ORP Rybitwa (ship, 1935)
 ORP Rybitwa , Czajka , Mewa and Jaskółka 1937
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The ORP Rybitwa was the third Jaskółka class ship from the 1930s. These boats were designed as mine sweepers , but also as mine layers and for submarine hunting . After returning early from a training voyage , the Rybitwa took part in all Polish missions from the first day of the war, was damaged in a German air raid on September 14 and sunk by its own crew when the Polish troops surrendered on Hela . Raised by the German Navy and reactivated as Rixhöft , it was mainly used as a torpedo catch boat . After it was returned to Poland in 1946, it was used again as a minesweeper, after which its crews were trained to hunt submarines. It was not taken out of service until 1970.
Navy of the Second Polish Republic
The main task of the boats in the 1930s was to train the crew. In August 1939, Czajka and Rybitwa were on a training voyage on the Estonian and Latvian coasts. The commanding officer at that time was Captain Marynarki Kazimierz Miladowski.
On the morning of 1 September, the Polish fleet with the minelayer left Gryf , the destroyer Wicher , the minesweepers Jaskółka , Rybitwa , Czajka , Czapla , Żuraw and Mewa and the gunboats General Haller and Komendant Pilsudski their base in Gdynia to by Hela to relocate and carry out " Operation Rurka ". The Gdańsk Bay was to be protected against German ship attacks with a mine barrier.
During the crossing, 33 Ju 87 dive bombers of Lehrgeschwader 1 attacked the fleet and "Operation Rurka" had to be canceled. In this attack, the Gryf , Wicher and Mewa received damage from close hits. The latter had to be towed from the Rybitwa to Hela. The Mewa remained in Hela, while the five undamaged minesweepers were ordered to the naval port of Jastarnia , where they remained stationed until mid-September.
On September 3, Jaskółka and Rybitwa brought the coastal defense commander, Stefan Frankowski, from Gdynia to Hela to support the local garrison. The Jaskółka and the other boats remained in constant use and carried out patrols on the coast. Four days later, Jaskółka and Rybitwa searched in vain on the coast near Mechelinski for a downed German pilot and got caught in another air raid by Stukas. She shot down one of the attackers. In further missions, Jaskółka , Rybitwa and Czajka provided fire support for Polish troops on the coast near Rewa on September 12 and again on September 14.
The second attempt to block the mine in Gdańsk Bay was made by the still operational boats Czajka , Jaskółka and Rybitwa on September 12th. They each threw 20 mines south of Hela.
When the German air raid on the boats lying in the port of Jastarnia on September 14, their use ended. At around 10 a.m., 11 Ju 87 dive bombers of 4th / Carrier Group 186 appeared over the harbor: Rybitwa was hit by a bomb that did not explode. Czajka and Żuraw showed minor damage, while Jaskółka and Czapla were destroyed.
Then Rybitwa , Czajka and Żuraw were transferred to Hela, where they were still at the time of the surrender on October 2nd. There they were sunk by their crews.
German Navy
On October 3, 1939, the Germans first lifted Żuraw and Czajka , then Rybitwa and later Mewa , all four of which were repaired and incorporated into the Navy.
Rybitwa was renamed Rixhöft in October 1939 . With the repair and conversion to a torpedo catch boat , the name was changed to TFA 8 (“Torpedo Catcher Abroad”) on June 14, 1941, and the 26th U-Flotilla was put into service in Gotenhafen on September 26, 1941. This served mainly for torpedo shooting training for submarine commanders - as a torpedo catch boat, it had to recover the fired exercise torpedoes. As armament, she now carried two 20 mm anti-aircraft guns.
At the end of the war, the TFA 8 (ex Rybitwa ) with its sister ships TFA 7 (ex Mewa ) and TFA 11 (ex Czajka ) as well as the old torpedo boats T 139 , T 151 , T 155 , T 156 and T 190 from the First World War became again Service in a combat unit used. Together they formed the re-established 4th Escort Flotilla from April to May 1945 and provided escort service in the Baltic Sea for the repatriation of troops and civilian population from the east as well as the Courland .
German mine clearance service
After the end of the war, like the other former Polish boats , the Rybitwa was assigned to the 3rd Mine Clearance Division of the German Mine Clearance Service on October 15, 1945 . The task of the 3rd Mine Clearance Division, based in Copenhagen, was to clear the sea mines in Danish waters. The - meanwhile unarmed - Rybitwa and her sister boats are not listed in the active flotillas and can be added to the reserve boats.
Navy of the People's Republic of Poland
In December 1945, the Polish military commission found the former Rybitwa together with her sister ships in Travemünde . The boats got their old names back and on March 12, 1946 they reached the former base in Gdynia. When it was returned, the Rybitwa was equipped with weapons from German stocks and now carried one double and two single 20 mm anti-aircraft guns. The boat kept this armament until July 1949.
In Gdynia the boats underwent a thorough overhaul, which was completed by June 1947. After the overhaul, it served briefly as a training ship for the naval officers ' school until the destroyer Błyskawica, who had meanwhile returned from England, took over this task in July 1947 . They were then - contrary to the original plan to station them together with former Soviet minesweepers in Gdynia - moved to Stettin . From there, by mid-1949, they cleared the coasts and sea routes for which Poland was responsible of mines.
Reclassified from the minesweeper to the D-47 guard boat , it received new armament according to Soviet standards in July 1949 and now carried two 37 mm cannons (1x2), two 12.7 mm machine guns (1x2) and two depth charges.
Until 1960, teams for anti-submarine defense were trained on it. In the last few years she served as a houseboat until the decision to finally decommissioned in 1970 and she was scrapped.
Remarks
- ↑ ORP is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".
- ^ Twardowski, p. 171
- ↑ comparable to a first lieutenant at sea
- ^ Piaskowski, p. 42
- ↑ Twardowski p. 175f.
- ^ Twardowski, p. 176
- ^ Twardowski, p. 176
- ^ Twardowski, p. 176, Piaskowski, p. 43
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/39-08.htm#SEP
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/39-08.htm#SEP , Bertke Vol. 1., p. 128, Twardowski, p. 176
- ^ Twardowski, p. 176
- ^ Twardowski, p. 177
- ^ Twardowski, p. 177
- ↑ http://www.forum-marinearchiv.de/smf/index.php?topic=9041.0 , Gröner, Vol. 5, p. 162
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/geleitflottillen.htm#Ostsee nach Hildebrand / Lohmann, Kriegsmarine 1939–1945, chap. 65, pp. 115-117
- ↑ Gröner, Vol. 5, p. 162, cf. Twardowski, p. 179
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/minen/dmrl.htm
- ↑ Twardowski, p. 175, p. 179
- ^ Twardowski, p. 175
- ^ Twardowski, p. 179
Web links
- http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/chronik.htm , accessed on January 5, 2017
- http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/mboote/m1-7.htm , accessed on January 5, 2017
- http://www.navypedia.org/ships/poland/pl_ms.htm , accessed January 5, 2017
- http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/minen/mrdiv3-frames.htm , accessed on January 5, 2017
literature
- Marek Twardowski: The Jaskolka Class Minesweepers , in: Warships. A quarterly Journal of warship history 15 (1980), Conway Maritime Press, London, pp. 167-179, ISBN 0-85177-207-2
- Stanisław M. Piaskowski: Okręty Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1920–1946 [The Ships of the Republic of Poland 1920–1946] , Planów album, Warsaw 1996, ISBN 83-900217-2-2
- Robert Gardiner / Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the world's fighting ships 1922-1946 , Conway Maritime Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-8317-0303-2
- Michael Alfred Peszke: Poland's Navy 1918-1945 , Hippocrene Books Inc., New York 1999, ISBN 0-7818-0672-0
- Erich Gröner: The German warships 1815 - 1945, Vol. 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speed boats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6
- Erich Gröner: The German warships 1815 - 1945, Vol. 5: Auxiliary ships II: Hospital ships, accommodation ships, training ships, research vehicles , port operations vehicles , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1988, ISBN 3-7637-4804-0
- Vincent P. O'Hara: The German Fleet at war, 1939–1945 , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 2004, ISBN 978-1-61251-397-3 (eBook)
- Donald A. Bertke, Gordon Smith, Don Kindell / Naval-history.net: World War II Sea War - Volume 1: The Nazis strike first , Bertke Publications, Dayton / Ohio 2011, ISBN 978-0-578-02941-2