ORP Wilia

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ORP Wilia
The ORP Wilia in 1932
The ORP Wilia in 1932
Ship data
flag German EmpireThe German Imperium German Empire France Poland
FranceFrance (national flag of the sea) 
PolandPoland (naval war flag) 
other ship names

Ganelon (1906)
Hilda Horn (1907)
Tinos (1911)
Le Bourget (1916)
Laurent Schaffiano (1922)
Modlin (1940)

Ship type Cargo
ship training ship
Shipyard Flensburg shipbuilding company
Build number 261
Launch May 26, 1906
Whereabouts Sunk as a breakwater off Normandy in 1944, scrapped from 1946
Ship dimensions and crew
length
104.0 m ( Lüa )
width 14.8 m
Draft Max. 5.2 m
measurement 3569 GRT , 2015 NRT
Machine system
machine 1 × 3-cylinder triple expansion machine
Machine
performance 		1,350 hp
Top
speed 		8-10 kn (Err km / h)
propeller 1
Armament

alternating:

  • 2 × 75 mm
  • 2 × machine guns 13.2 mm

The ORP Wilia (also: Wilja ) was a transport and training ship of the Polish Navy from 1925 built until 1940. As a cargo ship in 1906, it initially went as Ganelon , Hilda Horn and Tinos under the German flag, in 1916 as Le Bourget and Laurent Schiaffino under French flag before the Polish Navy bought it. At the beginning of the Second World War , the ship was in Casablanca and from 1940 sailed as Modlin freight across the Atlantic. With the invasion of Normandy in 1944, the ship was sunk as a breakwater. "Wilia" is the Polish name of the Belarusian or Lithuanian river Neris .

Construction and technical data

In 1905, the shipping company HC Horn from Schleswig ordered the steamer from the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft . Even before delivery, she sold it to the Bremen Roland-Linie , in which she was involved. The ship was laid down at the shipyard in 1906 under hull number 261. The launch took place as Ganelon on May 26th 1906, the delivery to the shipping company took place on July 14th 1906.

Its length was 104.0 meters, it was 14.8 meters wide, had a draft of 5.2 meters and was measured at 3569 GRT and 2015 NRT. The drive consisted of a 3-cylinder triple expansion machine with coal-fired boilers, which achieved 1,350 hp and acted on one screw. With that she reached a top speed of 8 to 10 knots. There are different specifications for armament, ranging from none over two 75-mm guns and two 13.2-mm machine guns to four 47-mm guns.

history

German cargo ship Ganelon , Hilda Horn and Tinos

For the Bremen Roland-Linie, the steamer, like almost all ships of the shipping company, was named after a character from the Roland song . As early as 1907, the Roland-Linie sold the ship to its shareholder, the HC Horn shipping company from Schleswig. This renamed the ship in Hilda Horn . The shipping company HC Horn last used the freighter with three other ships on its Adria line.

On November 28, 1911, the German Levante Line in Hamburg acquired these four ships from the Horn-Reederei, practically gaining a monopoly on the journey between Germany and the Levant . The former Hilda Horn was now called Tinos after the Cycladic island of the same name, Tinos . Most of the shipping company's ships were named after islands and towns in the Levant and were therefore colloquially referred to as "Ossendampers" after the name endings. At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, the Tinos was in the Aegean Sea and drove to initially neutral Greece. There it was launched in Piraeus and later interned. Even before Greece entered the war on the side of the Allies in 1917, French units that had already marched in seized the steamer on September 5, 1916.

French cargo ship Le Bourget and Laurent Schiaffino

The seized ship was transferred to Marseille and handed over to the French government. In the same year it was named Le Bourget and was used by the government for troop transports and for transports across the English Channel.

After the First World War, the ship was up for sale, but it wasn't until 1921 that a buyer was found. Charles Schaffiano's shipping company, Laurent Schiaffino & Cie. from Algiers , bought the steamer and named it Laurent Schaffiano - a family member of the shipping company. Algiers became the new home port. The shipping company's ships operated in particular between Algeria and Rouen , and later also between Morocco and France. The cargo usually consisted of colonial goods such as wine, fruit and vegetables, and passengers were also carried. The ship was up for sale again in 1925.

Transporter and training ship ORP Wilia of the Polish Navy

In July 1925, the Polish Navy bought the ship in France. After the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921, the army needed its own transport capacities to bring military goods into the country, which could only be transported by sea due to the tensions with neighboring countries. The ship was initially adapted to the needs of the Polish Navy and slightly rebuilt at the Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde shipyard in Bordeaux . An armament was not intended at this time. It was named Wilia - the Polish name of the Belarusian or Lithuanian river Neris . The handover and commissioning took place on August 8, 1925, also in Bordeaux. The first commander of the Wilja was Cdr. Mieczyslaw Burchardt, who had previously commanded the first Polish naval freighter, the Warta .

The main tasks of the ship were the transport of military goods - especially from France to Poland - and, as a training ship, the training of the technical on-board personnel. It also served as a troop transport several times. The ship took on these tasks from the start:

  • October 1925: First transport of military goods from France to Poland
  • 1926–1927: Service on the Danzig - Le Havre - Cherbourg - Brest - Danzig route
  • June 1927: Transfer of the exhumed body of Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849), one of the Polish national poets, from France to Poland
  • 1928: Joint exercises with the gunboat ORP Komendant Piłsudski and the sailing training ship ORP Iskra in the waters of the Ryské Bay
  • from 1928: Service on the Gdynia - Le Havre - Cherbourg - Brest - Gdynia route
  • 1929: Training trip to Norway
  • 1930–1932: Transfer of the crews for the new Polish warships built in France.
  • 1932–1934: Service as a training ship
  • March 6, 1933: During the " Westerplatte Affair ", the Wilia landed a battalion of Polish marine infantry and strengthened the Westerplatte garrison.
  • March 16, 1933: Return to Gdynia after the diplomatic settlement of the conflict.
  • 1934–1938: Several trips between France and Poland to transport parts of the miner ORP Gryf .
  • May 1937 - May 1938: Training trips to Estonia, Sweden and Great Britain
  • July 1939: Training trip to the Mediterranean
  • July 30, 1939: The Wilia Casablanca called due to an engine failure .
  • August 17, 1939: The sailing training ship Iskra also called at Casablanca and took over the cadets of the Wilia .

At the beginning of the Second World War , the Wilia was still in Casablanca for repairs. Together with the Iskra , she moored in Port Lyautey (today's Kenitra in Morocco) on October 10 and stayed there for the time being. The crews of the two ships were brought to France.

After the capitulation of France, the ship was first relocated to Gibraltar on July 3, 1940 , in order to avoid the threat of internment. A few days later, on July 8th, the ship left Gibraltar for Great Britain. The engine damage, which had previously only been temporarily repaired, was further repaired at sea and on July 17th the Wilia reached Liverpool. Here the ship was handed over to the Polish Merchant Navy.

Polish cargo ship Modlin

As early as July 30, 1940, the ship was given the name Modlin , named after the Modlin municipality north of Warsaw (now part of Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki ) and above all the Battle of Modlin in September 1939.

The ship was again overhauled and modernized in 1941. Information on the date and details of the modernization is not available. From 1941 to 1944 the Modlin sailed again as a cargo ship and transported supplies from Canada to Great Britain in the Atlantic convoys. The following journeys are known:

  • Convoy ON (S) 33: November 3, 1941 Liverpool - Convoy disbanded on November 23, 1941, Modlin to St. John's
  • Convoy SC 64: January 9, 1942 Sydney, British Columbia - Liverpool January 23; Cargo: pulp
  • Convoy SC 90: joined Sydney, British Columbia, Modlin on July 3, 1942, arriving from Newfoundland on July 5 - July 16, 1942 Liverpool; Cargo: pulp
  • Convoy ON 122: August 15, 1942 Liverpool - Convoy disbanded on September 3, 1942, Modlin to Halifax
  • Convoy ONS 5: April 21, 1943 Liverpool - May 12, 1943 Halifax
  • Convoy SC 137: Halifax July 19, 1943 - Liverpool August 3, 1943; Cargo: steel, wood

At the beginning of 1944, the Modlin was taken out of service due to wear and tear and the need for repairs.

The ship received one last task during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Two artificial harbors ( Mulberry harbors ) were to be built there, in order to be able to supply the landed Allied troops with supplies independently of ports. In the first phase of the construction of the Mulberrys on June 9, 1944, 53 old Allied merchant and warships were sunk by the Allies about 1,400 meters off the Normandy beach to form a four-mile basin and serve as a breakwater. Largely cannibalized, the Modlin was brought to the beach of the Gold Beach coastal section off Arromanches by tug and sunk there on June 9, 1944 as a breakwater for Mulberry "B" . After the war the ship was lifted and scrapped.

literature

  • Reinhold Thiel: North German Lloyd. Roland-Linie 1905 - 1992, Hauschild Verlag, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-8975-7008-4
  • Reinhart Schmelzkopf: The German Levante Line 1890 - 1967. Part 1: 1890 - 1920 , Verlag Karl-Heinz Butziger, Hamburg 1984 (without ISBN)
  • Jerzy Miciński, Bohdan Huras, Marek Twardowski: Księga statków polskich 1918–1945 [The Book of Polish Ships 1918–1945] , Volume 3, Polnord Wydawnictwo Oskar, Danzig 1999, ISBN 83-86181-45-1
  • Daniel Duda. Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej “Wilia” , in: “Nautologia” No. 149 (2012), Polskie Towarzystwo Nautologiczne, pp. 80–85
  • Maciej Neumann: Flota II Rzeczypospolitej i jej okręty [The fleet of the Second Republic and its ships] , Wydawnictwo LTW, Łomianki 2013, ISBN 978-83-7565-309-0
  • Stanisław M. Piaskowski: Okręty Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1920-1946 [The Ships of the Republic of Poland 1920-1946] , Album Planów, Warsaw 1996, ISBN 83-900217-2-2
  • Michael Alfred Peszke: Poland's Navy 1918-1945 , Hippocrene Books Inc., New York 1999, ISBN 0-7818-0672-0
  • Piotr Adamczak: Wojenne losy kanonierek [War fate of the gunboats] , in: Przegląd morski, June 2012 / No. 01 (058), pp. 88–93
  • Marcin Wawrzynkowski: Kanonierki ORP Komendant Pilsudski i ORP General Haller , Napoleon V, Oświęcim 2015, ISBN 978-83-7889-321-9

Web links

Commons : ORP Wilia  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ melt head, p. 68
  2. ↑ Piaskowski, p. 27, cf. Neumann, p. 211 and Duda, p. 80
  3. ↑ Schmelzkopf, p. 68, http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/horn.shtml
  4. ↑ melt head, p. 25
  5. ↑ ibid., P. 15
  6. ↑ melt head, p. 68, cf. http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/deutschelev.shtml
  7. ↑ Miciński, p. 235, Schmelzkopf, p. 68, http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/deutschelev.shtml , http://en.valka.cz/topic/view/29914/AK-ORP -Wilia
  8. ↑ Schmelzkopf, p. 68, Miciński, p. 235
  9. ↑ http://en.valka.cz/topic/view/29914/AK-ORP-Wilia
  10. ↑ Duda, pp. 80f., Piaskowski, p. 27; Neumann, p. 210
  11. ↑ Listing according to http://en.valka.cz/topic/view/29914/AK-ORP-Wilia , there however without references to the source, for individual data cf. also the additional notes in the text
  12. ↑ cf. Wawrzynkowski, p. 77, Duda, p. 83f.
  13. ↑ cf. Wawrzynkowski, p. 78f.
  14. ↑ cf. Wawrzynkowski, p. 81
  15. ↑ cf. Wawrzynkowski, p. 81
  16. ↑ cf. Peszke, p. 78
  17. ↑ http://en.valka.cz/topic/view/29914/AK-ORP-Wilia
  18. ↑ http://en.valka.cz/topic/view/29914/AK-ORP-Wilia
  19. ↑ http://www.warsailors.com/convoys/on33.html
  20. ↑ http://www.warsailors.com/convoys/sc64.html
  21. ↑ http://www.warsailors.com/convoys/sc90.html
  22. ↑ http://www.warsailors.com/convoys/on122.html
  23. ↑ http://www.warsailors.com/convoys/ons5.html
  24. ↑ http://www.warsailors.com/convoys/sc137.html
  25. ↑ http://www.forum-marinearchiv.de/smf/index.php?topic=22615.0
  26. ↑ http://www.archeosousmarine.net/gooseberry3.html , http://en.valka.cz/topic/view/29914/AK-ORP-Wilia