ORP Wilk (1931)

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Wilk p1
Ship data
flag PolandPoland (naval war flag) Poland
Ship type Submarine
class Wilk class
Shipyard Augustin Normand, Le Havre
Launch April 12, 1929
Commissioning October 31, 1931
Whereabouts Wrecked in 1951
Ship dimensions and crew
length
78.5 m ( Lüa )
width 5.9 m
Draft Max. 4.2 m
displacement above water: 980 ts
under water: 1,250 ts
Machine system
machine 1 × Vickers - Diesel engine
1 × electric motor (1200 PS / 909 kW)
Machine
performance
1,800 hp (1,324 kW)
Mission data submarine
Duration of use 35 days
Diving depth, normal 80 m
Immersion depth, max. 100 m
Top
speed
submerged
9.5 kn (18 km / h)
Top
speed
surfaced
14.5 kn (27 km / h)
Armament

ORP Wilk was a submarine of the Polish Navy . The Wilk ( Polish : "Wolf") was built between 1927 and 1931 by the Chantiers Augustine Normand shipyard in Le Havre and was the lead ship of the Wilk class of the same name . The design was based on the Pierre Chailey class of the French Navy . In 1939 the Wilk was the first of two Polish submarines to break through the German blockade to Great Britain.

commitment

Pre-war

On November 23, 1931, the newly built submarine entered the port of Gdynia in association with the gunboat General Haller and the sister boat Ryś . The first in command of the boat was kapitan marynarki Aleksander Mohuczy. On May 1, 1932, the boat received its identification "W", which can be traced back to the name Wilk . In August of the same year, the boat and other units went to Stockholm to visit the fleet . In April 1933 the boat underwent minor repairs, in May 1935 it was overhauled and some details were modified. In June 1936 the boat visited Reval together with its two sister boats . On July 1, 1937, the identifier was removed again.

Second World War

The mobilization of Poland took place on August 24, 1939. Wilk was put into combat readiness and ammunitioned with 10 torpedoes, 22 sea mines and 114 grenades for the deck gun . At the beginning of the war on September 1, 1939, all five Polish submarines ran out to patrol the Polish coast as part of the Worek plan . The area of ​​operations ordered was east of the mouth of the Vistula in the Danzig Bay . Due to the extremely unfavorable balance of forces from the Polish point of view , there were only little prospects of a successful combat mission.

The boat had its first enemy contact on September 2, when two German mine-layers and a destroyer were sighted at a distance of 1,400 m . The attack failed because the Wilk was discovered and attacked in turn. She was attacked with depth charges and was only able to break away during the night. The following day the Wilk was able to lay 20  sea ​​mines , although it was attacked again in the meantime. It is considered likely that on December 7, 1939, the German fishing boat MFK Pil 55 ran into one of these mines and sank at position 54 ° 37 ′ 5 ″  N , 19 ° 47 ′ 0 ″  E.

On the evening of September 3, Wilk met the Polish submarine Orzeł . The commander of the Wilk , Boguslaw Krawczyk , discussed for a long time with the commander of the Orzeł , Henryk Kłoczkowski . Krawczyk and Kłoczkowski had been friends for years. After this conversation Kłoczkowski behaved "pessimistic and strange" as the first officer of Orzeł , January Grudziński , testified later. After the conversation, Kłoczkowski made incomprehensible decisions for which he later had to answer before a court martial.

The following day the Wilk was attacked three times with depth charges, but suffered only minor damage. On September 5, the submarine had to go to a depth of 85 m in order to escape new German attacks.

On September 10th, Boguslaw Krawczyk requested permission from the command in Hel to call at the base. Due to the hopeless situation against the extremely superior German Navy , the naval command decided that the Wilk should either go to Great Britain or to neutral Sweden . The commander then decided to leave the Baltic Sea and break through to Great Britain. The boat headed north and sailed along the Swedish coast, where the heavy German cruiser Admiral Hipper was sighted on September 11 . The attack had to be stopped because the German escort ships caught the submarine early and attacked.

The Öresund was crossed on September 14th . The Wilk was the first of the two Polish submarines of the war to succeed in this operation. The second successful boat was the Orzeł . On September 20th, the British destroyer Sturdy escorted the Wilk to the British base Rosyth in Scotland . The boat was then overtaken in Dundee and placed under British command with the tactical number N 63.

On December 8, the British government announced that both the Wilk and Orzeł had broken through to Britain. This was a severe blow to the German propaganda, which claimed to have sunk all Polish submarines in the Baltic Sea. In truth, all Polish submarines had escaped. Both the Sęp and the Wilk's two sister ships were interned in Sweden . The Wilk and the Orzeł became famous and in December King George VI visited. the boats several times.

Between December 1939 and January 1940, two patrols were carried out off the Norwegian coast. In the spring of 1940, Commander Boguslaw Krawczyk was awarded the Krzyż Srebrny Order Virtuti Militari .

On June 20, 1940 Wilk was rammed at position 56 ° 50 ′ 0 ″  N , 3 ° 37 ′ 0 ″  E by an unidentified submarine and badly damaged. The other submarine sank with no survivors. The accident could not be solved. Wilk was probably accidentally rammed by the Dutch submarine O 13 . Another, but unlikely, assumption is that Wilk rammed the German U- 22 submarine . A comparison with German loss lists does not confirm this theory.

Because of the severe damage, Wilk had to be towed to Dundee. After repairs, the boat carried out five more patrols by January 1941. On July 19, 1941, Boguslaw Krawczyk committed suicide. His successor was komandor podporucznik Brunon Jabłoński. Jabłoński had been in command of the boat for six years six years earlier.

On April 2, 1942, the boat was ordered into the reserve.

After the war

Wilk was decommissioned in Poland in 1951 and then scrapped.

Commanders

  • kapitan marynarki Aleksander Mohuczy (October 31, 1932 - December 1934)
  • kapitan marynarki Brunon Jabłoński (December 1934 - June 21, 1935)
  • kapitan marynarki Wladyslaw Salmon (June 21, 1935 - July 1938)
  • captain marynarki Bogusław Krawczyk (July 1938 - April 19, 1940)
  • kapitan marynarki Borys Karnicki (April 19, 1940 - August 1, 1940)
  • komandor podporucznik Bogusław Krawczyk (August 1, 1940 - July 18, 1941)
  • komandor podporucznik Brunon Jabłoński (July 22, 1941 - April 2, 1942)

See also

  • ORP Wilk (other ships with the name Wilk )

literature

  • Erminio Bagnasco: Submarines in World War II , Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-613-01252-9 .

Web links

Commons : Wilk  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ "ORP" is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".