Mr. Ms. O 21
 Mr. Ms. O 21 is entering the port of Gibraltar |
|
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Keel laying | November 20, 1937 |
| Launch | October 21, 1939 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | May 10, 1940 |
| Decommissioning | November 2, 1957 |
| Whereabouts | scrapped |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
surfaced: 990 t |
| length |
77.7 m |
| width |
6.8 m |
| Draft |
3.95 m |
| Diving depth | 100 m (maximum calculated 175 m) |
| crew |
39 men |
| drive |
|
| speed |
19.5 knots surfaced / 9 knots submerged |
| Range |
10,000 nautical miles surfaced at 12 kn / 28 nautical miles dived at 8.5 kn |
| Armament |
1 × 88 mm cannon L / 45 of Bofors |
| Particularities: |
|
The Mr. Ms. O 21 (sometimes also with the English name HNLMS O 21 was performed), a Dutch submarine of the O-21 class of 1940 that the Second World War on the side of the Allies was used. The Koninklijke Marine boat was the most successful Dutch submarine of the Second World War. Among other things, it sank on 28 November 1941 in the Mediterranean , the German submarine U 95 and some Japanese ships in the Pacific War . The boat survived the war and served in the East Indies for a few years before joining the reserve fleet. O 21 was decommissioned in 1957 and sold for demolition.
Construction and commissioning
The keel-laying of the boat was made in the Nov. 20, 1937 Shipyard K. M. De Schelde in Vlissingen . Originally the boat number K XXI was planned, but this was changed to O 21 before the ship was launched . As an O-boat it was intended for use in European waters, whereas K-boats were used in the Dutch East Indies.
The boat was the type ship of the O-21 class , designed for seven boats , of which four boats were later used by the Allies and the remaining three as German booty submarines. The Dutch in-house design was modern, including a snorkel and a 40 mm cannon that could be lowered into a watertight compartment - details that the Germans copied in the class XXI and XXIII electric boats . On October 21, 1939 was O 21 with some difficulty from the stack . During the German invasion of the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, the Dutch Navy put the boat into service unfinished. It escaped the Germans to England accompanied by its sister boat O 22, which was also not fully equipped . Previously, O 21 were neither tested nor possessed it on ammunition for the weapons already installed. From May to June 1940 the boat was fully equipped in Rosyth , Scotland . Among other things, it received a loop antenna . The boat's snorkel had to be removed at the request of the British, as it seemed unnecessary and dangerous to them. First diving tests were carried out on June 3, 1940. Just four days later, the boat had to submerge in its own port in Scotland because of a German air attack . On June 22nd, the now operational boat was assigned to the British 9th Submarine Flotilla in Dundee .
Mission history
North Sea
On July 30, 1940, O 21 left for its first mission in the North Sea; some minor defects had to be fixed beforehand. The voyage was therefore also used to check the operational readiness of the boat and crew. Operational area was a circle of twenty nautical miles north of the Dogger Bank . On the afternoon of August 1, 1940, the submerged boat sighted a surfaced German submarine and shot a fan of two torpedoes from a distance of 2000 m , but missed the boat, which was probably U 60 . On August 9, the boat returned to Dundee, where Commander Ltz. I (Leutnant zur See, first class) JF van Dulm was awarded the Bronze Cross for successfully rescuing the boat from the Germans . The boat was on alert due to the possible invasion of England at the time. It did not sail again until August 28, this time in front of the southern approach to the port of Bergen , where only a small cutter was sighted, which the commander did not consider worth a torpedo. During a deep dive attempt while under way, damage to one of the deck torpedo tubes occurred. On the return to port, O 21 was almost stranded on the Scottish coast because of the bad weather.
The next mission, for which the boat set sail on September 27, 1940, led to the same area, where it again sighted a cutter. It was probably the same as the previous trip. On October 5th, however, O 21 sighted a returning German Type II submarine . Presumably O 21 also noticed this , because the German boat suddenly submerged and switched off the engines, so that O 21 , which had no possibility of underwater bearing , could not follow it. On the way back to the base, the boat carried out another deep dive test in which a control glass in the control center broke at a depth of 95 m . In addition, water penetrated the engine room through the screw shafts and damaged the anchor of the starboard electric motor . The propeller shafts ran tight, so that the engine died and the boat sagged to a depth of 106 m before it could be surfaced again by blowing it out .
Due to the damage, O 21 was taken to a dry dock after her return . A third deep dive attempt in November led the boat to the planned operating depth of 102 m without any problems.
The next mission from November 28 to December 12, 1940 took the boat off the Norwegian coast again, this time off Stavanger . The trip went without any special incidents.
After the return, tests were scheduled for O21 again. Since the supply of Dutch torpedoes in England was limited to the torpedoes that had been taken along when fleeing from the Germans, the compatibility of Dutch torpedo tubes with British torpedoes had to be checked. After successful tests, O 21 ran out again on December 29, 1940, this time equipped with British torpedoes, on a war patrol . The area of operation was the same area off Bergen / Norway, in which O 21 had already been twice before. As in previous missions there, it spotted a cutter on which no torpedo was wasted. On January 12, 1941, the boat returned to the base to set sail on January 27 for the next voyage. This trip, which lasted until February 10, was also unsuccessful.
Atlantic
From February 24 to March 10, the submarine drove with its sister boat O 23 as escort protection on the route Dundee - Gibraltar . At the meeting point with the first convoy, O 21 lost its escort ship, the mine clearer of the Free French fleet La Moqueuse, due to bad weather . While the boats were looking for this, they were shot at by a British cargo ship with its on-board cannon. The boats evaded this attack by diving. The now catching up La Moqueuse sighted the periscope of O 21 and also believed to sight a German submarine. Cast by the French water bombs damaged O 21 only slightly. The boat appeared immediately.
Mediterranean Sea
On March 14th, the boat reached Gibraltar and was organizationally subordinated to the British 8th submarine flotilla. Until mid-June, O 21 escorted several convoys, accompanying the northbound convoys to the meeting point with the convoy traveling on the opposite course , in order to then escort the southbound convoy to Gibraltar. This was followed by a short stay in Gibraltar for an overhaul, a brief participation in a anti-submarine exercise and another convoy escort before the boat was assigned on July 2 to patrol the Bay of Biscay north of Portugal . The British Admiralty was waiting for a German auxiliary cruiser there . On July 6th, O 21 returned to Gibraltar .
On July 16, 1941, O 21 ran out of the Mediterranean , where he was assigned a patrol area south of Naples . In a first convoy sighted on the morning of July 21, the distance was too great to get into attack position, in a second convoy the security of three torpedo boats was so strong that O 21 could not get into firing position. The commander took a schooner sighted on July 28th for a Q-ship and did not attack it. On the same day, O 21 found another convoy with the help of the listening device, consisting of four cargo ships and two destroyers as escorts. O 21 fired a quadruple torpedo at the convoy, dived to a depth of 35 m and went crawling . Two torpedoes hit the Italian freighter Monteponi , which sank the next day due to the damage. The counterattack of the escorting destroyers took place far from O 21 . On August 3, O 21 attacked an unknown Italian three-masted schooner (500 GRT) south of Sardinia , first with a torpedo (which, however, probably passed underneath the ship), then with the deck gun. At least seven of the 25 rounds fired hit the schooner, and after the ship burned, O 21 left the site of the attack. On August 6th the boat was back in Gibraltar.
On August 6, 1941, the sister boat O 24 sank the small Italian merchant steamer Bombardiere after a torpedo attack at 6:32 a.m. at position 41 ° 47 ' N , 12 ° 6' E in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Dutch commander erroneously reported the sinking of a 5000 GRT ship, but the Bombardiere actually only had a volume of 634 GRT. Interestingly, for unknown reasons, the official Italian position to this day is that the small merchant ship was sunk by O 21 instead of - as demonstrably correct - by O 24 .
On August 27, O 21 ran out again into the Tyrrhenian Sea . On August 31, an unknown Italian submarine of the Marcello class (1,060 / 1,313 t) was sighted , but missed it with a torpedo fan . The next attack by the boat on September 5 was more successful, the Italian freighter Isarco (5738 GRT ) was torpedoed and then sunk with the deck gun. O 21 took 22 crew survivors on board. The next day the boat attacked an unknown Italian auxiliary cruiser, but the torpedoes missed it. Two days later, September 7, the boat attacked an auxiliary mine casual of Fasana class on, the next day another convoy. None of these attacks were successful.
On September 27, O 21 sank an unknown small sailing ship at the position 42 ° North, 10 ° East with the 88 mm deck gun (this attack is not mentioned in the Dutch sources or in the commander's memoirs - but it is more official Italian point of view).
The next mission of the boat served as flank protection for a British convoy traveling from Gibraltar to Malta . The boat met the Vichy-French freighter Oued Yquem (1369 GRT) on October 3, which it sank with a torpedo at the position 40 ° 58 ' N , 9 ° 59' E , 3 nm from Cape Figari (Sardinia).
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On November 9, O 21 started another mission into Italian waters, where on November 15 the boat sighted the Italian freighter Ninetto G. (5335 GRT), which was part of a convoy , but attacked without success because all the torpedoes shot down the target missed. On November 16 and November 21, further unsuccessful attacks on merchant ships followed. On November 22nd, the boat sighted the Italian 92 GRT trawler San Salvatore , which it sank with the deck gun. The next day, O 21 attacked another Italian convoy with torpedoes, possibly sinking the 52 GRT trawler Nuovo Sant 'Antonio without the crew of O 21 having noticed - the official Italian position to this day is that O 21 sank the trawler. On November 24, the next Italian ship was sunk east of Sardinia , the 216 GRT sailing ship Unione , which first fired at the O 21 with its deck gun and finally rammed it. The boat was already almost ammunition-free and on its way back to Gibraltar when the lookout spotted a submarine on November 28 at around 0:50 a.m., which made itself felt with the signal lamp and tried to make contact. The Dutch did not recognize the code , so Ltz. I van Dulm, the commander of the boat, decided to attack the presumably hostile boat. The last bow torpedo of O 21 missed the target because the enemy submarine turned. Van Dulm also had his boat turned and shot down one of the two stern torpedoes that hit the German boat U 95 directly behind the tower. U 95 then sank and O 21 rescued twelve survivors of the German boat from the water, including the commander Kapitänleutnant Gerd Schreiber and a war correspondent . Schreiber had called him to the tower so that he could witness the sinking of an enemy submarine, as it had also been recognized on U 95 that no friendly boat had been signaled. For the sinking of U 95 , Ltz. I (Lieutenant First Class) van Dulm the British Distinguished Service Order .
Far East
After another uneventful patrol in the Bay of Biscay, O 21 returned to Great Britain on December 23 or 24, 1941, to be overtaken from January to July 1942. At the end of December Japan had attacked the Dutch possessions in the Dutch East Indies, so that the boat was needed there. During the shipyard layover, the boat's crew had to mourn their only death after a crew member was hit by a bus . On August 12, 1942, O 21 left for the Far East . On the first leg of the voyage, the boat escorted a convoy from England to Gibraltar, during which time it encountered U 254 , but missed the German boat. On October 17, 1942, the boat reached Simon's Town in South Africa , where a longer stay in the shipyard followed, during which, among other things, the volcanic coupling of the boat was replaced and the boat spent a week in dry dock, where the outer hull was cleaned and repainted. On January 11, 1943, O 21 continued its voyage and entered Colombo on Ceylon on February 21 , where it was now under the command of the British Asian Fleet . The first mission trip in the Pacific region joined O 21 to March 6. This led into the sea area between the Andamans and Siam . On the way, the boat sank the Japanese freighter Kasago Maru 2 (3967 GRT) on March 13 . After 18 days it was back in Colombo.
O 21 started the second war patrol in the Pacific with eight guests on board. These were agents of Chinese origin who were dropped off on April 21 on the west coast of Java Island . The following day, O 21 sank the Japanese freighter Yamazato Maru (6925 GRT), which was hit by two torpedoes from a four-fan, and attacked a Japanese Q-ship on the same April 22nd unsuccessfully. On April 24th, the boat cleared the Bay of Sabang off Sumatra .
After two more uneventful missions in the Straits of Malacca and south of Java, O 21 was relocated to Australia . The boat's next mission failed: two agents who were to be picked up on Java did not appear at the agreed point on the coast. Another agent O 21 dropped on Java on August 1 did not return to the meeting point the following night.
Once around the world
From August 25, 1943 to November, the boat was stationed in Fremantle , Australia, under the command of the American Pacific Fleet . After that, due to machine failure, it had to return to Great Britain, where it arrived in February 1944. The boat received new batteries in April, after which the boat crossed the Atlantic for a complete overhaul in Philadelphia from June to December. After a test period, the boat drove back to the Pacific War Room, making its way through the Panama Canal . Any defects that occurred on the voyage were repaired in Wellington ( New Zealand ) before the boat returned to Freemantle in May 1945, completing a circumnavigation of the world. Before the end of the war followed under the command of Ltz. I FJ Kroesen one more mission to the Sunda Strait , where O 21 damaged two Japanese coastal ships with the deck guns off the northwest of Java on July 29, 1945, sank a Japanese fishing boat estimated at 10 t by gunfire on July 31, and sank the south coast enlightened by Java. At the end of the war the boat was back in Australia.
Post war story
Dutch East Indies
After the war, O 21 remained in the Far East for some time, where it was stationed in Batavia (today: Jakarta) from October 1945 . The boat was under the command of Ltz from October 18, 1945 to May 4, 1946. II (Lieutenant at sea, second class) WFJ Mörzer Bruijns deployed against arms smugglers in Indonesian waters. A typical mission lasted around seven to ten days, during which numerous boats were stopped and searched. According to unconfirmed reports, O 21 is also said to have been patrolling the Sunda Strait from late October .
Back in the Netherlands
The boat finally returned to the Netherlands on April 21, 1946. From April 30 to February 7, 1950, the boat was transferred from active service to the reserve and stored until further notice. During this time the guns were - possibly - removed during various maintenance work .
Torpedo test boat
From October 7, 1950 until its final decommissioning on November 2, 1957, the O 21 was still used as a torpedo test boat. The O 21 worked closely with the tender and torpedo transport ship Mr. Ms. Mercuur (2) and a speedboat together (the latter followed and observed the torpedo runway ).
Decommissioning
After its official decommissioning and retirement on November 2, 1957 in Rotterdam , the boat was sold on January 24, 1958 for 141,000 guilders to the scrap dealer GP van Beckum in Alkmaar, who immediately dismantled it.
One of the torpedo tubes was used again from 1962 to 1976 on the torpedo test ship Mr. Ms. van Bochove used.
