Operation Postmaster
The operation postmaster was a British commando raid in World War II against alleged supply ships to German U-boats on the coast of West Africa.
history
In order to make it impossible to supply German submarines from merchant ships in neutral waters on the coast of West Africa, a British command was sent from England to West Africa in August 1941. In order to avoid political entanglements with neutral countries, the members of the command were disguised as civilians. The command assembled in Freetown , Sierra Leone . Maid Honor arrived there on September 20, 1941 . The Maid Honor was a former fishing trawler that had been converted into a yacht in 1936 and confiscated in March 1941 and converted for a military task, including concealed machine gun stands and a camouflaged light cannon. The armed trawler was to be used in its camouflage as a sailing ship with an engine for commando companies on the German-occupied French Channel coast . The ship and its command unit carried the name Maid Honor Force at the British secret organization SOE , which was responsible for espionage and sabotage operations . In July 1941, however, it was decided to use the Maid Honor Force to search for supply ships from German submarines on the West African coast.
With the Maid Honor , the command should explore the West African coast from the Gulf of Guinea to and including Liberia . In October 1941, the ship began its reconnaissance voyages. Towards the end of 1941, the SOE decided that the Maid Honor Force in the Gulf of Guinea should penetrate the port of the city of Santa Isabel on the island of Fernando Po , which belonged to the Spanish colonial empire, and seize the German and Italian merchant ships lying there to turn them off as supply ships for submarines. These ships were the large Italian cargo ship Duchessa d'Aosta and the two small German coasters Likomba and Bibundi .
When planning the operation against the ships of the Axis powers in the port of Santa Isabel, which the SOE had given the name "Operation Postmaster", it turned out that the Maid Honor was unsuitable for this mission. In Lagos , in the British Nigeria , the two tugs Vulcan and Nuneaton were found whose crews volunteered for the commando, as did some members of the Nigerian Civil Service.
On January 11, 1942, the Maid Honor Force left Lagos with their additional volunteers on their two tugs and reached Santa Isabel four days later, as planned, at midnight. The Vulcan docked at the Duchessa d'Aosta and the crew of the Italian ship was captured. Then the mooring lines of the Duchessa d'Aosta were blown, whereupon the Vulcan pulled the merchant ship out of the port into international waters . The Nuneaton docked at the Likomba and also pulled the Bibundi , which was moored at the Likomba, out of the port. With the explosion of the explosive charges on the mooring lines of the Duchessa d'Aosta , a wild anti-aircraft fire began by the Spanish port defense, which believed it was an air attack. In the dark of night the Spaniards did not notice the towing of the three merchant ships, and so the 15 cm cannons of the Spanish coastal artillery were not used.
Shortly after the successful attack on Santa Isabel, the Maid Honor Force returned to England, but left the Maid Honor in West Africa, where it was converted back into a trawler, but tropical woodworms perforated its wooden hull and made it unseaworthy. The Duchessa d'Aosta was renamed the Empire Yukon as a prize and went into service on the Allied side. The fate of the two German ships is uncertain. The Likomba is said to have been sold to Spain on January 21, 1943.
The official UK documents on Operation Postmaster will remain secret until 2017. The sequence of events was compiled from the statements of those involved.
literature
- Charles Messenger: The Commandos 1940-1946. GraftonBooks, London (England) 1991. ISBN 0-586-21034-2 , pp. 50-55.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ludwig Dinklage / Hans Jürgen Witthöft: Die Deutsche Handelsflotte 1939–1945 Volumes 1 + 2. Published by the Working Group for Defense Research in Stuttgart, Nikol Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2001. ISBN 3-933203-47-3 Volume 2 pp. 81–83.