Orzeł class (1939)
 The Orzeł
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
The Orzeł class was a submarine - ship class of the Polish Navy in World War II and after. The two boats in the class were built at the Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde in Vlissingen and the Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij in Rotterdam . The boats were designed by a team of Dutch and Polish engineers. The construction costs for the two Orzeł class boats amounted to over 20 million złoty and were mainly financed by the delivery of Polish agricultural products.
Constructive features
It was submarines with a classic combined drive from diesel and accumulator -betriebenen electric motors without snorkel . The two 6-cylinder diesel engines from the Swiss manufacturer Sulzer together delivered an output of 4740 hp (3484 kW ). The two electric motors came from the Swiss manufacturer Brown & Boverie and together delivered an output of 1,100 hp (809 kW). The boats had two shafts that drove two screws . With diesel propulsion, a speed of 19.4 knots (35.9 km / h ) could be achieved over water and, submerged, with electric propulsion 9.0 knots (16.7 km / h).
The hull was built as a 2-hull construction and had a guaranteed diving depth of 80 m. The maximum diving depth was given as 100 m.
The pipe armament for the emerged use consisted of a 105 mm deck gun of the Swedish manufacturer Bofors and two Bofors 40 mm - Flak in double carriage. The heavy 13.2 mm machine gun originally planned for air defense by the French manufacturer Hotchkiss was replaced by the Swedish double anti-aircraft gun during the construction phase.
The boats had eight internal reloadable torpedo tubes (four in the bow, four in the stern). In addition, four external, pivotable pipes that cannot be reloaded at sea were installed outside the pressure hull. In total, the boats carried up to 20 torpedoes . The torpedo tubes were designed to fire both French 21.7- inch (550 mm) and, with an insertion adapter , the smaller-caliber British 21-inch (533 mm) Whitehead torpedoes. In practice only the 21-inch torpedoes were used.
The design was a bit too big for the shallow waters of the small Baltic Sea . The maximum displacement of 1,650 ts even exceeded that of the early German Type IX offshore boats.
Boats of the class
-
Orzeł
- Builder : NV Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde ( Vlissingen )
- Keel laying : August 14, 1936
- Launched : January 15, 1938
- Commissioning: February 2, 1939
- Home port : Gdynia
- Use: The Orzeł ran out at the start of the war on September 1, 1939, was briefly interned in Estonia , broke through to Great Britain, sank several enemy units in April 1940 during the German Weser Exercise and has been missing in the North Sea since June 1940 .
-
Sęp
- Builder: Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij NV ( Rotterdam )
- Keel laying: November 1936
- Launched: October 17, 1938
- Commissioning: April 1939
- Home port: Hel
- Use: The Sęp was "kidnapped" in April 1939 during a test drive to Poland. She was badly damaged by German depth charges on September 3, 1939 and was interned in Sweden on September 14 . After the end of the war, the Sęp returned to Poland on October 24, 1945, where it was used as a training boat until it was decommissioned on September 15, 1969 . Sęp was scrapped in 1972.
See also
literature
- Erminio Bagnasco: Submarines in World War II , Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-613-01252-9 .
Web links
- The Orzeł class in uboat.net ( Engl. )
- Page about the Orzeł ( German , English and Polish)
- Page via built in the Netherlands submarines (Engl.)
Footnotes
- ^ "ORP" is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".
- ↑ In the Polish language "Orzeł" means " eagle ".
- ↑ In the Polish language "Sęp" means " vulture ".
