Ostmark (ship, 1936)
 Start of a Dornier Do 18 from Ostmark
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The Ostmark was a catapult ship built for Lufthansa , which served as a floating base for flying boats in their South Atlantic airmail service before the Second World War .
prehistory
Since 1934 Lufthansa has been using the two former cargo ships, Westfalen and Schwabenland , which had been converted for this purpose, as floating bases for the flying boats of its airmail service, which operates between South America, Europe and Africa. Both ships were equipped with a catapult . At the stern they had a ramp over which a canvas stiffened by struts could be deployed as a towing sail and then brought in again. One of the ships was stationed in Bathurst (now Banjul) in British Gambia and in Natal in Brazil . From Bathurst, the ship usually ran 650 km southwest into the Atlantic with a Dornier Wal on board, in order to then launch the machine using the catapult. The flight then went to Fernando de Noronha , with very good conditions to Natal. The ship at the South America station was mostly with a Dornier whale on board at Fernando de Noronha off the Brazilian coast. A Dornier whale started with the post in Natal to the ship at Fernando de Noronha and was lifted from the tow with a crane on deck. The catapult ship often marched further into the Atlantic so that the destination Bathurst was safely within range of the machine used. As a rule, the Dornier Wal, which was already on board, then started with the reloaded mail, in some cases also the Dornier Wal, who had arrived from Natal.
The 10-ton flying boats of the Dornier Wal type or from 1937 also Do 18 were accelerated to 150 km / h within seconds by the steam catapult of the ships.
Based on the experience with these converted ships, Lufthansa soon decided to have catapult ships specially designed for this task built. The first of these ships was the Ostmark .
Construction and technical data
The ship was on April 15 at the 1936 Howaldtswerken in Kiel from the stack and was already delivered on 16 May 1936th It was 79.8 m long and 11.25 m wide, had a draft of 4.72 m and was measured at 1280 GRT. The machinery consisted of two MAN 10-cylinder diesel engines, which gave the Ostmark 2000 hp and a speed of 13.5 knots . The fuel supply of 235 tons of oil gave a range of 9800 nautical miles at 13 knots cruising speed. The ship was equipped with a crane from the Hamburg crane company Kampnagel with 15 tons of lifting power and a 41.5 m long 15-ton catapult of the Heinkel K-9 type built by Krupp , which reached over the entire middle and foredeck. Behind it there was a 20 m long aircraft parking area and a turntable 6 m in diameter. On the right and left were two signal masts that could be folded down at the side. The towing sail made by Friedrich Beilken from Vegesack , which can be deployed at the stern , was seldom used. The ship had 11 tanks for aviation fuel , each with a capacity of 17,000 liters. The crew consisted of 29 men plus 18 aircraft crew.
Postal service
On May 22, 1936 Lufthansa put the ship into service. On June 2nd, it moved to the South Atlantic, where it took the place of the Swabian lands off Bathurst. The first scheduled launch by Dornier Wal D-AGAT Boreas took place on July 3rd . (The Schwabenland was first relocated to the Azores in 1936 , later to New York, in order to catapult the twin-engined Dornier Do 18 for the planned North Atlantic postal service . In 1936, it returned to the South America position participated in North Atlantic tests with four-engine Blohm & Voss Ha 139. )
The Ostmark was stationed only in Bathurst until the outbreak of the Second World War and during this time it looked after a total of around 300 mail flights. It was only replaced by Schwabenland (1937 and 1939) and Westphalia (1938) for overhaul times in spring . In August 1939 she had just returned to the ward.
The accident of March 12, 1937
On March 12, 1937, a serious accident occurred. The Heinkel He 111 post machine "Rostock" (D-ALIX) came with a load of mail from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and appeared at 2:10 in the morning over Bathurst, where it made several large circles over the city at a low altitude, but then flew in a south-westerly direction over the harbor and was no longer heard or seen afterwards. The Ostmark was in radio communication with the aircraft that was flown by flight captain Alfred Viereck. The crew also included the co-pilot Richard Rebbentrost and the radio operator Kurt Bichner. The second officer of the Ostmark , Hans Hemmann, returning from vacation, was also on board . Shortly after the “Rostock” disappeared, another Lufthansa aircraft and a Lufthansa boat began to search the Gambia estuary . Around 10:30 am, parts of the wreckage of the “Rostock” were discovered a few kilometers southeast of the pier in the river. Various parts of the wreckage and around 90% of the mail load were recovered during the day, but the four men of the crew were never found. The mail was dried on the Ostmark and flown to South America with the next Dornier Wal that evening .
Outbreak and end of war
The ship was surprised by the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939. At that time it was in the port of the island of Bolama in neutral Portuguese Guinea , but then went to Las Palmas on the (Spanish) Canary Islands on September 6 , where it stayed for a year.
On September 1, 1940, the Ostmark was requisitioned by the German Air Force . On September 3rd, according to orders, she tried to break through into occupied France . The company was successful and the Ostmark reached the Gironde at Le Verdon-sur-Mer on September 19th . On September 23, 1940 she left Le Verdon to move to Brest , where she was supposed to support the air force reconnaissance there with flying boats. During the journey she was secured by the two minesweepers M 6 and M 12 . On September 24, the Ostmark near the island of Île d'Yeu off the coast of the Vendée , southwest of Saint-Nazaire , was torpedoed by the British submarine Tuna at 5:42 a.m. The ship sank at 8:10 PM on the position 47 ° 1 ' N , 3 ° 2' W . All but one man could be saved.
The wreck was found in 2002 by divers from the French “Groupe de recherches et d'exploration maritime”.
literature
- Jörg-M. Hörmann: Flugbuch Atlantik, German catapult flights 1927–1939 . Delius Klasing Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-7688-1973-2 .
- Simon Mitterhuber: The German catapult planes and slingshots . Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-7637-6244-2 .
- PB Saris: Deutsche Lufthansa 1926–1945: history, clothing, badges . Book Center Empfingen, 1999, ISBN 3-86755-202-9 .
Web links
- Air Force catapult ships
- Air Force Catapult Ships (Engl.)
- Groupe de recherches et d'exploration maritime → Epaves Nord Ile D'Yeu → Ostmark (French)
- The Interesting History of the Lufthansa Catapult Ships . (engl.)
- Disaster in The Gambia . - Report on the total loss of the "Rostock" on March 12, 1937
- Image of the Ostmark
- The Ostmark. on the website of the Historical Naval Archives
