Otter (ship, 1934)
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The Otter was a mine transporter put into service in 1934 for the German Reich and Kriegsmarine . It was destroyed in a Soviet bombing raid in June 1944 off the Finnish coast .
Construction and technical data
The ship was built in 1934 by the Schichau works in Elbing . With a length of 53.3 m in the waterline or 56.7 m over all, a width of 10.4 m and a draft of 4.41 m , it displaced 1,220 tons when fully equipped . It was of a four-cylinder diesel engine of Sulzer with 450 PS is driven to start a speed of 9.5 knots enabled. The bunker supply of 35.2 tons of diesel oil resulted in a maximum range of 3000 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 9 knots. The armament consisted only of four 2 cm Flak C / 30 . The crew numbered 40–43 men. The ship could carry 300-370 mines in two holds in front of and behind the mast located amidships with its four cargo booms . The mines were transported in an unusable state. It did not have a mine-throwing device.
history
Reich and Kriegsmarine
The Otter was assumed after its entry into the lock Zeugamt Cuxhaven. Their job was to transport mines to the necessary ports and ships.
In the beginning of the Second World War , the ship served as a feeder for mine laying companies in the North Sea from 1941 then in the Baltic Sea and especially in the Gulf of Finland . In 1943 it commuted between Kiel and Northern Norway ( Narvik , Tromsø , Altafjord , North Cape ). Towards the end of 1943 it was attacked by a submarine near Stavanger , but the torpedo ran under the ship and detonated on an underwater rock. After the sinking of the battleship Scharnhorst in a sea battle off the North Cape on December 26, 1943, the Otter brought the corpses of crew members recovered by German destroyers back to Kiel.
In 1944, on a trip from Tromsø to Kiel south of Harstad , the ship ran into an underwater rock in a nocturnal snowstorm. Screw and rudder were badly damaged and flooding caused increasing list . The lifeboats were launched , but the leak was sealed and the ship was towed to Narvik in the floating dock for repairs.
In the spring and summer of 1944, the Otter then sailed in the Baltic Sea , mostly between Reval and the Finnish island of Kirkonmaa near Kotka on the northern edge of the Gulf of Finland , where a coastal battery and an important ammunition depot were located. On the afternoon of June 20, 1944, the military installations on the island were bombed by 18 Soviet Pe-2 fighters. The otter had arrived the day before with a load of 200 mines, the unloading of which had just ended. One of the bombs hit the mines lined up in front of the ammunition bunker and triggered a chain of explosions that reached the mine depot and destroyed it in a huge explosion. The otter lying on the pier was not hit directly, but was so badly damaged by the explosion that it went aground with a strong list. Although attempts were subsequently made to get the ship moving again, it finally had to be abandoned when the Wehrmacht withdrew from Finland: on September 14, a German commando detonated a depth charge in the engine room, which tore open the ship's bottom. The wreck 1949, towed to a vain attempt recovery, in deeper water about 500 m northeast of the pier and at 60 ° 25 ' N , 27 ° 4' O blown up.
annotation
Reports that the badly damaged ship was lifted and repaired in 1950 and then used as a cargo ship under the Finnish, then Swedish and finally Italian flags are unreliable.
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 3: Submarines, auxiliary cruisers, mine ships, net layers and barrier breakers . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1985, ISBN 3-7637-4802-4
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Volume 9: Historical Overview . Collective chapter landing craft, mine ships, minesweepers, speedboats, training ships, special ships, tenders and escort ships, torpedo boats, supply ships. Mundus Verlag, 1999, OCLC 247353137 .
- Pentti Nopanen: Rauha toi merelle vipinää . (PDF) In: Kansa Taisteli , September 17, 1984, pp. 292–296, here pp. 292–293 (Finnish); with photo of the destroyed otters lying on the pier
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Continuation War, Year 1944 ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ German Naval Staff, Operations Division, Part A Volume 58, June 1944 (English translation, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval History Division, Washington, DC, 1958) archive.org
- ↑ Otter at hylyt.net (Finnish)
