Palatia (ship, 1928)
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The third Palatia of the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag) was a freighter built for the West India service. She was one of a series of four ships that were delivered in 1928 by the Henry Koch shipyards in Lübeck and Howaldt in Kiel .
In 1940 the ship, along with other newer ships, was sold to the Soviet Union , which renamed it Khazan . When the German Reich invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the ship was in Stettin and was confiscated by the Germans.
Restored under its original name, the Palatia was used as a prisoner transport when it was sunk off the Norwegian coast by a New Zealand torpedo bomber on October 21, 1942 . 986 people lost their lives, 915 of them mostly Russian prisoners.
Construction and use of the Palatia until 1940
The Palatia was the third Hapag ship that bore the Latin name of the Electoral Palatinate . The first ship with this name was a small P-steamer built by the Stettiner Vulcan (6,687 GRT, in service from 1895 to 1905), the second a Brazil freighter of 3,558 GRT built in Flensburg from 1912, which was confiscated by Brazil in 1917 and was sunk by a German submarine in the same year .
The new Palatia was one of the first series of four motor freighters specially built for Hapag's West India service after the First World War . Hapag has been the only major German shipping company to have purchased mainly motor ships since the mid-1920s. Koch and Howaldt each delivered two ships of the new series to Hapag in 1928 and 1929. The type ship was the Phenicia delivered by Howaldt . The 119 meter long ships were equipped with a 6-cylinder two-stroke diesel from MAN , which gave them a service speed of 12.5 knots. The 4,000 GRT freighters had a cruiser stern .
The new ships were only used on the service to the Caribbean, a route that Hapag remained with between 1934 and 1936 even after the German shipping companies were separated. Shortly before the start of the war, three more newbuildings were procured for this trade area with the ships of the Orizaba class .
When the war broke out in 1939, the Palatia was at home with the Phenicia , while the Phrygia in Mexico and the Patricia in Aruba sought refuge. These two ships were lost in 1940.
On March 18, 1940, the Palatia became the property of Hamburger Reederei GmbH and from April 25, 1940 was used as a test ship of the torpedo research institute in Eckernförde and returned on July 2, 1940.
As a result of the German-Soviet economic agreement of August 1939, which was followed by another agreement to expand trade relations in February 1940, war and merchant ships were also delivered to the Soviet Union. The Palatia was sold to the Soviet Union in Leningrad on July 15, 1940 , where it was renamed Khasan .
When the German Reich invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the ship was in Stettin , was confiscated on June 22, 1941, and from August 19, 1941 sails again under its original name for the Hamburg-America Line . In 1941 she drove as a Kriegsmarine transporter and as a test ship for the blocking test command in Aarhus .
The Palatia in Stettin started its last journey to transport prisoners of war for forced labor to Ålesund via Kristiansand . She had 999 Eastern European prisoners of war on board and was part of a small convoy of three ships that was secured by three former fish steamers converted into submarine hunters. In Kristiansand the tanker Ostermoor had a machine failure and the prisoner transporter Ostland with a further 1,000 prisoners of war hit the ground. One of the escort boats also had problems, so that on October 21, 1942 at around 9:00 a.m., the Palatia only continued its journey with the submarine hunter UJ 1704 (ex Fischdampfer Uhlenhorst ).
In very bad weather, she was spotted shortly after 3 p.m. off Lindesnes by one of the four Handley Page Hampden torpedo bombers of Squadron 489 of the RNZAF on a routine patriol of the RAF Coastal Command along the Norwegian coast. It was raining and a strong wind churned the sea. Flying Officer JJ Richardson pushed his Hampden XA-B to a height of 20 meters and at a distance of 550 meters released a torpedo which hit the palatia on the starboard side near the engine room. The torpedo bomber was able to escape undamaged into the protection of the clouds despite the heavy defensive fire from the light anti-aircraft weapons of the Palatia and the escort boat. A Junkers Ju 88 escorted and tried unsuccessfully to catch the attacker. The Palatia dropped within 30 minutes after the attack on the position of 57 ° 58 '6 " N , 7 ° 14' 0" O .
After the torpedo hit, panic broke out on board the Palatia and the prisoners tried to get on deck through the cargo hatches. When taking in the castaways, the crew of UJ 1704 tried , preferably to save Germans, and used handguns if shipwrecked prisoners prevented this. Prisoners were only rescued when they were on rafts or floating debris with Germans. When the rescue attempts were broken off at around 7 p.m., 108 Germans had been rescued, but only 78 prisoners of war.
The number of victims was determined to be 986 men, including 915 prisoners of war. German reports criticized the behavior of the crews and suggested that an orderly evacuation of the Palatia according to the existing regulations would have saved more German lives. There were no publications about the incident.
Even weeks after the incident, dead people drove in large numbers in the area around Lista , which were removed by the German troops. In Norwegian history, the fall of the Palatia was the second highest number of victims. Only the sinking of the Rigel, which was also used as a prisoner transporter, in November 1944 between the islands of Søndre Rosøya and Tjøtta south of Sandnessjøen by British aircraft resulted in even more casualties with 2572 deaths.
Discovery of the wreck and commemoration
At a commemoration ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, the Lindesnes community also held a commemoration ceremony on May 6, 1995 to commemorate the Palatia disaster, accompanied by an exhibition of found objects.
The wreck was precisely located in 1997 by the Norwegian Navy recovery ship Tyr . It has been declared a memorial site by the Norwegian government and diving has been banned. King Harald V of Norway unveiled a memorial in honor of the victims in Lindesnes on September 21, 1997. A choir of 986 singers sang at this celebration: a singer for every life that was lost on the Palatia .
Fate of the sister ships
| Launched in service |
Surname | shipyard | tonnage | Load capacity | fate |
| 1928 8.1928 |
Phenicia (III) | Howaldt BNr. 687 |
4124 GRT | 6274 dw | West India Service, May 3, 1945 sunk, lifted and repaired by an air raid in the Kiel Canal . Delivered to the Soviet Union in 1946, renamed Admiral Senjawin , home port from 1964 Vladivostok , scrapped in 1971. |
| 1928 10.1928 |
Phrygia | Howaldt BNr. 688 |
4138 GRT | 6274 dw | West India Service, self- sunk off Tampico on November 16, 1940 , because the US destroyer Plunkett was mistaken for a British ship. |
| .1928 .1929 |
Patricia (II) | Koch BNr. 223 |
4979 GRT | 6200 dw | West India Service, confiscated by the Netherlands in Aruba in May 1940 , as Aruba , in service for KNSM from 1947 as Haarlem , sold to Greece in 1961, scrapped in 1969. |
literature
- Heinz Haaker: The "Ship Value of Henry Koch AG" - A Chapter of Lübeck Shipbuilding and Industrial History , German Shipping Museum, Bremerhaven 1994, Ernst-Kabel-Verlag, ISBN 3-8225-0299-5 , pp. 201-206.
Web links
- Eva-Ditte Donat: On the labor deployment of Soviet prisoners of war in Norway (PDF; 67 kB)
- Sea War October 12–29, 1942 Norway
Footnotes
- ↑ All sources give June 22nd as the day of the renewed occupation by the Germans, but Tallinn is also mentioned as the place , which was not occupied until August 28, 1941.
- ↑ Entry in the Great Norwegian Encyclopedia ( Memento from October 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ UJ 1704 Uhlenhorst ( Memento from February 21, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Numbers of victims and crew and guards differ.
- ↑ Image of the monument ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ History of the Haarlem with picture
