Palermo (ship, 1910)
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The Palermo was a cargo ship that the Regia Marina used as an ammunition transporter during World War II from 1940 to 1943 . The ship, built in 1910, sailed under the British flag as the Scottish Prince until 1937 and then under the Greek flag as the Athinai , until it was confiscated by Italy. After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, the ship was confiscated by the Germans and assigned to the Mediterranean shipping company . In 1944 the ship sank after an air raid.
Construction and technical data
The ship was laid in Great Britain at the Short Brothers shipyard in Sunderland in the north-east of England under construction number 359. The launch took place on January 10, 1910 under the name Scottish Prince , the completion took place in March of that year, also the delivery to the Scottish shipping company Prince Line in Newcastle upon Tyne .
Its length was 103.90 meters, it was 14.14 meters wide and had a draft of 6.52 meters. It was measured with 2897 GRT or 1794 NRT and had a load capacity of 5196 tdw. The drive consisted of a triple expansion machine with a two-cylinder one-end boiler, the output of which was 1800 PSi . This acted on a screw, the steamer reached a speed of 10.0 knots . No information is available on the number of crews.
history
British cargo ship Scottish Prince
At the time of commissioning, the Scottish Prince was the first of a class of four ships operated by the Prince Line. At that time, it had around 40 ships in freight and passenger traffic. The routes ranged from Great Britain to mainland Europe, across the Mediterranean to North, Central and South America, South Africa, India and the Far East. However , it is unclear with which freight and on which route the Scottish Prince was deployed. In the middle of World War I , the owner, Sir James Knott, sold the company. The background to this is the death of two of his three sons in France in the fight against the Germans and the missing report of the third, who was captured during the Battle of Gallipoli and remained until the end of the war. The buyer was the shipping company Furness, Withy & Co.
The Scottish Prince kept her name. On September 7, 1917, the ship was torpedoed and damaged in the English Channel by a German submarine . However, the ship was able to enter and was repaired again. For the entire course of the First World War, only isolated information about their journeys or whereabouts is available. The British auxiliary cruiser HMS Macedonia sighted the Scottish Prince on August 2, 1915 on the Río de la Plata and the auxiliary cruiser HMS Perth on July 5, 1918 sighted the ship near the island of Perim at the southern entrance to the Red Sea off the southwest coast of Yemen . The other years up to the sale in 1937 were so uneventful that no further information is available.
Greek cargo ship Athinai
The ship, now 27 years old, was sold in 1937. The "Hellenic Lines Limited" (PG Callimanopoulos) from Piraeus in Greece acquired the ship on September 8, 1937 for 25,000 British pounds. On November 6th, the new owner entered the ship in the port register of Piraeus with the number 907 and registered it as Athinai . Over the next few years only information about the confiscation is available: On the first day of the Italo-Greek War , on October 28, 1940, the Italian torpedo boat Schiaffino landed the freighter off Messina .
Italian ammunition transporter Palermo
After the seizure, the Italian government assigned the ship to the Regia Marina, which in 1940 classified it as an ammunition transporter and gave it the name Palermo . The crew now consisted of 20 officers and men; no information is available about armament. Only fragmentary information is available from the history of the ship in this role. Thus, the British submarine HMS will Urusla off the island on May 4, 1941 Kerkenna on the Tunisian coast four torpedoes at the single-propelled Palermo have fired, but missed it. At the beginning of September 1943, the Palermo was on the west coast of Greece, where it was attacked and damaged by four Beaufighters of the 252nd RAF Squadron with aerial bombs in Preveza on September 2nd . From there the ship ran to Albania and arrived in Vlora at the time of the Italian surrender on September 9th .
German cargo ship Palermo
In Vlora, the ship fell into German hands on September 10, 1943 and was confiscated a day later. The ship kept its name and was assigned to the Mediterranean shipping company . On May 26, 1944, the ship was en route from Venice to Poreč on the west coast of the Istrian peninsula in Croatia . The next day, the Palermo ran into a mine off the Tagliamento estuary, presumably an older Italian barrier. According to some information, the ship sank while, according to other information, it reached Fiume and sank there on July 6, 1944 by bomb hits.
literature
- Reinhart Schmelzkopf: Foreign ships in German hands 1939–1945 . Strandgut-Verlag, Cuxhaven 2004
- La Marina italiana nella seconde guerra mondiale, Vol. II: Navi militari perdute . Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare, Rome 1965
Web links
- Steamers & Motorships . plimsollshipdata.org, Lloyd's of London, 1945; accessed on October 31, 2017
- naval-history.net ; accessed on October 31, 2017
- red-duster.co.uk ; accessed on October 31, 2017
- theshipslist.com ; accessed on October 31, 2017
- theshipslist.com ; accessed on October 31, 2017
- gracesguide.co.uk ; accessed on October 31, 2017
- historisches-marinearchiv.de (with photo) ,; accessed on October 31, 2017
- marina.difesa.it ; accessed on October 31, 2017
- wlb-stuttgart.de ; accessed on October 31, 2017
- wlb-stuttgart.de ; accessed on October 31, 2017
- wrecksite.eu ; accessed on October 31, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schmelzkopf, p. 186, cf. historisches-marinearchiv.de
- ↑ red-duster.co.uk , theshipslist.com
- ↑ Schmelzkopf, p. 186, red-duster.co.uk , theshipslist.com
- ↑ naval-history.net , naval-history.net ( Memento of the original from November 21, 2015 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.
- ↑ historisches-marinearchiv.de , Schmelzkopf, p. 186
- ↑ marina.difesa.it
- ↑ historisches-marinearchiv.de , according to the chronicle of the naval war , the submarine was off the Tunisian coast at this time, but only mentions the attack on the German transporters Brook and Tilly LM Russ , see: wlb-stuttgart.de
- ↑ Schmelzkopf, p. 186, historisches-marinearchiv.de , marina.difesa.it x
- ↑ Schmelzkopf, p. 186, wlb-stuttgart.de , historisches-marinearchiv.de , red-duster.co.uk
