Peter Lohmeyer (naval officer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter Lohmeyer (center of the picture, in uniform) visiting the Olympic port in Kiel (1970)

Peter Lohmeyer (born January 2, 1911 in Zanzibar City , † May 28, 2002 in Schleswig ) was a German Cape Hornier , naval officer and captain of the merchant navy . During the Second World War he was a pilot and submarine commander . In the German Navy he became sea captain and commander of the second Gorch Fock .

Life

Coming to Germany from German East Africa in 1920 , Lohmeyer attended schools in Wandsbek b. Hamburg and Bielefeld . Fascinated by Count Luckner , he went to the Grand Duchess Elisabeth of the Elsfleth Seafaring School in 1934 . In the winter orcan he rounded Cape Horn on the sailing ship Bremen to load saltpeter in Pisagua . After returning home, he checked in Kiel-Holtenau . He traveled on steamboats to the North Sea , the Baltic Sea , the Mediterranean , the Pacific coast of North America and Australia . After his return in 1933 he took the helmsman's examination (A 5) and the radio operator's license class 2 at the seafaring school in Bremen . Its director Julius Preuss and the later Admiral Bernhard Rogge recommended him to apply to the Reichsmarine .

marine

Basic training began on April 1, 1934. The sailing ship time on the first Gorch Fock was waived for the merchant marine. Lohmeyer completed torpedo , communications and weapons courses . In the meantime with the Navy , he was transferred to the naval pilots for four years . After a year of training, he came to the long-range reconnaissance in List on Sylt . There he flew on Dornier Wal and Dornier Do 18 . After the pilot's exam in See , he trained himself. He spent six months with squadrons on Mallorca (during the Spanish Civil War as part of the Condor Legion ) and Borkum .

Since November 1, 1938, back with the fleet , he was ordered to submarine training in Gotenhafen . He took over his first submarine in Memel . In Danzig he met his future wife. After his honeymoon through East Prussia in the autumn of 1940, he took over his second submarine in Lorient with U 138 . On the way to Kiel he wanted to sink the Empress of Japan . Briefed in the new class VII C submarine at Howaldtswerft , he took command of U 651 . In June 1941 he was forced to surface in the North Atlantic by a six-hour depth charge by the Royal Navy . With the 28-man crew, he was able to save himself from the boat that had sunk itself. After interrogation in Westmorland , he was sent to several Canadian camps as a prisoner of war . There he passed the interpreting exam for English . He spent the last 15 months of the six-year captivity in South Wales , dismantling small bunkers .

New beginning

Back with his family in Hamburg , Lohmeyer made his way through the post-war period in the port of Hamburg and from 1949 as a runway controller at Hamburg Airport . For Hanover Airport added he acquired the license for air traffic control . In 1956 he started working as an air traffic control specialist in the newly founded Bundeswehr.

After a few weeks of preparation time with the naval aviation flotilla and at the Uetersen airfield , he came to Kaufbeuren Air Base as an air traffic control instructor . Since he was supposed to set up the pre-command for Marinefliegergeschwader 1 in Jagel , he was brought back to the Navy in April 1957. As commander, he was responsible for the entire ground organization of Jagel Air Base.

In 1962 Lohmeyer was transferred to a department that had to revise the provisional strength and equipment verification (STAN) for all units of the Navy. This activity gave him "naturally an extraordinarily deep insight into the entire organization of the Navy and all departments" . In November 1963, Hans Engel brought Lohmeyer to the new Gorch Fock as first watch officer . In 1964, the already famous ship sailed for the sailing parade at the World's Fair in New York City . After he became the captain of the sea in October 1965, Count Luckner and Helmut Grubbe , the captain of the Passat , visited him . On the trip to Brazil , Lohmeyer brought the Gorch Fock to the southern hemisphere for the first time . At the beginning of January 1969 he handed it over to Ernst von Witzendorff. While still a soldier, he was sent to Tanzania with a technical officer to inspect the police boats donated by Germany . Half a century later he saw many places of his childhood again.

Even before his official retirement on March 30, 1969, he made the maiden voyage of Hamburg to South America as a guest of the German Atlantic Line . The shipowner Axel Bitsch Christensen won him over as captain of the Hanseatic . After a year and a half, he moved to Hamburg , the new construction of the Hamburg Atlantic Line. In the three years he sailed the Pacific , the Caribbean , the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean .

With Hans Engel, he sailed the Amphitrite from Mandelieu-la-Napoule to Germany in October 1973 . The Clipper Deutsches Jugendwerk zur See wanted to buy the ship. As an honorary captain, Lohmeyer led the ships of the Clipper DJS association on many sailing trips .

Movie

  • On windjammers around the Cape . VHS, 48 min. Delius Klasing.

Individual evidence

  1. The "Empress of Japan" was sold to the Hamburg-Atlantic-Linie in 1958 and renamed Hanseatic (Schiff, 1930) and scrapped in 1966. Lohmeyer took over the Hanseatic (ship, 1964) as captain.
  2. Theo-Peter Koesling: Amphitrite (2012)
  3. Gorch Fock sailing training ship

Web links