Horse boat

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The horse boat (actually horse transport boat ) was a non-motorized landing craft used by the German armed forces from the beginning of the 20th century until the Second World War .

Loading of a horse-drawn boat during Operation Albion in October 1917

The horse transport boat was developed in the first years of the 20th century by the Stülcken shipyard in Hamburg in cooperation with pioneers from the German Schleswig-Holstein Pioneer Battalion No. 9 from Harburg as a landing craft. The boats were built from 1904 to the end of the First World War in 1918 and again in the same size, but slightly improved, from 1924 to 1941.

The horse boat was used to land troops and supplies on the open coast from cargo ships to the shore. Since the boats did not have a motor, they were either pulled back and forth between the ship and the beach on a rope connection ( called landing ropes) or moved by motor boats .

The boat was 10.5 m long and 3.4 m wide. The tail was as transom formed and folded down as a landing flap, for the reception and delivery of cargo. In order to keep the draft as low as possible, the bottom of the boat was made of a multi-sealed air box. The horses weighed boat ten tonnes and could hold ten tons of cargo, which each have eight to ten horses , two field guns , a 15-cm howitzer with Protze , a truck or 70 marching serially equipped infantry corresponded.

During the First World War in 1917, the Albion company , the conquest of the Baltic islands in the Baltic Sea , which then belonged to Russia , was used on a large scale . In 100 hours with 24 horse boats on three landing ropes, 3319 horses, 909 vehicles and additional soldiers were landed - 70% of the equipment of a division .

In the 1930s the horse boat was completely out of date as a landing craft and was replaced by the newly developed pioneer landing craft in the early 1940s .

literature

Randolf Kugler: Landings in Germany since 1900 . Verlag Oberbaum, Berlin 1989. ISBN 3926409525 .

Footnotes

  1. ^ Randolf Kugler: Landings in Germany since 1900 . Verlag Oberbaum, Berlin 1989. ISBN 3926409525 . Pages 48-51.
  2. ^ Randolf Kugler: Landings in Germany since 1900 . Verlag Oberbaum, Berlin 1989. ISBN 3926409525 . Pages 60-61.
  3. ^ Randolf Kugler: Landings in Germany since 1900 . Verlag Oberbaum, Berlin 1989. ISBN 3926409525 . Pages 34-38.