Polyp (ship, 1920)
The Polyp was a coastal motor ship (Kümo) built in 1920 , which was used by the German Navy from 1940 to 1945 as an auxiliary, salvage and accommodation ship and went back as Kümo after the war.
Construction and technical data
The ship, with a high chimney and a pole , ran in November 1920 at the shipyard of J. Frerichs & Co. , Einswarden , with the hull number 356 and the name Ivo from the stack was in December of the year to the Hamburg-Bremen Africa Line , Bremen , delivered. It was 55.32 m long and 9.06 m wide and had a 3.60 m draft . With a measurement of 667 GRT , it had a lifting capacity of 870 t . A triple expansion machine with 500 psi , built by the shipyard in its Osterholz facility , enabled a speed of 9.5 knots .
history
The ship was sold to HP Vith GmbH in Flensburg in December 1921 and renamed Andrea Vith on January 23, 1922 . On March 25, 1924, it was sold again to the Stettiner Dampfer-Compagnie in Stettin, which renamed the ship Sassnitz . Only 21 months later, on December 21, 1925, the shipowner Carsten Rehder from Altona bought the ship, which was then renamed John Rehder on July 7, 1927 .
When the construction of the test submarine VS 80, developed in cooperation with the engineer and inventor Hellmuth Walter and equipped with the revolutionary Walter turbine system , was completed at the Germania shipyard in Kiel in early 1940 (it was launched on April 14, 1940 ), the Navy chartered the John Rehder on February 15, 1940 and, after appropriate modifications, made it available to Walter KG as an escort , safety and accommodation ship for testing the submarine. On July 17, 1940, the Kriegsmarine finally bought the ship. It was to be used exclusively for carrying out tests and tasks within the scope of ongoing naval orders. The tests took place initially in the Schlei , from November 1940 in the Putziger Wiek south of the Hela peninsula .
After completion of the VS-80 tests, the ship remained with the Navy, which renamed it Polyp and used it as an auxiliary rescue ship , tug and barge in the Baltic Sea . In the unsuccessful operation Tanne Ost , the attempted occupation of the island of Hogland in the Gulf of Finland on September 15, 1944, the Polyp was involved and was damaged by enemy fire.
post war period
Shortly before the occupation of Hamburg by British troops on May 3, 1945, the shipping company Carsten Rehder succeeded in negotiations with representatives of the Navy to cancel the sale of the ship to the Navy and thus prevent its confiscation as Navy property and spoils of war. The ship was initially confiscated by Great Britain, but then returned to Rehder. From March 10, 1949, it was again operating as John Rehder , mainly transporting timber from Scandinavia to West Germany, and was finally sold on February 18, 1955 to Walther Ritscher, Hamburg, for demolition.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ In the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London there are several short films produced by Walter KG that show the test submarine VS 80 during test drives in the Schlei and Putziger Wiek, including at least one who and shows barge John Rehder and Polyp , respectively ; IWM Reference GWY 1659: Transfer of Dock and Boat V80 from the Schlei to Hela in November 1940 ( http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060004792 ).