Clearing boat escort

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clearance boat escorts were a specialized form of tender , the basic form of escort ships for supplying other ships. The tasks and definition of a clearing boat escort ship included management and support tasks of a small boat flotilla - here from clearing boats in contrast to speedboat escort ships and submarine escort ships .

Conception and development in Germany

Minesweeper type 16: Latvian minesweeper Virsaitis (ex German M 68 )

The term "Räumbootbegleitschiff" was only used in the Kriegsmarine - based on the designation of the "shallow mine clearing boats" used by the Imperial Navy in the First World War for coastal minesweepers. The Reichsmarine also used these boats and established the clearing boat as an independent type of ship in the 1920s . In other navies, the escort ships of minesweepers, coastal minesweepers and mine clearance boats were called tenders. This was or is also valid for the Federal Navy or German Navy , whereas in the People's Navy of the GDR escort ships were classified as "floating bases".

With the upgrading of the Navy from 1935 and the establishment of mine clearance boat flotillas, it became necessary to add appropriately equipped escort ships to these flotillas, which served the boat crews as accommodation and the boats as fuel, ammunition, fresh water and food depot.

For this purpose, older ships of the Navy were selected as evacuation boat escorts. The Navy first pulled in old minesweepers of the 1916 type from the First World War and converted them. In the course of the Second World War, other ships unsuitable for front-line use were used for this purpose. Independent developments of evacuation boats were only planned in the Z-Plan . These new builds of the “Rbootbegleitschiffe AF” were to be commissioned from around January 1942. There are no drafts.

history

Clearance boat support ship Weser in Norway

Of the Type 16 boats , seven boats and one of the Type 15 boats were used, at least temporarily, as evacuation boats during the war. The minesweeper M 50 was used as a minesweeper in 1915 as a clearance boat support boat. The remaining boats were minesweepers in 1916 or other classes of ship, such as fishing boats.

Before the war, the Zieten (ex M 138 ) and the Brommy (ex M 50 ) were the first boats to go to the shipyard in 1937 and 1938 for conversion. The Zieten was put back into service on March 5, 1936, or after renewed reconstruction on September 2, 1938 as the clearing boat accompanying ship of the 1st clearing boat flotilla , thus replacing the Brommy there. On February 19, 1938, the Brommy was initially assigned to the 1st and from September 21st, 1938 to the 2nd clearing boat flotilla .

Based on the experience gained in converting the first boats into evacuation boats, the other boats were lengthened by two meters to create additional space. This increased the tonnage by a good 200 tons.

Before the war, the Von der Groeben (ex M 107 ) and the Raule (ex Wacht , ex M 133 ) were rebuilt and joined the 3rd and 4th clearing boat flotilla. At the beginning of the war, the two fishery protection ships Elbe and Weser were added, which were also extended to improve seaworthiness. The Elbe served with the 5th clearing boat flotilla and the Weser with the 11th clearing boat flotilla , and from mid-October 1940 on the 7th clearing boat flotilla . The Von der Groeben switched from the 3rd Räumbootsflotille to the 4th Räumbootsflotille in April 1940 and was used as an escort boat for the 12th Räumbootsflotilla from May 1942 when it was renamed to M 507 . In October 1940 the Zieten was reclassified as a minesweeper and was now used in this function in the 1st clearing boat flotilla, but remained the command and escort ship of the flotilla until it was sunk.

With the beginning of the Second World War, the ships provided for in the Z-Plan were finally canceled and the conversion of further Type 16 boats was accelerated. In the years 1941 to 1943 the former minesweepers Von der Lippe (ex Taku , ex M 146 ) for the 10th clearing boat flotilla , Hille (ex M 560 , ex Hecht , ex M 60 ) for the 21st clearing boat flotilla , Alders (ex M 526 , ex M 126 ) for the 9th clearing boat flotilla and Jungingen (ex M 534 , ex Frauenlob , ex M 134 ) for the 8th clearing boat flotilla . Shortly before the end of the war, the M 535 (ex Gazelle , ex Hela , ex M 135 ) was added for the 3rd clearing boat flotilla .

Fleet companion F 1

In addition, other ships unsuitable for use at the front were used: In the course of 1942, the Nordpol (ex H 521 , ex Siegfried , ex FM 1 ) was to be used as a clearing boat escort; it is also listed as a navigation training ship; used by the 1st clearing boat flotilla up to its sinking at Gotenhafen at the end of 1943. In October of that year, the former fleet attendant Queen Luise (ex F 6 ) was employed with the 4th clearing boat flotilla until January 1943 . In November 1943, the old traffic steamer Nordsee was also used by the 13th clearing boat flotilla . The assignments and assignments of other units are unclear. There is contradicting information for the freighter Nadir (ex hospital ship Claus , ex Schwalbe ) as to whether it was used for this purpose in the 8th clearing boat flotilla or was only used as a navigation school boat. When exactly the Barbara , the former British sloop Zinnia and later the Belgian fisheries protection ship of the same name , served as an escort ship for the 14th clearing boat flotilla , which was newly established at the end of December 1943 , in addition to her main task as an artillery training ship, remains to be clarified.

In the Black Sea , the 30th clearing boat flotilla, newly established in 1943, used the inland passenger ship Brunhild, built in 1939 in the Linz shipyard in Austria, as an escort ship.

Seven of the escort ships used were lost during the war:

  • M 533 (ex Raule ) sank on May 9, 1942 after colliding with the clearing boat R 45
  • the Jungingen sank on September 27, 1943 after an attack by British motor torpedo boats
  • M 550 (ex Brommy) , M 507 (ex Von der Groeben ) and the Von der Lippe sank during the Allied air raid on Boulogne on the night of June 15-16, 1944
  • M 538 (ex Zieten ) was sunk by a Soviet air raid on June 21, 1944 and later lifted, but no longer repaired. Instead of the M 538, the sister ship M 566 (ex Störtebeker , ex M 66 ) took over the function of the escort ship in the 1st clearing boat flotilla.
  • Queen Luise, who had been with the 6th outpost flotilla since the beginning of 1943 and was decommissioned in October 1943, last sank in Wilhelmshaven on March 30, 1945 due to a British air raid.

The remaining boats served in the German mine clearing service after the war and were soon scrapped in the west or some of them continued to serve in the Soviet fleet until the 1960s.

Clearance boat escorts of the Kriegsmarine

HMS Zinnia , later Barbara

The following ships were put into service as clearing boat escorts for the Navy:

literature

  • Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 4: Auxiliary Ships I: Workshop Ships, Tenders and Support Ships, Tankers and Suppliers . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1986, ISBN 3-7637-4803-2 .
  • Erich Gröner, Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 5: Auxiliary Ships II: Hospital Ships, Residential Ships, Training Ships, Research Vehicles, Port Service Vehicles . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1988, ISBN 3-7637-4804-0 .
  • Erich Gröner, Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 8/1: River vehicles, Ujäger, outpost boats, auxiliary minesweepers, coastal protection associations (part 1). Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-7637-4807-5 .
  • Hans Jürgen Witthöft : Lexicon on German naval history . 2 volumes. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977/1978, ISBN 3-7822-0144-2 .
  • Jürgen Gebauer, Egon Krenz: Marine Encyclopedia from A-Z . Licensed edition, Tosa Verlag, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85492-757-6 .
  • Siegfried Breyer: Special and special ships of the Kriegsmarine (I). Navy Arsenal, Volume 30 . Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Wölfersheim-Berstadt 1995, ISBN 3-7909-0523-2 .
  • Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: Die Deutsche Kriegsschiffe, Volume 9: Historical overview, collective chapter landing craft, mine ships, minesweepers, speedboats, training ships, special ships, tenders and escort ships, torpedo boats, supply ships . Mundus Verlag 1999.
  • Gerd-Dietrich Schneider: From the Canal to the Caucasus. The 3rd R-Flotilla - fire brigade on all fronts . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1982, ISBN 3-7822-0260-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gebauer, Krenz: escort ship . P. 36, Witthöft: Tender . Volume 2, p. 98
  2. ↑ Gröner, Volume 4, p. 52
  3. ↑ Gröner, Volume 4, p. 52 f. Hildebrand, p. 198
  4. ↑ Gröner, Volume 5, p. 209
  5. ↑ Gröner, Volume 4, p. 52f., P. 38, cf. Schneider, p. 291f.
  6. ↑ Erich Gröner: The German warships, 1815-1945: torpedo boats, destroyers, speedboats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats . Bernard & Graefe, 1982, ISBN 978-3-7637-4801-3 , pp. 171 ( google.com [accessed August 2, 2020]).
  7. ↑ Gröner, Volume 5, p. 123
  8. ↑ Gröner, Volume 4, p. 39
  9. ↑ Gröner, Volume 5, p. 53, Breyer, p. 41
  10. ↑ Gröner, Volume 5, p. 39, p. 121, wlb-stuttgart.de and Schneider, p. 291
  11. ↑ Erich Gröner: The German Warships, 1815-1945 . Bernard & Graefe, 1982, ISBN 978-3-7637-4804-4 , pp. 39 ( google.com [accessed August 2, 2020]).
  12. ↑ Gröner, Volume 8/1, pp. 104f., Http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/km/rboote/rfl-frames.htm