RAMB class
RAMB I sinks on February 27, 1941
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
RAMB was the name of four similar Italian refrigerated cargo ships that were builtby Ansaldo and CRDA from1937 to 1938 on behalf of the state banana trading company of the same name, Regia Azienda Monopolio Banane (RAMB) . From their home port of Massaua in Eritrea , the ships were supposed toensurethe transport of bananas between Italian East Africa and the mother country.
The four ships were designed in such a way that they could be quickly converted into military ships in the event of war. After Italy entered the Second World War in June 1940, the freighters were placed under the Regia Marina and three were converted into auxiliary cruisers and the fourth into a hospital ship. All ships were sunk during the war.
RAMB I
RAMB I was built by Ansaldo in Genoa in 1937 . She had a displacement of 3,667 tons and, like the three sister ships, reached about 18 knots.
When the war broke out, the RAMB I was in the port in Eritrea, where it was converted into an auxiliary cruiser for the trade war in the Red Sea and assigned to the Italian flotilla there . During the next nine months, she was involved in several unsuccessful assault attempts. After the British conquest of East Africa was foreseeable in February 1941, the RAMB I fled the Red Sea together with the RAMB II and the colonial ship Eritrea , successfully breaking through the blockade of the Bab al-Mandab . However, on February 27, the RAMB I was sunk by the New Zealand cruiser Leander near the Maldives , after she had separated from the other ships and before she was able to capture a prize . 113 survivors could be picked up by the cruiser.
RAMB II
The RAMB II was built in 1937 by Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico (CRDA) in Monfalcone . It was powered by two CRDA 7-cylinder oil engines with an output of 7200 bhp .
Like the RAMB I, it was in Massaua at the beginning of the war and shared its fate up to its flight to the Indian Ocean, but in contrast to this it was able to successfully reach Japan . The crew planned to ambush Allied cargo ships from Japanese ports, but the Japanese authorities refused because the country was not at war with the Western powers at that time. Instead, the ship was disarmed and, while retaining the crew and the Italian flag, chartered from Japan in 1942 and renamed Calitea II . When the Italian government signed an armistice with the Allies two years later in 1943, the crew sank their ship on September 8 in the Bay of Kobe itself. The wreck was lifted and added to the Japanese fleet as Ikutagawa Maru . On January 12, 1945, an American bomber sank them during Operation Gratitude .
RAMB III
The RAMB III was completed by Ansaldo in Genoa in 1938. Due to the start of the war, unlike her sister ships, she never reached Africa, but was used as convoy protection in the Mediterranean after being converted into an auxiliary cruiser. On November 12, 1940, she was involved in a battle in the Strait of Otranto , but managed to escape by abandoning the rest of the convoy's ships. At the end of May 1941 the ship was sunk by a submarine in the port of Benghazi , but towed to Trieste and repaired there. In September 1943 the RAMB III was taken over by the German Navy and used as a mine- layer Kiebitz . The mine-layer was lost in November 1944 when it first ran into its own mine and then was sunk by a US air raid near Rijeka . After the war, the wreck was lifted and extensively converted into the Yugoslav state yacht Galeb .
RAMB IV
The RAMB IV was built by CRDA in Monfalcone from 1937. Like RAMB I and II , she was in Eritrea at the beginning of the war, but in contrast to the other ships, it was converted into a hospital ship. She remained in the port of Massaua, where she was captured by the British in April 1941. They took the ship into their own service as HMS Ramb IV . On May 10, 1942, it was sunk near El-Alamein by combat aircraft of Group I / Lehrgeschwader 1 .
literature
- Roger Jordan: The World's Merchant Fleets, 1939: The Particulars And Wartime Fates of 6,000 Ships , p. 224, p. 535
- Nathan Miller: War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II , Oxford University Press, p. 242ff, p. 618
- Marc'Antonio Bragadin: The Italian Navy in World War II , p. 74ff
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Sea War 1939–1945, May 1942 , accessed on June 17, 2013