RAMB IV
 The RAMB IV 1941
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The RAMB IV was an Italian refrigerated ship built in 1937 and was used to transport bananas from Italian East Africa to Italy. During the Second World War , the Regia Marina used it as a hospital ship . After the conquest of Italian East Africa, the Royal Navy used the ship as HMS RAMB IV, also as a hospital ship until it was sunk in May 1942.
Construction and technical data
The ship was to order the on January 14, 1937 dell Ministerio 'Africa Italiane in Rome for the state's banana trading company ( Regia Azienda Monopolio banana ) at the shipyard Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico in Monfalcone under the hull number 1201 set to Kiel . The ship was the fourth and last ship in the RAMB class and the second in this series to be built by Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico. When it was launched on June 7, 1937, the ship, like its sister ships, was given the abbreviation of the parent company with a consecutive number and was christened RAMB IV . The ship was 116.78 meters long, 15.21 meters wide and had a draft of 7.77 meters. The RAMB IV was measured with 3676 GRT and 2175 NRT. The load capacity was 2460 dwt . Two FIAT nine-cylinder two-stroke diesel engines with 7200 hp enabled a speed of 18.5 knots with two screws . As a hospital ship, the crew consisted of 120 people; as a cargo ship, it could carry 12 passengers.
history
Refrigerated ship of the Regia Azienda Monopolio Banana (1937–1940)
With the RAMB IV , the Regia Azienda Monopolio Banana decided to have its fleet of relatively small but very modern refrigerated ships in order to be able to transport the fruit from Italian East Africa to Italy without stopping. Since it held the monopoly on this trade, it did not need to fear competition. The new ship put them into service on October 27, 1937 and started operations (probably in December) 1937, which must have been characterized without any particular incidents, as little information is available about this time. At the time of the Italian entry into the war on June 10, 1940, the RAMB IV was in Massaua .
Hospital ship of the Marina Regia (1940–1941)
Like her three sister ships, the RAMB IV was intended as an auxiliary cruiser in the event of war, which had already been taken into account when the ships were built. For this purpose, it was to be equipped with four 120 mm caliber guns. The equipment for the auxiliary cruiser was stored for two ships in Naples and for two ships in Massaua. When Italy entered the war, the sister ships RAMB I and RAMB II were also located in Massaua , which were equipped with the stored guns. The RAMB IV initially remained in the port of Massaua.
When the British army defeated the Italian army in North Africa with Operation Compass in December 1940, troops in Italian East Africa could no longer be reunited anytime soon. In anticipation of an imminent defeat and exhaustion of the fuel reserves, the Regina Marina decided to use the RAMB IV as a hospital ship. With the material and personnel available in East Africa, the ship was equipped with 272 beds and painted white with green stripes and a red cross in accordance with the Geneva conventions for hospital ships. On February 7, 1941, the Navy put the RAMB IV into service as a hospital ship and stationed it as a floating hospital in Massaua for the next two months.
Shortly before the fall of Massaua, the Regia Marina decided to apply for a passage through the Suez Canal for RAMB IV in order to bring at least some of the wounded and sick to Italy. If the application is rejected, the ship should be interned in Yemen or Saudi Arabia . The British Admiralty had the ship intercepted by the destroyer HMS Kingston , which landed the RAMB IV on April 8th. Crew and wounded were taken prisoner.
The ship became the property of the Ministry of War Transport , operationally it was subordinated to the Royal Navy, which continued to use it as a hospital ship under the name HMS Ramb IV . In April 1941 she brought the Italian prisoners of war from Italian East Africa to Sudan , where they were housed in prisoner-of-war camps. Until around the end of 1941, the Ramb IV sailed under the British flag in the Red Sea. In early 1942 she was relocated to the eastern Mediterranean , where she operated on the coasts of Libya, Egypt and Palestine. On May 10, 1942, the ship was attacked and sunk on the way from Tobruk to Alexandria by Ju 88 bombers of the Lehrgeschwader 1 . 165 men were killed, including 155 wounded and sick.
literature
- Enrico Cernuschi, Maurizio Brescia, Erminio Bagnasco, Le navi ospedale italiane 1935–1945 , Albertelli Edizioni, Parma, 2010, ISBN 978-88-87372-86-1 .
- Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare: La Marina italiana nella seconde guerra mondiale, Vol. III: Navi perdute. Tomo II - Navi mercantili , Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Rome 1952.
- Maurizio Brescia: Mussolini's Navy. A Reference Guide to the Regia Marina 1930-1945 . E-Book, Kindle Edition, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84832-115-1 .
- Donald A. Bertke, Gordon Smith, Don Kindell: World War II Sea War . Volume 6: The Allies Halt the Axis Advance , Bertke Publications, Dayton OH 2014, ISBN 978-1-937470-09-8 , Naval-history.net.
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Published by the Working Group for Defense Research and the Library for Contemporary History . Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching o. J. [1968], ISBN 3-88199-009-7 . (extended online version)
Web links
- MV Ramb IV (+1942) at wrecksite.eu (with photo), accessed on June 10, 2019
- Ramb IV at naviearmatori.net (with photo), accessed on June 10, 2019