SMS A 20
 The sister ship A 12 as the Belgian A2 Prince Charles after 1918
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SMS A 20 was a class AI coastal torpedo boat of the Imperial Navy built in 1915 . In 1919 the Belgian Navy initially took over the ship as the A 9 PC , later renaming it to A 9 , A 20 and West Diep . In 1940 the German Navy took over the ship and converted it into the Reiher high-speed tug and then into the Warendorp E-Mess school boat . In 1948 it was dismantled.
Construction and technical data
A 20 was one of the 25 Class A I boats, a type of torpedo boat specially designed for use off Flanders . The A-boat should also be used as a fast minesweeper and escort vehicle. The boat was laid on the keel of AG Vulcan in Hamburg and was launched on August 27, 1915. Only a few days later, on September 1, 1915, it was put into service.
Then the boat, like 14 other boats in the class, was dismantled again and transported by rail to occupied Belgium. The boat was reassembled in Hoboken , now part of Antwerp .
The length was 41.58 meters, it was 4.60 meters wide and had a draft of 1.52 meters. The displacement was 109 standard tons (137 tons maximum). The drive consisted of two coal-fired water tube boilers and a standing three-cylinder triple expansion piston engine that achieved 1200 hp and acted on a screw. This enabled the boat to reach a top speed of 19-20 knots .
A 20 was armed with a 50 mm torpedo boat cannon L / 40 and two 45 cm torpedo tubes . In addition, it could carry four mines and was equipped with demining equipment. The crew was 28 officers and men.
Imperial Navy 1915–1918
After assembly, the boat was put back into service on May 1, 1916. The boat spent the entire war time in the area of the Flemish coast.
On site it turned out that these boats with a speed of only 20 knots had hardly any possibility of aggressively acting as torpedo boats. For this reason, the boats were not used as torpedo carriers and the torpedo tubes were removed. Subsequently, the remaining boats were only used for security, mine detection and tender tasks. The surviving boats in Flanders were combined in 1917 to form the Flemish Minesweeping Flotilla . Overall, the boat type did not prove itself.
One of the commanders of A 20 was the later admiral of the Kriegsmarine Günther Lütjens .
At the end of the war, the Navy decommissioned the boat on November 15, 1918 when Belgium was evacuated. On that day A 20 was interned together with twelve other boats of the Flanders Flotilla in Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands .
Belgian Navy and Navy School 1919–1940
In the summer of 1919, according to the Versailles Treaty , it had to be ceded to Belgium along with another 10 torpedo boats and 26 minesweepers. The "Corps des Torpilleurs et Marins" of the newly founded Belgian Navy took over the boat on June 25, 1919 and initially gave it the designation A 9 PC . In 1927 this was changed to A 9 . After the navy was disbanded in May 1927 due to strong domestic political pressure and insufficient funding, the vehicle again carried its old designation A 20 .
In 1931 it was given to the State Naval School in Ostend with the name West Diep . In addition to training, it supported the Wielingen and Zinnia teams, which were also assigned to the naval school . The tasks of West Diep , now unarmed and occupied by a civilian team, included sovereign activities such as monitoring shipping and securing the coast.
Kriegsmarine 1940–1945 and whereabouts
After the Wehrmacht marched into Belgium , the Germans confiscated the boat. In which form it was initially used is unclear, possibly analogous to the Wielingen in coastal and harbor protection. From November 21, 1941, the Beliard Crighton shipyard in Ostend was converted to a high-speed tug. The renovation dragged on until 1943. The boat was then put into service on March 2, 1943 at Flak School I in Swinoujscie . There it was used as an anti-aircraft gun school boat Reiher , equipped with four 37 mm anti-aircraft guns . By October 1943 it was converted into the E-Meß school boat Warendorp and used as such within the school association of the Navy Flak School I until the end of the war. The armament now consisted of a 20 mm flak and a machine gun, the regular crew of 18 men, plus 10 students.
After the war ended, the boat became the spoils of American war in May 1945. In April 1946 it was repaired again at the Wilhelmshaven naval shipyard and then finally demolished in Wilhelmshaven in 1948.
See also
- List of German torpedo boats (1871-1919)
- Class A coastal torpedo boats
- List of A Class coastal torpedo boats
literature
- Harald Fock: Z-before! Volume 1: International development and war missions of destroyers and torpedo boats 1914 to 1939 . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1998, ISBN 3-7822-0207-4 .
- Robert Gardiner, Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the world's fighting ships 1922-1946 . Conway Maritime Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-8317-0303-2 .
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speedboats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6 .
- 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 .
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . 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
Web links
- marinebelge.be accessed on July 27, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gröner Volume 2, p. 36, Hildebrand, p. 159
- ↑ Jib: Z-Vor! Vol. 2 p. 348
- ↑ Gröner Vol. 2, p. 36
- ↑ Gröner Vol. 5, p. 112f.
- ↑ Gardiner, p. 385, Gröner vol. 5, p. 112f., Hildebrand, p. 159
- ^ Named after Brun Warendorp, a Lübeck mayor and leader of the Hanseatic armed forces in the battle with Denmark 1361-1369.
- ↑ Gröner, Vol. 5, p. 112f., Hildebrand, p. 159