SMS Albatross (1907)
 Model of the SMS Albatross
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
SMS Albatross was a mine cruiser of the German Imperial Navy ; she belonged to the Nautilus class .
Mission concept
The Albatross and her sister ship Nautilus were designed based on the experience of the Russo-Japanese War 1904/05 and a reassessment of the mine war. Sea mines , so experience has shown, are no longer purely a defensive means, but could also be used successfully as an offensive weapon. Both ships were designed to be part of the high seas fleet and, in the event of a tactical retreat behind their own fleet, to throw mine barriers on which the pursuing enemy ships should run aground or to place offensive barriers in the approach routes of enemy ports. Therefore, they were not classified as mine-layers but as mine cruisers. The ship itself was not supposed to be offensive and therefore received a comparatively weak artillery armor with eight 8.8 cm guns for self-defense against light naval forces.
history
After the various test drives in 1907, the ship was assigned to the maneuver squadron with the main mooring port of Cuxhaven . In 1911 it was rammed and repaired by the Hansa steamer Wartburg .
Right at the beginning of the First World War , in August 1914, the Albatross and the small cruiser Stuttgart threw an offensive barrier of 200 mines into the mouth of the Tyne . Further operations followed in the southern North Sea and later in the Baltic Sea .
For July 1, 1915 it was planned to throw an offensive mine barrier of 180 mines, northeast and northwest of Bogskär . On the way back arrived under the command of Rear Admiral Mikhail Bachirew standing Russian squadron consisting of the armored cruisers Admiral Makarov and Bajan and the protected cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg , on July 2, 1915 during the so-called Gotland raids off the Swedish island of Gotland on Albatross and the small cruiser Augsburg as well as three torpedo boats. The Russians concentrated their fire on the Albatross , which was badly hit by its commander, Frigate Captain West, aground on the Gotland coast. The team had to mourn 28 deaths, to which a memorial stone on the church of Östergarn commemorates. The survivors were interned by the Swedes until the end of the war.
The Swedes towed the ship to Fårö on July 23, 1915 and returned it to the German Reich in December 1918 after the end of the war . On December 31, 1918, the ship returned to Danzig. On March 21, 1921, it was removed from the list of warships and then scrapped in Hamburg.
literature
- Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921. P. 158.
- The disaster of the miner Albatross. Marine-Arsenal special issue vol. 15, pp. 46/47.
- Erich Gröner / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 3 : U-boats, auxiliary cruisers, mine ships, net layers and barrier breakers. . Bernard & Graefe, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7637-4802-4 , pp. 175 .
- Dieter Jung: The ships of the Imperial Navy 1914–1918 and their whereabouts. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-7637-6247-7 .