SMS Fuchs (1905)

SMS Fuchs was a tender and artillery training boat of the German Imperial Navy and the Imperial Navy .

Imperial Navy

The boat was sold under the household name "Tender A" in December 1904 at the Jos shipyard . L. Meyer in Papenburg ordered where there on 29 July 1905 the name Fuchs baptized by stacking ran. The ship was 42.9 m long and 8.3 m wide, had a draft of 3 m and displaced 638 t . It was armed with two 10.5 cm rapid fire cannons and two 8.8 cm rapid fire cannons. The engine plant generated 1,100 hp and allowed a top speed of 12 knots . The crew numbered 51 men.

The Fuchs was put into service on February 3, 1906 and assigned to the "Inspection of Ship Artillery", with Sønderborg as its home port, where it served as a tender for the large cruiser and artillery test ship SMS Prinz Adalbert . There it was used to tow sea targets , to secure the firing area, to supply the firing ships and as a school boat. In May 1907 the Fuchs collided with the ship of the line SMS Schwaben , which had been a training ship since 1906, inspecting the ship's artillery , and the boat had to be docked for repairs . In the last pre-war years, 1913 and 1914, the ship was also used for coastal exploration trips.

In the July crisis of 1914, which led to the outbreak of the First World War , the Fuchs was assigned to the Elbe port flotilla on July 30, 1914, which was renamed the Elbe outpost flotilla on June 1, 1917 . From autumn 1917 until the end of the war, the ship served the North Sea outpost flotilla as the guide boat of the 1st half flotilla.

Imperial Navy

After the end of the war, the ship was taken over into the Reichsmarine, where it was used as a school boat and tender at the ship artillery school from April 1, 1922 . First in command during this time (April 1922 to June 2, 1925) was First Lieutenant at Sea and later Lieutenant General of the Air Force Herbert Olbrich (1897–1976).

The ship was decommissioned on May 12, 1928, sold for scrapping on May 3, 1929 and scrapped in Wilhelmshaven in the same year . The tasks of the ship were carried out by the former minesweeper M 130 , built in 1919 and converted in 1928 into an anti-aircraft cartillery school boat and tender , which was also named Fuchs on May 12, 1928 .

literature

Siegfried Breyer: Special and special ships of the Kriegsmarine (I), Marine-Arsenal Volume 30, Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Eggolsheim-Bammersdorf, 1995, ISBN 3-7909-0523-2

Hans-H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships , 10 volumes, Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, ISBN 3-8364-9743-3

Web links

Photo of the Fuchs tender , January 1, 1914, on gettyimages.com

Individual evidence

↑ In 1914 the inspection of the ship's artillery included the liner SMS Wettin , which had replaced SMS Schwaben , the large cruiser Prinz Adalbert , the small cruisers SMS Augsburg , SMS Stuttgart and SMS Danzig , and the tenders SMS Delphin , SMS Hay , SMS Drache and Fuchs allocated.
↑ The Swabians had replaced the old SMS Mars there . (Hans-H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German Warships , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, ISBN 3-8364-9743-3 , Volume 7, pp. 139ff.)

[1] In 1914 the inspection of the ship's artillery included the liner SMS Wettin , which had replaced SMS Schwaben , the large cruiser Prinz Adalbert , the small cruisers SMS Augsburg , SMS Stuttgart and SMS Danzig , and the tenders SMS Delphin , SMS Hay , SMS Drache and Fuchs allocated.

[2] The Swabians had replaced the old SMS Mars there . (Hans-H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German Warships , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, ISBN 3-8364-9743-3 , Volume 7, pp. 139ff.)