SMS Greif (ship, 1914)
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The SMS Greif was an auxiliary cruiser of the Imperial Navy in the First World War .
Construction and technical data
The ship was used for the Society Dampfschiffs German-Australian (DADG) in the AG Neptun in Rostock built and ran on 29 July 1914 just days before the outbreak of the First World War , under the name of Guben from the stack . The freighter had 4,962 GRT and was supposed to travel the Australian route. The machinery consisted of two coal-fired steam boilers and a three-cylinder, triple expansion machine with 3,000 hp. The ship had one propeller and a design speed of 13 knots .
Conversion to an auxiliary cruiser
The ship was used by the Imperial Navy in 1915 for auxiliary services in accordance with the War Act of 1873 and converted into an auxiliary cruiser at the Imperial Shipyard in Kiel . It was equipped with four 15 cm guns (two on each side) and a 10.5 cm gun on the quarterdeck; there were also two 50 cm torpedo tubes , one on each side of the forecastle. After the upgrade, it had a range of 35,000 nautical miles. The crew consisted of 10 officers and 297 men. The commander was frigate captain Rudolf Tietze (born September 13, 1874).
On January 23, 1916, the new auxiliary cruiser under the name Greif was put into service in Kiel . In mid-February it was inspected in Kiel by Grand Admiral Prince Heinrich of Prussia . One of the keynote speakers announced that the Greif was to wage trade wars in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans ; the British Navy was thus prepared for the impending departure of a German auxiliary cruiser. The Greif moved through the Kiel Canal to Hamburg and went to sea on February 27, 1916 with 600 rounds of 15 cm and 200 rounds of 10.5 cm ammunition and twelve torpedoes from Cuxhaven towards Norway . She was camouflaged as the Norwegian freighter Rena from Tønsberg . The submarine U 70 ran ahead as an escort .
February 29, 1916
On the morning of February 29, 1916, the Greif was discovered northwest of Bergen by the two British auxiliary cruisers Alcantara (16,034 GRT) and Andes (15,620 GRT). Both were former mail ships of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company , which had been requisitioned by the Royal Navy in 1915 and equipped with six 15 cm guns as auxiliary cruisers. They belonged to the Tenth Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral Dudley de Chair and were part of the outer locking ring of the British North Sea blockade (between Scotland and Norway, south of Iceland , and in the Denmark Strait north of Iceland).
The Alcantara was closer, warned the Greif to stop with a warning shot and dropped a boat at 9:40 a.m. to inspect the suspicious merchant ship. The Griffin then hoisted the flag of war , picked up speed and opened fire. Already the first shot was a hit on the bridge of Alcantara , of all connections to the engine room destroyed. The Alcantara returned fire, and a violent artillery duel developed over a short distance (never more than 3,000 meters), which neither of the two unarmored ships could withstand in the long term. On the Greif , the riot ammunition stacked by the 10.5 cm gun exploded and set the stern on fire. Their oil tanks also caught fire. The Greif, for its part, scored a torpedo hit on port amidships on the Alcantara , the effect of which, however, partially fizzled out in the coal bunker . Nevertheless got Alcantara growing list to port, but fired nevertheless, along with her sister ship have hastened Andes (under Commander CB Young), continue to the stricken and burning grip .
At 10:18, frigate captain Tietze ordered "All hands off board". He himself was killed by an artillery shell while abseiling on the ship's side. At 10:45 am, Captain Tom Wardle on the Alcantara also had to give the order to leave his ship. At around 10:50 a.m., the small cruiser Comus under Captain Alan Hotham and the destroyer Munster had come close enough to witness what had happened. The Alcantara capsized and sank at 11:06; 72 men of their crew were killed. The Munster took in the survivors. The griffin floated on fire and with a waving flag. From 11:39 a.m. to 12:12 p.m., the Comus fired more artillery volleys at them. She then rescued a total of 117 survivors from the water, two of whom later died of hypothermia. A total of 192 crew members of the Greif lost their lives, including five of the ten officers.
One of the survivors was the later known psychiatrist Hans-Gerhard Creutzfeldt , who was embarked on the Greif as a naval staff doctor.
wreck
The wreck of the Greif is at 61 ° 45 ' N , 1 ° 10' E. , about 230 nautical miles east of the Faroe Islands .
literature
- Tony Bridgland: Sea Killers in Disguise: Q Ships and Raiders of World War I. US Naval Institute Press, 1999, ISBN 978-1-55750-895-9 ; (Chap. 14, pp. 174-178).
- Francis Poole: Alcantara vs. Griffin: Duel of the Merchant Cruisers. United States Naval Institute Proceedings, July 1975.
- Paul Schmalenbach: German Raiders. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. 1977, ISBN 0-85059-351-4 .
- Walter von Schoen: Pirate course: heroic deeds of German auxiliary cruisers. Ullstein, Berlin 1934
- Entry: auxiliary cruiser "Greif". In: Captain of the Sea a. D. Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz: The cruiser war 1914-1918. The cruiser squadron. Emden, Koenigsberg, Karlsruhe. The auxiliary cruisers. Oldenburg i. O. 1931, p. 208.
- Entry griffin. In: Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. 7 volumes, Ratingen o. J. 1983, Vol. 6, p. 102.
- Chapter: SM auxiliary cruiser "Greif". In: Eberhard von Mantey : The German auxiliary cruisers. Berlin 1937, pp. 211-222.
- Paul Jolidon: With German privateers in the world war: Experiences of an Alsatian sailor on German blockade breakers. Berlin 1934.
- Paul Jolidon: Un Alsacien avec les corsaires du kaiser. Paris 1934.
- John Walter: Pirates of the Emperor - German trade troublemakers 1914–1918. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-613-01729-6 , pp. 91-93.