SMS Hela (1895)

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Hela
SMS Hela.jpg
Ship data
flag German EmpireGerman Empire (Reichskriegsflagge) German Empire
Ship type Aviso
Shipyard AG Weser , Bremen
Build number 108
building-costs 2,703,000 marks
Launch March 28, 1895
Commissioning May 3, 1896
Whereabouts Sunk on September 13, 1914
Ship dimensions and crew
length
105.0 m ( Lüa )
104.6 m ( KWL )
width 11.0 m
Draft Max. 4.64 m
displacement Construction: 2,027 t
2,082 t
 
crew 178 men
Machine system
machine 6 steam locomotive boilers,
2 3-cylinder compound machines
Machine
performance 		5,982 hp (4,400 kW)
Top
speed 		20.5 kn (38 km / h)
propeller 2 three-leaf 3.25 m
Armament
Armor
  • Deck: 20-25 mm
  • Coam: 40 mm
  • Command tower: 30 mm

SMS Hela was an Aviso , known from 1899 as a small cruiser , of the German Imperial Navy , which was used in the First World War . She was a single ship and was very lightly armed with four 8.8 cm guns for a cruiser.

From the summer of 1900 the Hela was used for a year off China during the Boxer Rebellion . After extensive renovations between 1903 and 1906, the Hela served as a fleet tender from 1910 . When the First World War broke out in 1914, she was used as a cruiser to support the torpedo boats stationed in Heligoland , and on September 13, 1914, she was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine E9 .

Pre-war history

Construction and technical data

The Hela was in on December 5, 1893 Werft AG Weser in Bremen on down Kiel . She ran on 28 March 1895 by the stack . She was named after in Gdansk located peninsula Hela . The ship was 105 m long, 11 m wide and had a draft of 4.64 m, the water displacement was 2,082 tons. The peace team was 179 men.

The ship was propelled by two three-cylinder triple expansion steam engines, each working on a screw 3.25 m in diameter. Six locomotive boilers in two boiler rooms produced the steam for the machines installed in separate rooms, which were designed for 6,000  hp and enabled the Hela to achieve a speed of 20.5  knots during test drives .

She was armed with four 8.8 cm L / 30 rapid loading cannons , six 5 cm rapid loading cannons and three 45 cm torpedo tubes , two of which were on deck and one was installed under water on the bow. The 10 kg shells of their 8.8 cm cannons could be fired up to 6,900 m at the maximum elevation of 20 °. The guns had 200 rounds each and could achieve a rate of fire of up to 15 rounds / minute. The 5 cm L / 40 cannons had a maximum rate of fire of ten rounds per minute and, with their 1.75 kg projectiles, had a range of only 6,200 m. There were 250 rounds for each of these cannons.

The Hela was only slightly armored by a 20 mm armored deck, some of which was reinforced to 25 mm on the sides. The command tower was protected a little more with 30 mm armor.

The Hela was the last of nine Avisos that came into service for the Imperial Navy since the purchase of the Zieten from England in 1875. She was the forerunner of the full-fledged Gazelle- class small cruisers .

The Hela was commissioned on May 3rd, 1896. Due to problems with the machine system, after extensive testing, it was taken out of service on September 19, 1896 to carry out repairs.

Fleet service

On March 10, 1898 the final commissioning of the Avisos Hela took place . He was assigned to the 1st Division of the 1st Squadron. From June 14th to July 31st, the Hela was assigned to the imperial yacht Hohenzollern as an escort cruiser and took part in the emperor's annual voyage to the north , which led into the Hardangerfjord . From September 17 to December 8, she then accompanied the Kaiser on a trip to Palestine with Hertha . In 1899 she took part in the squadron's trips to the Atlantic, the visit to Dover and visits to the Netherlands and Sweden. In the course of a reorganization of the ship names, the Hela was reclassified as a small cruiser.

East Asia deployment

During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the Chinese besieged the legation district in Beijing and murdered the German ambassador, Baron Clemens von Ketteler . The violence against Europeans in China led to an alliance of eight states against the nationalist Chinese movement, which included the German Reich, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the United States, France and Japan. The soldiers currently stationed in China were too few to defeat the boxers. In Beijing it was a force of just over 400 men from the eight states that defended the legation district. The main element of German military power in China was the East Asian cruiser squadron , which consisted of the protected cruisers Kaiserin Augusta , Hansa and Hertha , the small cruisers Irene and Gefion and the gunboats Iltis and Jaguar . In addition, there were 500 German soldiers in Taku as part of an international force of around 2,100 men who, under the leadership of British Admiral Edward Hobart Seymour, tried to terrorize Beijing, but were stopped by the fierce resistance of the boxers at Tientsin .

Despite the objections of the head of the Reichsmarinamt , Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz , who considered the operation unnecessary and too extensive, the Hela was sent to East Asia with her division of the four Brandenburg -class ships in the summer of 1900 . They left Kiel on July 9th and Wilhelmshaven on July 11th, 1900 to support the international armed forces in China. On 17./18. July the division bunkered in Gibraltar and passed the Suez Canal on the 26th / 27th, where the gunboat Luchs joined the association. In front of Perim and in Aden, the ships bunkered again in order to start the crossing of the Indian Ocean to Colombo on August 2nd without a lynx . From there, the association continued through the Straits of Malacca to Singapore , where the first long break was made during the division's departure from August 19 to 23. On the 28th the division reached Hong Kong and on August 30th it was in the roadstead of Wusong near Shanghai and participated in the "blockade" of the Chinese Navy, which up the Yangtze River had no intention of attacking the overwhelming international forces. In addition to the four German ships of the line, two British ships blocked the exit from the river along with a large number of cruisers, gunboats and torpedo boats from all countries. The siege of the Legation Quarter in Beijing was now over. The Hela mostly stayed with the bulk of the liner division during the operation in East Asia and was from March to May 1901 - under the command of the later chief of the cruiser squadron, Lieutenant Captain Maximilian von Spee - in Tsingtau , where gradually all of the division's liners were overhauled arrived in Hong Kong or Japan and did joint exercises. On June 1, 1901, the German association with the four ships of the line, Elector Friedrich Wilhelm , Brandenburg , Weißenburg and Wörth and the Hela, began the march back home, which was reached on August 11. On the way back, the division ran into Mahé as an additional coal station on the march against the monsoon for safety . On August 1st, the division met in Cadiz with the new I. Division of the I. Squadron under Prince Heinrich of Prussia on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Große and both divisions then ran back home together. The entire operation was extremely costly, as foreign coal stations had to be used on the marches to and from East Asia. These ships were actually not needed for operations during the Boxer Rebellion . The demonstrative nature of the operation, which cost the Reich over 100 million marks, was obvious. No other state used its forces to the same extent.

The Hela made a trip abroad to Norway from August 26 to September 16, 1901, during which Christiania was visited among others . In the winter of 1902, some renovation work began, so that at the end of January 1903 she was able to take over the task of a training ship for light guns. However, the poor condition of their boilers already led to the Hela being decommissioned on April 25, 1903 .

Second deployment phase

After a modernization from 1903 to 1906 at the Imperial Shipyard in Gdansk with the installation of a modern boiler system of eight marine standard boilers, conversion to a two-chimney, new bridge system, improved internal division, extended double floor, reduction of the armament to two 8.8 cm Guns and an increase in the crew to over 200 men, put the Hela back into service as a fleet tender on October 1, 1910. In this function, she often transported high-ranking observers or visitors to the fleet on maneuvers, fleet parades or the like. From April 1912 she also moved her home port from Wilhelmshaven to Kiel.

First World War

Sea battle near Heligoland

After the outbreak of the First World War, the Hela belonged to the IV reconnaissance group and to secure the German patrols off Heligoland , which were attacked on August 28, 1914 by superior British naval units . The Hela escaped this battle , in which three other German small cruisers and a torpedo boat were sunk, undamaged.

Downfall

A short time later, on the morning of September 13, 1914, she was torpedoed about six nautical miles south-southwest of the port of Helgoland, on the way to Wilhelmshaven , by the British submarine E9 under the command of the future Admiral Max Horton . The Hela was hit amidships and sank after about 25 minutes, but almost the entire crew except for two men from U 18 and a German outpost boat could be rescued.

E9 was chased by German units all day, but escaped to Harwich . When entering the port, Horton established the tradition of British submarines to set the Jolly Roger pirate flag after a successful sinking .

Commanders

literature

  • Lynn E. Bodin: The Boxer Rebellion. Osprey Publishing, London (1979)
  • Terrell D. Gottschall: By order of the Kaiser: Otto von Diederichs and the rise of the Imperial German Navy, 1865-1902. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2003, ISBN 1-55750-309-5
  • Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford.
  • Erich Gröner : The German warships 1815-1945. Volume 1. Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 .

Web links

Commons : SMS Hela  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Gröner, p. 126
  2. ↑ Germany 8.8 cm / 30 (3.46 ") SK L / 30
  3. ↑ Bodin, pp. 5-6
  4. ↑ Bodin, p. 1
  5. ↑ Bodin, p. 6
  6. ↑ Bodin, p. 11
  7. ↑ Bodin, pp. 11-12
  8. ↑ https://von-lans.livejournal.com/1028.html