SMS Iltis (1905)
The sister ship Stolzenfels
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The auxiliary cruiser SMS Iltis was built in 1906 as a cargo ship Gutenfels for DDG Hansa .
At the beginning of the First World War , it was confiscated by Great Britain in Egypt in 1914 .
In 1917, the ship , which had meanwhile been renamed Turritella , was seized by the auxiliary cruiser SMS Wolf in the Indian Ocean and used briefly as the German auxiliary miner SMS Iltis against Aden .
ship
The second Gutenfels of the DDG Hansa belonged to the eight ships of the Rheinfels class , which from 1905 to 1907 at Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson ( Rheinfels , Braunfels , Rotenfels , Rauenfels ), the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft ( Gutenfels , Stolzenfels ), Joh. C. Tecklenborg ( Lindenfels ) and AG Weser ( Uhenfels ) had been built for DDG Hansa .
The 10,700 t displacement and 5,528 GRT ship was launched on November 18, 1905 at the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft under the name Gutenfels . It was 135 meters long and 17 meters wide and had a draft of 6.3 meters. Its top speed was 11 knots.
At the beginning of the war, six freighters of the class were seized or seized by the British Navy in Port Said , Perim , Bombay , Calcutta , Sydney . The Rauenfels found refuge in Brazil , which was neutral until 1917 , and the Uhenfels in the neutral Dutch East Indies .
history
When the First World War broke out , the Gutenfels was in Port Said, Egypt . She was confiscated from Great Britain as enemy possession and first under the name Polavon , then in 1916 as the tanker Turritella ( Tanker 147 ) under the direction of the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company Ltd. Commissioned for the Royal Navy .
On February 27, 1917 at 6:25 a.m. the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Wolf, west of Colombo , which had also belonged to the Hansa Line before the war , sighted the Turritella in the Indian Ocean. After a brief pursuit, the Turritella was stopped with a shot in front of the bow at 8 ° 40 ' N , 63 ° 15' E at 0800. She was immediately converted into an auxiliary cruiser with a 5.2 cm cannon and 25 sea mines under the name SMS Iltis . The ship's commanding officer was the Wolf's first officer , Lieutenant Iwan Brandes . The crew consisted of 27 members of the Wolf as well as a larger number of Chinese who were part of the original British crew and who have now been recruited for German services. The polecat was supposed to lay the mines off Aden and then wage a trade war on its own for as long as possible.
Naming
Frigate Captain Nerger , Commander of the Wolf , wrote the following about the commissioning and renaming of the ship :
“Kapitänleutnant Brandes, who saw 27 men, mainly machine, FT , signaling and helmsman personnel, was given command of the newest ship in the German fleet, which I commemorate the first combat activity in my life - I was on in 1900 the 'Iltis' took part in the fight against the Takuforts as first lieutenant under the current Admiral Lans - gave the name 'Iltis'. "
Whereabouts
While laying the mines, the polecat was discovered on the morning of March 5, 1917 by the British sloop HMS Odin of the Cadmus class , which was armed with six 4- inch cannons. The cruiser HMS Fox , which had already been successfully deceived , approached again. In view of their hopeless inferiority, the crew of the polecat sank their ship west-southwest of Aden at 12 ° 26 ' N , 44 ° 12' E itself and was picked up by the crew of the Odin . Some of them did not return from captivity until 1920, like Brandes himself . Until then she was housed in the detention center in Ahmednagar , India .
After the scuttling, the Chinese crew members gave the British interrogators a precise description of the wolf , but the wolf left the area of operations in the Indian Ocean shortly afterwards. Two English steamers ran into the mines laid out by the polecat . On March 20, 1917 the 5,064 GRT steamer Danubian and in January 1918 the Hong Moy with 3,910 GRT. Both ships were still able to reach the port of Aden despite the damage they suffered.
Fate of the sister ships
Surname | Shipyard | GRT tdw |
Launched in service |
further fate |
Rheinfels (2) |
Swan Hunter construction no. 732 |
5512 8670 |
06/19/1905 08/08/1905 |
Confiscated in Bombay in 1914, Baxtergate in 1922 , laid up in March 1930, demolished in August 1933 |
Gutenfels (2) |
Flensburg building no. 254 |
5576 8745 |
18.11.1905 16.01.1906 |
Confiscated in Port Said in 1914, attacked by SMS Wolf in 1917 , used as an auxiliary ship Iltis , sunk off Aden itself on March 5, 1917 |
Stolzenfels (3) | Flensburg building no. 255 |
5566 8780 |
01/6/1906 03/02/1906 |
Confiscated in Sydney in 1914: Dongarra , 1925: British Kotka , 1927 Benvrackie , 1931 demolition in Japan |
Braunfels (2) | Swan Hunter construction no. 760 |
5557 8650 |
22.06.1906 08.17.1906 |
Confiscated in Bombay in 1914, Yugoslavia in 1924: Vidovdan , stranded in the Dutch East Indies on December 15, 1939 , total loss |
Rotenfels |
Tecklenborg building no. 214 |
5584 8700 |
September 18, 1906 November 8, 1906 |
Seized in 1914 in Calcutta, 1925 Cape St. Martin , 1927 Yugoslavia: Dujan Silni , 1925 China: Pei Ping , 1938 Japan: Wonsan Maru , November 9, 1942 US submarine USS Halibut sunk |
Lindenfels (2) | Swan Hunter construction no. 768 |
5476 8600 |
November 4, 1906 December 18, 1906 |
Applied off Aden in 1914: Kingsmere , 1922 to Greece: Agios Ioannis , laid up in December 1931, June 1933 demolition in Italy |
Rauenfels | Swan Hunter construction no. 770 |
5476 8620 |
14.12.1906 05.02.1907 |
1914 in Brazil, confiscated in 1917: Lages , loaned to France 1920–1922, owned by Lloyd Brasileiro in 1927 , sunk by U 514 off the north coast of Brazil on September 27, 1942 |
Uhenfels |
AG Weser Building No. 259 |
5577 8670 |
01/19/1907 04/6/1907 |
1914 in Tandjung / Dutch East Indies, October 1918 to the Netherlands: Bandoeng , launched in early 1931 and sold for demolition at the end of the year |
References and comments
- ^ Paul Schmalenbach: The German auxiliary cruisers 1895-1945 . Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg / Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7979-1877-1 , p. 47 .
- ^ John Walter: Pirates of the Emperor - German trade troublemakers 1914-1918 . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, p. 176. ISBN 3-613-01729-6
- ^ Letter to the editor Hermann Rieke. In: FAZ , August 30, 2010, page 6
- ^ John Walter: Pirates of the Emperor - German trade troublemakers 1914-1918 . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-613-01729-6 , p. 177.
- ↑ Loss of the Vidovdan
- ↑ Sinking of the Genzan Maru
- ↑ sinking of Lages
literature
- 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, vol. 6, p. 106
- Chapter: Auxiliary cruiser "Wolf" . In: Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934
- Chapter: SM auxiliary cruiser "Iltis" . In: Eberhard von Mantey : The German auxiliary cruisers , Berlin 1937, pp. 315-324.
- John Walter: Pirates of the Emperor - German trade troublemakers 1914–1918 . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, p. 184. ISBN 3-613-01729-6
Web links
- Gutenfels at Hansa-Ships
- The 7 days of the SMS "ILTIS" in the Indian Ocean