SMS Lauting

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SMS Lauting was a tugboat and mine- layer that acted as a tender from 1907 to 1914 on the East Asian station of the Imperial Navy in Tsingtau and as a mine- layer in the early stages of the First World War . The ship was self- sunk during the siege of the German colony of Kiautschou , then lifted, repaired and put back into service by the Japanese Navy . It served under various names as a salvage tug , then as a privately operated passenger ferry and finally as a naval transporter until it ran into a mine on May 30, 1945 off Fukuoka and sank.

Construction and technical data

The intended for the German naval base in Qingdao, from steel -built vessel arrived on 10 November 1906, the hull number 449 at the Howaldtswerken in Kiel from the stack . It was 43.4 m long and 8.7 m wide and displaced 582 tons . It had a triple expansion steam engine that developed 450 hp and allowed a speed of up to 10.2 knots . The ship was unarmed, but was equipped with the devices for picking up and laying 120 mines.

After its completion and the completion of the test drives in January and February 1907, the ship was dismantled, transported to Tsingtau and reassembled there. It was named after the highest peak of the Lao Shan Mountains (located within the German colony) , the 1132.7 m high Lauting, east of Tsingtau.

history

Imperial Navy

Until the outbreak of World War I, Lauting had a career without any notable incidents. It had not been assigned to the naval base but to the East Asia Squadron as a tender and carried material and personnel to and between the ships at the station.

After Japan had entered the war on August 13, 1914 on the side of the Entente and on August 15 had sent the German governor von Kiautschou an ultimatum until August 23 to surrender unconditionally by September 15 at the latest, Lauting ran under theirs Commander Herbert Kux several times to lay mine barriers in front of Tsingtau. In the early evening of August 22nd, when she laid mines on the small island of Tai-Kung-Tau southeast of Tsingtau, she was secured by the torpedo boat S 90 , which was attacked by the British destroyer HMS Kennet . S 90 then ran at high speed in the direction of Tai-Kung-Tau, warned the Lauting , successfully returned the Kennet's fire and steered into shallower water between the island and the mainland. The Kennet broke off the pursuit because she was taken under fire by the coastal battery of Fort Hui-tschien-Huk and did not want to risk running into the dangerous reefs off the island.

On August 23, the Lauting put another barrier, this time more strongly secured by S 90 , the gunboat Jaguar and the old Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth , whose main armament after the expansion of its two 24 cm guns, however, only consisted of six 15 -cm cannons. The company remained undisturbed, but on the march back a mine exploded behind the Lauting , which damaged the ship so much that it had to be in the floating dock for two days for repairs . Since a strong Japanese fleet under Vice Admiral Katō Sadakichi and the British liner HMS Triumph appeared on August 27 to blockade Tsingtau, further mine laying companies were no longer possible. The boat was sunk in the inner harbor of Tsingtau on September 28, 1914 - just like the previously disarmed and decommissioned gunboats Cormoran , Iltis , Luchs and the torpedo boat Taku .

Japan

After the surrender of the German troops in Tsingtau on November 7, 1914 and the occupation of the area by Japan, the ship was lifted, repaired and put into service by the Japanese Navy under the name Shirogame as a salvage tug. From 1931 to 1938 the ship was privately owned and was used as a passenger ferry under the name Sanogawa Maru (1931-1935) and Sanogawa Maru No. 2 (1935-1938). Then the Japanese Navy took possession of it again, renamed it Hakuun Maru and used it as a transporter. On 30 May 1945, it was in one of American US B-29 - bombers of the XX Bomber Command, 20th Air Force, in the Hakata Bay in front of Fukuoka on the Japanese island of Kyushu dropped mine and sank.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ German spelling at that time.
  2. ↑ The Kennet received at least six goals, which put a gun out of action, the bridge destroyed and the commanders killed and two other men.
  3. ^ War diary of the siege of Tsingtau, July 23 to November 29, 1914 , published by Tageblatt fur Nord-China AG, Tientsin, January 1915, p. 13
  4. ↑ Japanese Maritime Blockade Tsingtau 1914, at weaponsandwarfare.com
  5. ↑ Lauting (1907 ~ 1914) Hakuun Maru (+1945), at www.wrecksite.eu

literature

  • Naval archive (ed.): The battles of the Imperial Navy in the German colonies; First part: Tsingtau . Mittler & Sohn, Berlin, 1935 (Chapter 1)