SMS Meteor (auxiliary cruiser)
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
SMS Meteor was a German auxiliary cruiser that operated in the North Sea and the White Sea in 1915 .
Origin and technical data
The Meteor was built in 1903 as Vienna by Ramage & Ferguson in Leith . Their size was 1912 GRT, the length 89.1 m, the width 11.3 m, the draft 5.1 m. Her construction speed was 14 knots. The range was about 5,000 nautical miles at an average speed of 9 knots .
When war broke out in 1914, the steamer was in German territorial waters and was confiscated by the German authorities as a so-called embargo ship. Due to its British design, which enabled camouflaged operation on the high seas, it was converted into a mine ship in early 1915 at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven .
On May 6, 1915, the Meteor was put into service under Corvette Captain Wolfram von Knorr (1880–1940). Knorr, son of the former fleet admiral Eduard von Knorr , named the mine ship after the gunboat Meteor , which his father led in the naval battle on November 9, 1870 off Havana against the French Aviso Bouvet . As a mine ship or auxiliary cruiser, the Meteor was armed with two 8.8 cm rapid-fire cannons and two 3.7 cm revolver cannons as well as 374 mines on the first voyage.
The first trip
On May 29, 1915, the Meteor left Wilhelmshaven and sailed into the White Sea to lay mines on the shipping route to Arkhangelsk . During the exit, she worked with the U 19 submarine , which practically did the reconnaissance for the mine ship. On 7./8. June 1915 mine barriers were laid, on which at least four British ships sank. On the way back, the Meteor fought cruiser war. The Swedish freighter Thorsten , which carried 200 Russian mail bags as banned goods, was brought to Germany as a prize. The Meteor arrived in Kiel on June 17, 1915 .
The second trip
For another venture, the Meteor was also equipped with a 15 cm rapid fire gun and two 45 cm torpedo tubes. The aim was to lay a mine barrier off the Moray Firth on the Scottish east coast, where the main British warship courses were. At the company, the steamer worked with the U- 17 submarine . On the night of August 8, 1915, she put four mine blocks in front of the Firth. On the march back there was a battle with the British auxiliary cruiser The Ramsay , which the Meteor sank by a torpedo hit. Opposite the British auxiliary cruiser, the Meteor had posed as the Russian cargo steamer Imperator Nikolai II . Eight officers and 90 men were rescued from the Ramsay ; it had been torn in two by the torpedo hit.
On the further return voyage, the Meteor checked the Danish sailor Jason . Since he had loaded pit wood and railway sleepers for Great Britain, the crew was taken over and the Jason burned.
Due to mine discoveries and the battle with the Ramsay , the Meteor was searched for by British naval units at an early stage. On August 9, the steamer was discovered by five British units. Von Knorr decided to submerge himself; the crew and parts of the rescued crew from the Ramsay boarded a Swedish fishing trawler. On the journey south, von Knorr had the passengers transfer to a Norwegian fishing cutter, who were then released. The Swedish cutter was towed by U 28 on August 10 and towed to List .
Consequences for British naval warfare
The sinking of The Ramsay by the torpedo shot of a German auxiliary cruiser meant that the British side tightened the inspection measures of their blockade forces to avoid a repeat of such an incident.
literature
- Entry: Auxiliary cruiser "Meteor" , in: Kapitän zur See a. D. Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz: The cruiser war 1914-1918. The cruiser squadron. Emden, Koenigsberg, Karlsruhe. The auxiliary cruiser , Oldenburg i. O. 1931, pp. 192-201.
- Entry Meteor , 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 in one volume, Ratingen o. J. (1983), Vol. 6, p. 102.
- Eberhard von Mantey : The German auxiliary cruisers , Berlin 1937.
- Fritz-Otto Busch : Auxiliary cruiser "Meteor" , Berlin 1939.
- Eberhard von Mantey: The two "meteors" in the German Navy , Berlin 1925.
- Fritz-Otto Busch: Auxiliary cruiser "Meteor" - mines, men and mackerel , anchor books. Seafaring around the world , No. 36, Munich 1956.
- John Walter: Pirates of the Emperor - German trade troublemakers 1914-1918 . Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1994, ISBN 3-613-01729-6 , pp. 185-186.