SMS Nymph (1899)
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The second SMS Nymphe was a small cruiser of the Imperial Navy and the third Gazelle- class ship . Modernized, the nymph was also in service with the Reichsmarine from 1924 to 1929 .
Building history
The keel of the ship was laid in November 1898 at the Germania shipyard in Kiel . Mayor Heinrich Klug , who was to christen the cruiser with the name Nymphe on November 21 , 1899, traveled with Senator Emil Wolpmann from Lübeck on November 20, 1899 . Following the baptism Klug put telegram to at this time to Windsor Castle in London , who remained Emperor of the carried christening discretion. He replied delighted about this event on his mother's birthday . The President of the Torpedo Attempt Commandos, Captain Hugo Zeye , put the nymph into service for the first time on September 20, 1900.
The cruiser, displacing a maximum of 3,082 t, was 105.1 m long, 12.2 m wide and was able to run at 8,486 PSi on two screws in the test at 21.2 knots and was thus somewhat slower than the planned 21.5 knots. He had the standard armament of his class with ten 10.5 cm L / 40 rapid fire guns, initially fourteen 3.7 cm automatic cannons and two 45 cm torpedo tubes. The normal manning was 257 men.
The painting "View of Lübeck" by Elisabeth Reuter was in the mess of the cruiser . The Lübeck Senate commissioned the Lübeck artist to paint it.
First missions
As early as January 1901, the test drives had to be interrupted because the nymph was used as an escort cruiser for the imperial yacht Hohenzollern to accompany Kaiser Wilhelm II to the funeral ceremonies for his grandmother, Queen Victoria . The nymph lay off Portsmouth from January 26th to February 5th and then ran back through Sheerness and Vlissingen until the 8th .
In March she was ready for action and was not assigned to the fleet, but to the torpedo inspection as the second test ship. This service was interrupted by regular missions as an escort cruiser for the imperial yacht. In 1902 she took part in the north country trip, a visit to Tsar Nicholas II in Reval from 6 to 8 August and a visit to the emperor's uncle, the English King Edward VII , in November. In 1903 she was in Copenhagen from April 2nd to 6th , when the emperor passed the Danish King Christian IX. visited, and took part again in the north country trip. In winter, the ship usually had longer lay times in the yard with a reduced crew. In 1904 the nymph was not used as an escort ship for the imperial yacht. In spring she carried out torpedo tests in the Norwegian archipelago.
At the beginning of 1905 she was then briefly the first test ship for torpedo inspection until she was replaced by SMS Munich , and then in April became the third artillery training ship . In the spring of 1907, four 10.5 cm guns were removed from the port side and replaced by four 8.8 cm guns and two 5.2 cm guns. The nymph was now the training ship for machine weapons. On August 31, she was rammed by the armored ship SMS Frithjof during the autumn maneuvers and decommissioned in Kiel on September 19, 1907 because of the damage. After repairing the damage, it was transferred to Danzig, where it was activated again on May 23, 1908 to replace its successor, Medusa , who needed a major overhaul. Until February 15, 1909, the nymph training ship for machine guns with home port remained in Sonderborg , before it was replaced by SMS Stuttgart .
War effort
On August 2, 1914, the nymph was put back into service and on the 8th took over the leadership of the Elbe harbor flotilla. It is not known whether it was restored to its original armament during this period of service. On September 1, 1915, she was used as a training and test ship for the torpedo inspection and finally decommissioned on November 1, 1916. She was disarmed and served as a living and exercise ship for torpedo inspection.
Imperial Navy
The old ship did not have to be delivered at the end of the war. It was moved from Kiel to Wilhelmshaven in November 1920 and modernized there from November 1922 in the naval shipyard . Instead of the sweeping ram, it was given a modern cruiser bow and a new foremast.
On November 30, 1924, the modernized Nymphe, now armed with former submarine cannons, was put into service and became the flagship of the commander of the light naval forces of the Baltic Sea. In June 1925 she made a trip abroad to Norway and in 1926 took part in the fleet voyage to the Atlantic, visiting Cádiz , Port Mahon , Málaga and Vigo . She stayed briefly in Skagen during the autumn maneuvers . During the fleet voyage in 1927, she suffered damage to the steering gear in a storm in the Bay of Biscay , which had to be repaired in Ferrol . Visits to Santa Cruz , La Luz , Lanzarote , Horta , Ponta Delgada , Seville and Cádiz followed. On both voyages the participating four ships of the line and two or three cruisers visited the foreign ports individually, in different groups and rarely the entire association. In 1928 the nymph visited Norway and Skagen again.
On April 16, 1929, the nymph finally retired from the service of the Imperial Navy and was replaced by the new light cruiser Königsberg . Briefly used as a living ship , the nymph was removed from the list of warships in 1931 and broken up in Hamburg in 1932.
Commanders
| September 20, 1900 to March 1901 | Sea captain Hugo Zeye |
| March 1901 to September 30, 1901 | Corvette captain / frigate captain Georg Friedrich Scheibel |
| October 1, 1901 to September 1902 | Corvette Captain Günther von Krosigk |
| September to October 1902 | Lieutenant Captain Albertus Petruschky (deputy) |
| October 1902 to January 1903 | Corvette Captain Walter Voit |
| January to February 1903 | Captain Willibald Grauer (deputy) |
| February to October 1903 | Corvette Captain Walter Voit |
| October to December 1903 | Corvette Captain Wilhelm Sthamer |
| December 1903 to February 1904 | Captain Willibald Grauer (deputy) |
| February to September 1904 | Corvette Captain Wilhelm Sthamer |
| September 1904 to January 1905 | Corvette Captain Leberecht Maaß |
| January to March 1905 | Frigate captain / sea captain Ernst Schäfer |
| March to September 1905 | Corvette Captain Karl Behm |
| September to November 1905 | Captain Paul Siewert (deputy) |
| November 1905 to January 1906 | Frigate Captain Wilhelm Schäfer (deputy) |
| January to September 1906 | Corvette Captain / Frigate Captain Karl Behm |
| October 1906 to September 19, 1907 | Corvette Captain Heinrich Trendtel |
| May 23, 1908 to November 1908 | Frigate Captain Paul Jantzen |
| November to December 1908 | Lieutenant Captain Kurt von Grumbkow (deputy) |
| December 1908 to February 15, 1909 | Corvette Captain Max Werner |
| August 2, 1914 to January 1915 | Frigate Captain Ernst Ewers |
| January to August 1915 | Frigate Captain Erich Graf von Zeppelin |
| August to September 1915 | Captain Friedrich Wolf (deputy) |
| September 1915 to September 1916 | Corvette Captain Walter Holtzapfel |
| September to October 1916 | Corvette Captain Hermann Schantz (substitute) |
| October 1916 to November 1, 1916 | Corvette Captain Bruno Hintze |
| November 30, 1924 to January 9, 1925 | Sea captain Ernst Bindseil |
| January 10, 1925 to September 20, 1926 | Frigate Captain Georg Kleine |
| September 21, 1926 to September 29, 1928 | Frigate captain / sea captain Fritz Conrad |
| October 3, 1928 to April 16, 1929 | Frigate Captain Wolf von Trotha |
Known crew members
- Hans-Rudolf Rösing (1905-2004), was from 1962 to 1965 as Rear Admiral in command of Defense Division I.
- The later Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Karl Dönitz, was a navigation officer from December 17, 1927 to September 23, 1928 , when the cruiser was part of the Baltic Sea Forces .
Footnotes
- ↑ "The baptism of the cruiser nymph at the Germania shipyard in Kiel." In: Vaterstädtische Blätter , year 1899, no. 45, issue of November 26, 1899.
- ^ "An artist from Lübeck." In: Vaterstädtische Blätter , year 1903, no. 20, edition of May 17, 1903.
- ↑ s. < https://bgef.de/dieschiffe/emdeniii/chefetage/doenitz-karl.html Bordgemeinschaft der Emdenfahrer>, accessed on July 14, 2020
literature
- Erich Gröner, Dieter Jung and Martin Maass: The German Warships 1815–1945 Volume 1 . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 .
- 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,