SMS S 22 (1913)
 The sister boat S 17
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
S 22 was a large torpedo boat of the 1911 official draft of the Imperial Navy (so-called Lans-Krüppel). The boat was part of a twelve-unit series that wasawardedto Schichau-Werke by the Reichsmarinamt in1912. S 22 sank on March 25, 1916 during an advance by German naval forces after a mine hit .
history
Construction and commissioning
The Schichau shipyard in Elbing , West Prussia, began building the S 13 to S 24 series of boats in 1911 . The tenth boat with hull number 873, for which the designation S 22 was intended, was ready for launch on February 15, 1913 . The boat was completed by the summer of that year and was put into active service by the Navy on July 23. The construction cost around 1,600,000 marks .
Calls
The boat formed the VII. Torpedo Boat Flotilla with the sister ships of the entire series and in this context belonged to the 14th Torpedo Boat Flotilla with the boats S 19 to S 23 .
At the beginning of the war it was used in the outpost service in the North Sea and as a submarine safety device when the heavy units of the deep sea fleet advanced .
loss
On March 25, 1916 around 9:30 was carried out an attack British destroyer on the German outpost in List , while aircraft of the British Seeflugzeugträgers HMS Vindex the airship hangars of Tonder should attack. German planes then flew a counterattack from the Naval Air Base List. The evasive British destroyer HMS Lavrock rammed the destroyer HMS Medusa , which then had to be towed and later abandoned because of the stormy weather.
The British action provoked a German reaction. The high seas fleet set out to counterattack the retreating British ships. During this company ran Torpedoboot S 22 under Kapitänleutnant Karl Galster (1886-1916) to 21:30 on a mine about 30 nautical miles north of Terschelling at 53 ° 46 ' N , 5 ° 4' O . The boat broke apart amidships. While the front half sank immediately, the stern remained buoyant for about five minutes. The torpedo boat S 18 , which was in the vicinity, could not provide any help due to the extremely bad weather conditions. Only seventeen sailors were saved. The commander and 75 other crew members died.
During the same operation, the northern German interceptor group also lost the G 194 torpedo boat when the British cruiser HMS Cleopatra rammed it into it.
The German Navy named its destroyer Z 20 Karl Galster after the fallen commander of S 22 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from August 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
literature
- Harald Fock: Black journeymen , Volume 2: Destroyers before 1914 , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1981, ISBN 3-7822-0206-6 .
- Harald Fock: Z-before! , Volume 1: International development and war missions of destroyers and torpedo boats 1914 to 1939 , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7822-0762-9 .
- Erich Gröner : The German warships 1815-1945 Volume 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speed boats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats , Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6 .