SMS Silesia
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SMS Silesia was a battleship of Germany class . It entered service for the Imperial Navy in 1908 and was used during the First World War. After the war, the ship was part of the Reichsmarine and from 1935 of the Kriegsmarine , during this time she was in service from March 1, 1927 to May 4, 1945.
history
Imperial Navy
The construction of the Silesia took place as a liner R , with its sister ships receiving the construction designations N ( SMS Deutschland ), P ( SMS Hanover ), O ( SMS Pommern ) and Q ( SMS Schleswig-Holstein ).
The construction contract for Silesia was placed on June 11, 1904 at the F. Schichau shipyard in Danzig . The keel was laid on November 19, 1904. The launch on May 28, 1906 took place in the presence of the emperor. In March of 1908 the final equipment took place in Kiel. On May 5, 1908, the Schlesien was put into service. In the meantime, the Royal Navy had taken the HMS Dreadnought, the first battleship with a uniform caliber of the main artillery into service. Ships like the Silesia were already out of date when they were put into service.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, the Schlesien was used in security service in the German Bight , later as a target ship for submarines . In 1916 she took part in the Battle of the Skagerrak . Then she was used as a training ship with reduced artillery equipment. When the November Revolution broke out in 1918, Silesia left Kiel on November 5 , before the Kiel sailors' uprising could spread on board, for the Flensburg-Mürwik base . When the ship anchored off Flensburg - Mürwik , the commander , frigate captain Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz , allowed the crew members who professed to support the revolution to leave the ship. Less than half of the crew and only a few machine personnel remained. From November 6th to 9th, Silesia made an odyssey through the Baltic Sea to escape the revolutionary forces. The midshipmen of officer crew VII / 18 on board replaced the machine personnel and henceforth referred to their crew as " Silesia Crew ".
On November 10, 1918 and December 1, 1918, the Silesia was decommissioned.
Reich and Kriegsmarine
The Silesia was on March 1, 1927 as the replacement for the Hannover transferred to the Imperial Navy and returned to service and was next in fleet service active. In 1938/1939 the drive system was completely converted to oil firing.
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During the Second World War she was used as a cadet training ship. In 1940 Silesia took part in the occupation of Denmark during the Weser exercise. The middle artillery was handed over to various auxiliary cruisers , then used again as a school and training ship as well as for ice breaker services . In April 1942, the ship moved together with the damaged battleship Gneisenau to Gotenhafen . Towards the end of the war, Silesia shot at land targets on the Pomeranian coast.
On May 3, 1945, 3:01 a.m., it ran south-east of Greifswalder Oie onto a British ground mine . The mine hit occurred in the area of the bow and severely damaged the ship. Two sailors were killed. The Silesia was dragged from Z 39 to the roadstead of Swinoujscie, where it secured the evacuation of Usedom with its anti-aircraft defense.
Whereabouts
On the evening of May 4, 1945, with the completion of the evacuation of Usedom by the Navy, Silesia was blown up and sank to the bottom. But because parts of the superstructure protruded from the water, a fire was set in order to complete the self-destruction.
The scrapping began four years after the end of the war. The work dragged on and it wasn't until 1970 that most of the remains of the ship were scrapped. Remnants could still be seen in 1980, which were broken off in the following years.
technical description
Technical specifications
- Measurement 8048 BRT , 4145 NRT
- Construction displacement 13,191 t
- Displacement 14,218 t
- Armoring: Deck 40 mm, armored deck slopes 97 mm or 67 mm, command tower 30 mm to 300 mm in front, 140 mm aft, belt armor up to 240 mm on 80 mm teak backing. Casemates 170 mm, shields 70 mm, citadel 170 mm, towers of the heavy artillery and barbeds up to 280 mm.
Armament
The armament consisted of four 28 cm rapid loading cannons L / 40, 14 17 cm rapid loading cannons L / 40, 20 8.8 cm rapid loading cannons L / 35 and, at times, four automatic cannons. There were also six underwater torpedo tubes with a diameter of 45 cm. In the further course the armament, apart from the main armament, was changed several times.
Propulsion and crew
The propulsion power was 18,923 PSi , the range was 4800 nautical miles at 10 knots speed. A maximum of 1750 tons of coal could be carried, after the installation of the additional oil firing 1380 tons of coal and 180 tons of heating oil. The construction speed was 18.5 kn.
The crew strength was 35 officers and 708 men, whereby the crew was reinforced for special purposes (fleet or squadron flagship).
Commanders
| May 5 to July 1908 | Sea captain Franz von Holleben |
| July to September 1908 | Sea captain Friedrich Schultz |
| September 1908 to September 30, 1909 | Captain Reinhard Koch |
| October 1, 1909 to February 1911 | Sea captain Hugo Louran |
| February to October 1911 | Sea captain Hugo Langemak |
| October 4, 1911 to September 30, 1912 | Sea captain Carl Schaumann |
| October 1, 1912 to March 1915 | Sea captain Carl Hollweg |
| March to April 1915 | Corvette Captain Maximilian Becker (substitute) |
| April 1915 to September 1916 | Sea captain Friedrich Behncke |
| September 1916 to June 1917 | Sea captain Ernst Ewers |
| June to August 1917 | Corvette Captain Paul Globig (deputy) |
| August to October 1917 | Corvette Captain Günter Paschen |
| October to November 1917 | Captain Lieutenant of the Reserve Franz Wilde (deputy) |
| November 1917 to April 1918 | Corvette Captain / Frigate Captain Hans Pochhammer |
| April 1918 | Frigate Captain Max Lutter |
| April to May 1918 | Sea captain Gustav Luppe |
| May to September 1918 | Frigate Captain Otto Döhring |
| September to November 10, 1918 | Frigate Captain Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz |
| November 1918 | Lieutenant captain of the sea defense Heinrich Dau |
| November 1st to December 1st, 1918 | Lieutenant Captain Hermann Brunswik |
| March 1 to September 27, 1927 | Sea captain Werner Tillessen |
| September 28, 1927 to September 30, 1928 | Frigate captain / sea captain Alfred Saalwächter |
| October 1, 1928 to September 22, 1929 | Frigate captain / sea captain Max Bastian |
| September 23, 1929 to September 23, 1932 | Sea captain Kurt Assmann |
| October 1, 1932 to September 28, 1934 | Sea captain Wilhelm Canaris |
| September 27, 1934 to September 24, 1936 | Captain Heinrich Ancker |
| September 25, 1936 to September 29, 1937 | Sea captain Thilo von Seebach |
| October 1, 1937 to August 3, 1938 | Sea captain Friedrich-Wilhelm Fleischer |
| August 4, 1938 to April 4, 1939 | Sea captain Werner Lindenau |
| April 20 to November 16, 1939 | Sea captain Kurt Utke |
| November 17, 1939 to July 30, 1940 | Sea captain Günther Horstmann |
| July to August 1940 | Frigate Captain Arnold Oehrl |
| January to May 1941 | Frigate Captain Johannes Isenlar ( mdWdGb ) |
| May 1941 to October 1941 | Sea captain Werner Lindenau |
| January 15 to June 30, 1942 | Sea captain Ernst von Studnitz |
| June to September 1942 | Frigate Captain Walter Hauser (m. D. W. d. G. b.) |
| September 1942 to February 1943 | Sea captain Franz Frerichs |
| February to March 1943 | Corvette Captain d. Res.Oscar Brödermann (m. D. W. d. G. b.) |
| March to June 1943 | Corvette Captain Helmut von Oechelhaeuser (m. D. W. d. G. b.) |
| June 1943 to November 1944 | Sea captain Alfred Roegglen |
| November 1944 to May 4, 1945 | Sea captain Hans-Eberhard Busch |
Known crew members
- Walter Heck (1910–1987), was from 1969 to 1970 as Flotilla Admiral sub-department head in the command staff of the armed forces
- Heinz Kühnle (1915–2001) was the fourth inspector of the Navy from 1971 to 1975
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 , p. 44-46 .
- Hildebrand, Hans H. / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 7 : Ship biographies from Prussian eagle to Ulan . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen (licensed edition by Koehler's Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, approx. 1990).
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: Ship classes and ship types of the German Navy . tape 10 : The armored ships and ships of the line of the Brandenburg, Kaiser Friedrich III, Wittelsbach, Braunschweig and Germany classes . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 2001, ISBN 3-7637-6211-6 .
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ Letters from midshipman Dr. Curt Richter , eyewitness letters on the escape of Silesia under the command of Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz from Kiel,
- ^ A b Rolf Johannesson : Officer in a critical time. Herford and Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-8132-0301-8 , p. 17 ff.
- ^ Letters from midshipman Dr. Curt Richter. P. 11.
- ^ Wolfgang Harnack: The German Flottentorpedoboote from 1942 to 1945. Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn GmbH, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-8132-0825-7 , p. 197.
- ^ A b Hans Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships - biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Volume 7, p. 128.