SMS Strasbourg
 Drawing of the SMS Strasbourg
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The small cruiser SMS Straßburg was a warship of the Imperial German Navy . It was the third ship in the Magdeburg class .
Pre-war missions
After completion of the tests, the small cruiser Strasbourg came to the Association of Reconnaissance Ships on December 23, 1912 to replace the small cruiser Berlin . On January 6, 1913, there was a collision with the Danish freighter Christian IX in the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal . On February 23, the cruiser was operational again. From April 6 to September 23, 1913, the ship was assigned to the Mediterranean Division together with the small cruiser Dresden . Both ships reached La Valletta on April 13th . The Strasbourg then ran to Alexandrette and was in Constantinople in May. In April she accompanied the flagship of the Mediterranean Division, the battle cruiser Goeben , to Venice, Pola and Naples. Then she went once more to the Aegean Sea and Alexandrette, from where she marched back on September 9, 1913 and returned to Kiel on September 23, together with the Dresden .
On December 8, 1913, Strasbourg was assigned to the "Detached Division" under Rear Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz . Together with the ships of the line Kaiser and King Albert , she undertook a voyage to the South Atlantic from December 9th, via Togoland (December 29th to 31st), Cameroon (January 2nd to 15th, 1914, meeting with the gunboats Panther and Eber ), German South West Africa (January 21 to 28), via St. Helena to Brazil , Argentina , where they brought the squadron commander to Buenos Aires , while the liners stayed in Mar del Plata , Uruguay , around Cape Horn to Valparaíso ( April 3 to 11) in Chile and again in Brazil.
In Santos , the Strasbourg separated from the division and ran to reinforce the American station in the Caribbean. Since the Dresden stationed there was mainly busy with the situation in Mexico , it should deal with unrest in the Dominican Republic . She called at Puerto Plata on June 2 , where she found a ship of the line, an armored cruiser and a US Navy gunboat. It ensured that HAPAG steamers could take up cargo there again. After receiving care in Kingston (Jamaica) , she returned to Santo Domingo . On July 4th, she met the new station cruiser Karlsruhe at sea .
On July 20, 1914, she started her voyage home from Saint Thomas , anchored off Horta , Azores from July 27 to 28, and then ran at maximum speed and temporarily dimmed through the English Channel to Germany. On the British side, since it entered the Azores, there were suspicions that the cruiser could sail into the Mediterranean to reinforce the German Mediterranean Division. Exactly on the day of mobilization (August 1, 1914), Strasbourg returned to Wilhelmshaven driving alone. The liners had already returned home via Madeira on June 17, 1914.
First World War
At the beginning of the war, the Strasbourg was used in the North Sea in the outpost and security service. On August 28, 1914, she took part in the naval battle near Helgoland . She fought with the light cruisers Fearless and Arethusa and destroyers and eventually came across with the Cöln on the five British battlecruisers that she was able to escape. The ship received a hit and later helped rescue the crew of the small cruiser Ariadne . In November 1914 an advance to the British east coast followed. In the process, Strasbourg came into contact with the old British torpedo cannon boat Halcyon . From March 17, 1915, the ship undertook with the II reconnaissance group forays into the eastern Baltic Sea . In April, the Strasbourg was back in the North Sea. Between July 14 and October 18, the ship was in the shipyard, where the 10.5 cm guns were replaced by 15 cm cannons and two additional 50 cm torpedo tubes were built on deck. After the reconstruction, the Strasbourg took part with the II reconnaissance group in various advances and in the trade war in the North Sea.
On March 18, 1916, the II. AG was renamed the IV. Reconnaissance Group and their ships moved to the Baltic Sea. Mine operations, some as far as the Gulf of Finland , followed. In the autumn of 1917, Strasbourg took part in the occupation of the Baltic Islands ( Operation Albion or Battle of Moon Sound ). On January 10, 1918, the ship returned to the North Sea.
The last advance of the German deep sea fleet took place from April 23rd to 25th. On the 24th, at 6:10 a.m., the battle cruiser Moltke suffered turbine damage . The ship remained motionless. The Strasbourg was the first ship to arrive at the damaged ship. A tow attempt began at 10:38, but the tow line broke after a short time. Shortly afterwards most of the fleet had reached the scene of the accident and the Oldenburg liner was able to tow the Moltke . The Strasbourg initially secured the towing train until other security units arrived.
In May and June, Strasbourg participated in mining companies. In August 1918 she was assigned to the Schlussstein company with the IV reconnaissance group and arrived in Libau on August 18 with the sister ship Stralsund . She was then used in the Gulf of Finland between Helsinki and Tallinn and returned to the North Sea on October 1st. In November she moved to Sønderborg , then Saßnitz (November 11th) and finally to Stettin , where she was disarmed.
post war period
Towards the end of the war, the Strasbourg was in Kiel. In Stettin the ship was disarmed and the crew reduced. On March 24, 1919, the cruiser - now again with a full crew - became the lead ship of the minesweeping associations of the Baltic Sea and a year later even the flagship of the 2nd Admiral of the Baltic Sea Forces. On June 4, 1920, the small cruiser Strasbourg was finally decommissioned and delivered to France as the ship O on July 20, 1920 . In Cherbourg , the ship was finally handed over to the Italian Navy , which put it back into service under the name Taranto in 1925.
In May 1926 she became the flagship of the Italian units in East Africa and put 120 seamen ashore to fight against insurgents at Bender Kassim , Somalia. Since then, she has had an aircraft on board. From 1927 onwards it was used again in the Mediterranean in various functions, sometimes as an escort ship for smaller units. From May 1935 the Taranto was overhauled in La Spezia and reassigned to the Eritrea / Somalia station from September 5, 1935 to August 28, 1936.
The ship was then converted. Two boilers were expanded, the engine power was reduced to 13,000 hp and the top speed was reduced to 21 knots. In the summer of 1938 the Taranto came back into service, but did not go to East Africa, but remained in the Adriatic.
Second World War
During the Second World War she was deployed eleven times, six of them as a mine-layer. In October 1940, the Taranto was assigned to the Forza Navale Speciale in Taranto , which was to carry out the planned but then canceled landing on Corfu when the Italian attack on Greece was imminent .
When Italy turned to the Allies on September 9, 1943, the crew sank the ship in the port of La Spezia , where it had now been in reserve. The Germans lifted the ship again, but it was sunk again on October 23, 1943 by aerial bombs. After another uplift, the former Strasbourg was finally destroyed in an air raid on September 23, 1944.
Commanders
| October 1 to December 7, 1912 | Frigate Captain Wilhelm Tägert |
| December 1912 to November 1913 | Frigate Captain Wilhelm Paschen |
| November 26, 1913 to December 14, 1915 | Frigate captain / sea captain Heinrich Retzmann |
| December 1915 to September 1917 | Frigate Captain Hans Carl von Schlick |
| September to November 1917 | Frigate Captain Hans Quaet-Faslem |
| November 1917 | Frigate Captain Hans Carl von Schlick |
| November 1917 to May 1918 | Frigate Captain Paul Reichhardt |
| May to December 1918 | Frigate Captain Fritz Müller-Palm |
| March 1919 | Captain Botho Schepke |
| March to April 1919 | Frigate Captain Max Hagedorn |
| April 1919 to June 1920 | Corvette Captain Waldemar Kophamel |
literature
- 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.
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: Small cruisers 1903-1918, Bremen to Cöln class. Volume 12 Ship classes and ship types of the German Navy, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7637-6252-3 .
Footnotes
- ↑ The towline only broke again towards evening. While being towed, the Moltke succeeded in gradually getting the engines going again and on the following day at around 5:40 pm to throw off the tow lines and to run over 12 knots on its own. Two hours later they were torpedoed by a British submarine. She could only drive at the lowest speed, soon arriving tugs brought the battle cruiser to Wilhelmshaven by April 26, 8:56 a.m.