SMS Stralsund
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The small cruiser SMS Stralsund was a warship of the Imperial Navy .
Delivered to France after the First World War , she served as Mulhouse in the French Navy from 1922 to 1933 .
description
The official drafts for the Stralsund as well as for the three other small cruisers of the Magdeburg class ( Magdeburg , Breslau , Strasbourg ) were made by the secret naval construction officer Dr. Ing.Hans Bürkner developed. In contrast to the previous designs, the ships received a side armor with a thickness of 60 mm, which covered 80% of their length. The ramming bow that had been common up until then was no longer necessary. In its place there was a so-called cruiser bow with a straight stem , the shape of which was significantly steeper above the waterline than below.
The four ships of the Magdeburg class had mine throwing devices. Their main armament consisted of 10.5 cm quick-loading cannons. Comparable British ships were partly equipped with a caliber of 15.2 cm - but were slower. On the German side, preference was given to the higher rate of fire of the smaller guns. It was not until the First World War that it was converted to the 15 cm caliber.
history
The light cruiser Stralsund ran on October 4, 1911 at the shipyard AG Weser in Bremen from the stack . The north German Hanseatic city of Stralsund is considered the "cradle" of the Prussian Navy . The naming was a tribute to this fact.
The Lord Mayor of Stralsund , Ernst August Friedrich Gronow , said in his baptismal address: “ Stralsund's citizens will always accompany this proud ship with best wishes on all its journeys, be it paths of peace or struggle - we hope for peace, after all, every new ship means the German Reichsmarine another guarantee for the maintenance of the peace. "
On December 10, 1912, the small cruiser was put into service. During the test drives it reached a remarkable speed of 28,277 knots. Like the built at the same shipyard type ship Magdeburg they had three set Bergmann turbines. On February 15, 1913, the Stralsund was assigned to the Association of Reconnaissance Ships.
War effort
At the beginning of the First World War , the ship belonged to the II reconnaissance group. On August 17, 1914, the ship's first war mission began . Together with the sister ship Strasbourg , as well as the submarines U 19 and U 24 , it made an advance into the Hoofden (southern North Sea ). There was an exchange of fire with British destroyers . On August 28, 1914, the ship took part in the sea battle near Helgoland . With the Danzig she ran from the Jade as support to the battlefield. There were fights with three British cruisers, and she received one hit. Then the Stralsund was able to save 59 sailors from the small cruiser Ariadne , which was set on fire and sinking . A tow attempt that was still being attempted failed.
On September 20, 1914, the Stralsund moved to the Baltic Sea, where it took part in an advance between the island of Gotland and the Gulf of Riga until September 26 . Soon afterwards the ship returned to Wilhelmshaven . During the first advance of the 1st and 2nd reconnaissance groups to Great Yarmouth with the battle cruisers Seydlitz , Von der Tann , Moltke , the armored cruiser Blücher and the small cruisers Strasbourg , Graudenz and Kolberg to the east coast of England on November 3, 1914, the Stralsund mined , secured by the Kolberg , the gateway to Great Yarmouth. Several reconnaissance trips off Heligoland followed . On the second advance on December 16, 1914, the ship initially accompanied the I. Reconnaissance Group on the approach to bombard Hartlepool, Scarborough and Whitby , but was released early with Strasbourg and Graudenz in very bad weather.
Stralsund was also involved in the third fleet operation (January 23 and 24, 1915) . This led to the battle on the Dogger Bank , which they survived without losses. On May 17, 1915, a mining operation off the east coast of England followed together with the small cruisers Pillau , Rostock , Strasbourg and Regensburg .
In the summer, the Stralsund moved with other parts of the deep sea fleet (1st Squadron, 1st / 2nd Reconnaissance Group) to the Baltic Sea to support the land offensive in the Baltic States. Back in the North Sea, the Stralsund tried , together with other small cruisers and the III. Torpedo boat flotilla to wage a trade war in the North Sea at the turn of the year 1915/1916. Subsequently, the ship was released from the II reconnaissance group because of a long stay at the Imperial Shipyard in Kiel . During this shipyard overhaul from February 21 to June 17, 1916, the forecastle deck was extended ten meters back towards the center of the ship in order to create a higher position for the new 15 cm cannons, which replaced 10.5 cm guns. Furthermore, 50 cm torpedo tubes were installed on the middle deck, while the tubes of the same caliber that had previously been under the waterline were removed.
During this time the Battle of the Skagerrak took place, as a result of which the German Navy restricted its area of operation in the North Sea. So after her return to service on July 6, 1916, the Stralsund's operations were limited to smaller operations. On September 12, 1916, an aircraft was stationed on board for aerial reconnaissance. On 4th / 5th November of this year followed an advance to the Danish west coast to provide assistance to the U 20 and U 30 submarines that ran aground there . On December 2, 1916 was Stralsund IV. Reconnaissance group allocated where they temporarily as flagship conducted, mining companies as well as outposts and security services.
Between August 7 and October 15, 1917, the shipyard was idle at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel, among other things because of massive turbine damage. In October 1917, Stralsund took part in the occupation of the Baltic Islands . Then she returned to the North Sea. There she received a mine hit on February 2, 1918, but was able to drive to Wilhelmshaven on her own . After the restoration, she was deployed from May to June 1918 in the Baltic Sea , where according to the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk there should be a ceasefire. There she served the Commander in Chief of the Baltic Waters, Rear Admiral Ludolf von Uslar , at times as a flagship.
In the summer of 1918, the planning staff of the joint German-Soviet company "Keystone" set up on the Stralsund . The aim was to drive out the British who had landed in Murmansk . However, this company was given up in September 1918.
In November 1918 the small cruiser lay in front of Reval and was asked by the soldiers' council there to lower the naval flag . After the threat of fire, the commander had the trade flag set. The ship secretly left Reval early on November 12, 1918 and ran via Libau and Swinoujscie to Kiel , where it arrived on November 14, 1918. The crew was dismissed here and the ship was decommissioned on December 17, 1918.
In French service
It was assigned to the French Navy as a reparation payment. There it was in service from August 3, 1920 to February 15, 1933 under the name Mulhouse . From the summer of 1922 she was assigned to the 3rd division of light cruisers of the Mediterranean fleet, which also received two other cruisers of German origin, the Metz (originally Königsberg ) and the Strasbourg (ex Regensburg ). In 1922/23 she took part in the mission in Turkey and in 1925 in missions off the Moroccan coast. The division was in December 1926 in "2. Division ”and transferred to the Atlantic fleet in Brest in August 1928 . While the division's two other former German cruisers went into reserve in 1929, the Mulhouse remained in service until 1933.
Although the former Stralsund was removed from the list of warships and sold for demolition, the Germans found the old cruiser in Brest in 1940 and then towed it to Lorient to use it as a barge during the construction of the submarine bunker . It was then sunk to prevent torpedo attacks against the gates and to serve as a fixed point for a safety net. The last French cruiser Strasbourg , which was also found by the Germans, suffered the same fate .
Memorabilia
The Stralsund 's ship's bell was made available in 1945 by a British officer to a pastor in Raisdorf for the local chapel for refugees from Silesia . After the construction of a new church in Raisdorf, the former Stralsund crew handed this bell over to the Naval Memorial in Laboe , which it lent to the Danish Navy Museum in Stralsund after 1990 . The last survivor of the crew, W. Roger, also presented the Stralsund flag to this naval museum on Stralsund's Dänholm .
Ship bell of the small cruiser Stralsund
Model of the Stralsund
Cutter coat of arms of the Stralsund
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Commanders
| December 1912 to January 1913 | Frigate Captain Magnus von Levetzow |
| January 1913 to July 1915 | Frigate captain / sea captain Viktor Harder |
| July 1915 to June 1916 | Frigate Captain / Sea Captain Karl Less |
| June 3 to September 2, 1916 | Sea captain Hans Gygas |
| September 1916 to April 1918 | Frigate Captain Otto Hillebrand |
| April to December 1918 | Frigate Captain Hermann Bendemann |
Known crew members
- Bernhard Rogge (1899–1982), was from 1957 to 1962 as Rear Admiral in command of Defense Area I.
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,
Web links
- Technical data and a brief history of SMS Stralsund at www.deutsche-schutzgebiete.de
- Magdeburg class on worldwar1.co.uk (English)
- Magdeburg class on historyofwar.org (English)
- Magdeburg -class with many pictures on battleships-cruisers.co.uk (English)
- Pictures of the former German cruisers in French service
- Cruiser Mulhouse