Sneland I
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The Sneland I ( German "Schneeland Eins " ) was a Norwegian steamship ( prefix DS for Norwegian dampskip ), which was available to the Allies as a freighter for the Norwegian merchant fleet Nortraship during the Second World War and performed vital services. It was sunk on the last day of the war in the Firth of Forth by the torpedo of a German submarine .
fate
The ship was launched in May 1922 at the German shipyard Nüscke & Co. in Stettin-Grabow from the stack passed in September to the shipping company. It was initially baptized with the name Ingeborg and drove for three years for Stettiner Reederei Stange & Dreyer GmbH before it was bought by the Norwegian shipping company Richard Amlie & Sverre Amlie (Amlie & Amlie) in Haugesund in 1925 . There it got its new name Sneland I .
After under the code name " operation weserübung " in April 1940 by the German Wehrmacht perpetrated attack on Norway , the ship was put under allied protection and completed several hundred rides mainly on the North Atlantic . This included the dramatic journey with the convoy SC 7 (SC stands for Slow Convoy , German "slow convoy" ), which ran from Sydney ( Nova Scotia ) in Canada in the direction of Liverpool in October 1940 . The convoy was attacked by a pack of German submarines from October 16 to 19 . He suffered heavy losses in the process; twenty of its 35 ships were sunk. The Sneland I , loaded with sulfur , escaped and happily reached the port of Greenock on the west coast of Scotland on October 22nd . In addition, the ship completed trips across the Mediterranean and even in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean (see also: scan of the original trip list under web links ).
On May 7, 1945, the day of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht , Sneland I was part of the British convoy EN 491 under the command of Captain Johannes Lægland . He left on the same day from the port of Methil (picture) , a small Scottish town in the Council Area Fife south of the confluence of the Leven in the Firth of Forth. In addition to the Sneland I , the convoy also included four other merchant ships, namely the British freighters Avondale Park and Weybank and the Norwegian ships Rolf Jarl and Selvik . In view of the imminent end of the war, the convoy drove without escort. His destination was Belfast .
In the late evening of the day the convoy was sighted by the German submarine U 2336 near the Isle of May at the exit of the Firth of Forth (map) . This was a relatively small, but at the time ultra-modern submarine of the Type XXIII with a crew of only 14 men and an armament of only two torpedoes. The commander , Lieutenant (KptLt.) Emil Klusmeier (1912-1982), was to 22:30 each one torpedo at the Avondale Park (2878 BRT ) and the Sneland I fire. The first torpedo hit Avondale Park and sank it ( 56 ° 5 ′ N , 2 ° 32 ′ W ). Two sailors died while 32 were able to save themselves.
The Sneland I changed course, but only a few minutes later, between about 10:40 p.m. and 10:45 p.m., she too was hit on the starboard side and sank within only two minutes ( 56 ° 10 ′ N , 2 ° 31 ′ W ) .
The first and third officer tried together, the port - lifeboat to allow water, but the Sneland I capsized too quickly to starboard and ripped the team overboard. Of the 29 men, 22 were rescued from the sea through the Valse (T-151). Seven crew members, including the captain, were killed.
These were the last ever sinkings caused by a German submarine in World War II.
literature
- Eberhard Rössler : submarine type XXIII. 2nd, expanded edition. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 2002, ISBN 3-7637-6236-1 , pp. 109-112.
- Eberhard Rössler: From the original to the model. Submarine type XXIII. A picture and plan documentation. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1993, pp. 37-38, ISBN 3-7637-6007-5 .
Web links
- More information about the Sneland I
- Photo accessed April 17, 2018.
- Dates , accessed April 17, 2018.
- Crew list , accessed April 17, 2018.
- Report on Destiny , accessed April 17, 2018.
- Scan of the original list of their trips (from the Norwegian National Archives Riksarkivet )
Individual evidence
- ↑ D / S Sneland I (Nortraship) (Norwegian), accessed on 17 April 2018th
- ↑ Report on the Sneland I (English), accessed on April 17, 2018.
- ↑ D / S Sneland I (Nortraship) (Norwegian), accessed on 17 April 2018th
- ^ Arnold Hague Convoy Database, Convoy SC 7 (English), accessed April 17, 2018.
- ↑ Page 1 of the trip list (English), accessed on April 17, 2018.
- ↑ page 9 of the trip list (English), accessed on April 17, 2018.
- ↑ Report on the Sneland I (English), accessed on April 17, 2018.
- ^ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Maritime War 1939–1945, May 1945 , accessed on April 17, 2018.
Map with all coordinates: 
