Warmia (ship, 1922)
The Warmia
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The Ermland of the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag) was the fourth new building for the participation of the shipping company in an East Asia joint service with British shipping companies and North German Lloyd . The first four ships in the Havelland class were almost entirely motorized cargo ships with a small passenger facility for 18 passengers.
In contrast to the first two ships, the Ermland and her sister ship Rheinland were equipped with low-speed diesel engines without a gearbox. Commissioned in September 1922, Warmia remained in the East Asian service until 1939 and was in Kaohsiung , Formosa , when the war began .
She was sent from Japan to Europe as the first blockade breaker at the end of December 1940 and reached Bordeaux in April 1941 . On the way she met with the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer , among others .
Renamed Weserland , it returned to Japan in autumn 1942. Her last voyage began on October 26, 1943 in Yokohama and ended on January 2, 1944 in the South Atlantic at position
17 ° 0 ′ 0 ″ S , 21 ° 0 ′ 0 ″ W between Ascension and the Brazilian coast, where she was sunk by the US destroyer USS Somers .
Building history
The Ermland was Hapag's fourth new building for participation in an East Asia joint service with the British shipping companies Alfred Holt & Co. and Ellerman & Bucknall , who had offered the German shipping companies Hapag and Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) an operating partnership, which they accepted in 1921 . Hapag wanted to operate the route as the two British shipping companies primarily as a freight line and the motor ships commissioned from Blohm & Voss therefore only had space for up to 18 passengers.
Hapag's first ship in this joint service was the Havelland , the type ship of the newbuildings, which was deployed in December 1921. She and the second ship in the series, the Münsterland , were powered by still existing submarine diesels, the high speed of which was reduced by a gearbox that had been developed by the Blohm & Voss director Hermann Frahm .
The Ermland , named after the Prussian landscape of Ermland , and her sister ship the Rhineland , formed the second group of newbuildings in which the slow-running 6-cylinder diesel engines of the Burmeister & Wain design built by Blohm & Voss were tested, which acted directly on the two waves . The Ermland was launched on February 18, 1922 as the last ship of the original order nine months after the first ship and was delivered on August 29, 1922 one year after the type ship.
The class was completed by two more ships ( Saarland , Vogtland ) in 1924, which received an additional deck and could then take 49 passengers on board. The Vogtland was again equipped with the drive concept of the first ships, while the Saarland was driven by a geared turbine for comparison purposes .
Last missions as Warmia
The Warmia remained primarily in service on the East Asia route until 1939. Her last peace voyage took her from Houston to Manila , where she arrived on August 26, 1939. The captain decided to leave the port immediately because of the tense political situation and on the 31st he entered Takao (now Kaohsiung), Formosa, where the ship stayed for the next 11 months. She still had 706 t of fuel on board, enough for 53 days at sea and over 12,000 nm. From July 28 to August 5, 1940, the Ermland then drove to Kobe to take on tasks in the stage.
Without any cargo, the Ermland left Kobe under Captain F. Krage on December 28, 1940 to take prisoners from German auxiliary cruisers . She first met the auxiliary cruiser Orion and the prize tanker Ole Jacob on January 5, 1941 at the Lamotrek atoll on the Marshall Islands . After taking over the 183 prisoners remaining on the Orion (including 32 Norwegians from the Ringwood ), the Ermland , disguised as the Russian Tbilisi from Vladivostok , continued her solo voyage towards home through the Pacific and around Cape Horn on January 9th . On February 23, she sighted a large ship moving alone, probably a troop transport.
At the supply point “Andalusia”, the Warmia replenished its supplies from the Nordmark utility under Captain Grau and took over 148 more prisoners from the ships deployed in the South Atlantic. 56 came from the cruiser Admiral Scheer , whom she met a little later in the mid-Atlantic. On April 3, 1941, the Warmia arrived in Bordeaux as the first blockade breaker from Japan.
More missions than Weserland
Because of the risk of confusion with the marine supplier of the same name, the Warmia was renamed Weserland after this trip and armed with a 10.5 cm gun and four 2 cm anti-aircraft machine guns. The Weserland attempted to leave the port on August 17, 1942 with a general cargo for Japan . She was attacked by British planes near Cape Ortegal and ran into the shelter of Spanish coastal waters on the 20th. From there she returned to Bordeaux. On September 18, Captain Krage managed to break out from Bordeaux to Yokohama. This time the ship was discovered and attacked by a Short Sunderland further away from the Spanish coast . The flying boat was shot down. Two men of the crew could be saved. Both survived, although one was severely burned and the other had a leg amputated. On December 1, 1942, the Weserland reached Japan, although she had sighted six foreign ships on the way.
The Weserland began its first return journey on January 5, 1943 from Yokohama. The voyage was canceled and the ship returned to Japan via Batavia . It was not until October 26, 1943 that the Weserland finally started its return journey, on which 35 Italian submarine drivers were on board on their journey home from Singapore .
On New Year's Day 1944, the reconnaissance squadron stationed on Ascension began their routine flights with their Consolidated PB4Y -1 Liberators. After a flight of more than six hours, the second machine discovered a ship on an ONO course at 10 knots at around 2 p.m. It posed as the Glenbank (which was en route to Montevideo from Cape Town). The insecure Americans fired some 12.7 mm machine gun shots, whereupon the Weserland shot back and hit exactly. The plane landed on Ascension at 6.45 pm with one injured person. To clear the ship, a machine was set in motion and the destroyer USS Somers (Cdr. EC Hughes) was set in motion. At 8:35 pm the search engine sighted the alleged Glenbank , which was now 70 nautical miles southeast of the previous position. The plane returned to Ascension and landed at 3:30 a.m. on January 2nd. The machine started again at 9.30 a.m. and found the suspicious ship. When the machine made its report, the Weserland again opened very precise fire at 17.25 and damaged the Liberator “Baker 12”. At 6.30 p.m., three more machines were at the Weserland and the damaged machine was able to take the 600 nm return flight, which ended at 9.47 p.m. after constant loss of altitude on the water surface.
At 22.00, the sighted Somers the Weserland in 12 nm distance that was illuminated by the aircraft. The Somers finally opened fire at a distance of 4 nm and the Weserland sank at 00:30 on January 3, 1944. Five men died, the 134 survivors were taken on board by the Somers .
The strong and very thorough surveillance can be traced back to ultra-decryption results, which led to the loss of the blockade breakers Rio Grande and Burgenland by January 6, 1944 . On January 2nd alone, four lone drivers were discovered and checked.
Fate of the sister ships
Launched in service |
Surname | tonnage | Construction no | fate |
05/12/1921 08/30/1921 |
Havelland | 6334 BRT 9660 tdw |
No. 461 | Motor ship powered by two submarine diesel engines via gears, maiden voyage from Hamburg to East Asia on September 10, 1921, handed over to the Japanese Navy in 1944 / Tatsumi Maru , stranded in Kobe in September 1945 and canceled in 1946 |
August 13, 1921 January 23, 1922 |
Münsterland | 6408 BRT 9760 tdw |
No. 462 | Drive as before, February 2, 1922 maiden voyage from Hamburg to East Asia, January to May 1942 as a blockade breaker from Japan to Bordeaux, January 10, 1944 sunk by British artillery off Calais when attempting to lay through the canal , 59 dead |
October 1, 1921 March 25, 1922 |
Rhineland | 6552 BRT 9900 dw |
No. 414 | Motor ship powered by diesel engines that act directly on the waves, April 19, 1922 Maiden voyage from Hamburg to East Asia, June 16, 1926 sunk after colliding with a Japanese freighter on the Yangtze River near Hankau , |
10/20/1923 02/02/1924 |
Saarland | 6863 BRT 9468 dw |
No. 460 | Drive by a steam geared turbine, February 23, 1924 maiden voyage from Hamburg to East Asia, from January 1934 also deployment from Hamburg to the west coast of South America (Kosmos service), in September 1939 refuge in Dairen, September 30, 1940 sold to Japan / Teiyo Maru Sunk by US aircraft on March 2, 1943 |
May 3, 1924 August 23, 1924 |
Vogtland | 7106 BRT 9800 tdw |
No. 401 | Motor ship powered by two submarine diesel engines via gears, September 21, 1924 maiden voyage from Hamburg to East Asia, from March 1934 deployment from Hamburg to the west coast of South America (Kosmos service), converted to diesel-electric propulsion by Blohm & Voss in 1938, from February 1939 Used again in East Asia, in September 1939 refuge in Batavia, confiscated in May 1940 and used as a Berakit under the Dutch flag, sunk in the Pacific by a Japanese submarine on May 7, 1943 |
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The History of German Passenger Shipping Volume IV Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 21
- Hans Georg Prager: Blohm & Voss Koehler Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977, ISBN 3-78220-127-2 .
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1919 to 1985 . Steiger Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-921564-97-2 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Kludas, Vol. IV, p. 160
- ↑ a b c d e f g Kludas, Vol. IV, p. 162
- ↑ Kludas, Vol. IV, pp. 164f.
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↑ Paul Vois, a French prisoner, wrote “A thousand islands and none for us” about the voyage.
The higher numbers in some books overlook the prisoners taken in the Atlantic and that the Orion in Emirau also dropped women and "natives" - ↑ Central Atlantic between March 8-16, 1941
- ↑ Information varies in all sources, Erich Gröner, Die deutschen Kriegsschiffe 1815-1945, Volume 4, gives four 2 cm MK and four MG from October 1941
- ↑ Jochen Brennecke, Black Ships - Wide Sea
- ↑ sinking of the Münsterland
- ↑ Rothe, p. 97