Sesia class
The Sesia class was a class of four seaworthy landing ships of the Italian Navy ( Regia Marina ) , which were officially designated as water tankers ( motocisterne per acqua (MC) ) for reasons of military secrecy . Since the Sesia carried out a number of landing exercises near Massaua in the Red Sea in 1937 , Jane's Fighting Ships correctly classified the ships as landing ships as early as 1937 and the French Revue Maritime in 1939.
Construction history and technical data
The class consisted of the type ship Sesia , the Garigliano and the Scrivia and Tirso, built three years later . The ships were built between 1933 and 1937 and were all named after rivers. The design was based on that of the Adige built in 1927/29 , the defects of which - bow flap too narrow for vehicles, engine too weak to get away from the beach after a landing - were eliminated on the new ships. They were about a third longer and heavier than the Adige .
The Sesia and the Garigliano were laid down in the spring of 1933 and put into service in 1934. The Tirso and the Scrivia followed three years later: the Tirso put into service on August 17, and the Scrivia on October 18, 1937. The ships were 65–66 m long and 10.05 m wide. Her draft was a maximum of 4.2 m at the stern and 0.5 m at the bow. The water displacement was around 1000 tons , about 1450 tons maximum. Two diesel engines of 300 to 315 hp each allowed a top speed of 10.5 knots . The range was 5,000 nautical miles at 6 knots cruising speed, 4000 nautical miles at 8 knots or 2700 nautical miles at 10 knots. The ships were armed with four 13.2 mm machine guns. In 1938/39 the armament was changed and now consisted of two 20 mm machine guns L / 65 and three 8 mm machine guns. Up to 118 mines could be picked up during mine operations . They could each carry more than 1000 troops or wheeled vehicles and light tanks and land via a 2.7 m wide and 13 m long, electrically operated bow ramp . On flat beaches, the bow rudder halfway under the fore ship could be retracted. In the stern there was a ballast tank that could be flooded to reduce the draft at the bow even further if necessary.
Mission history
The Sesia and the Garigliano were already used in the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936) in the Red Sea. In April 1939, all four ships took part in the Italian invasion of Albania . On June 10, 1940, when Italy entered the war and invaded southern France , the Scrivia was in Pula and the other three in Taranto . The Sesia , the Garigliano and the Tirso then moved to Valona in southern Albania in order to carry out a planned landing of troops on Corfu during the attack on Greece at the end of October 1940 with the so-called Forza Navale Speciale , which had to be canceled due to bad weather. In August 1941 the four ships were moved to Livorno to be ready for a planned invasion of Corsica . For this purpose, they were equipped with an assemblable army pontoon bridge of 70 m length, which was supposed to cross sandbanks in front of the beach and which could be ready for use within 19 minutes of touching the ground. In the early summer of 1942 they were made available for the German-Italian landing on Malta ( company Herkules or "Operazione C3") , which was planned but not carried out in July . The ships were then used on November 11, 1942 for the landing in Corsica , and then also for the transfer of Italian troops to Tunisia, which began shortly thereafter .
Whereabouts
- The Sesia survived the war and was in service with the Italian Navy with the registration A 5375 until June 1, 1972.
- The Garigliano was taken into possession by German troops on September 13, 1943 and put into service by the Navy on November 25, 1943 as a mine ship under the name Dwarsläufer . In February 1944 the ship was renamed Oldenburg . On April 25, 1945, it was self-sunk in Genoa by its crew . In 1946 the ship was lifted and put back into service by the Italian Navy under its old name Garigliano . It was decommissioned on April 1, 1952 and then scrapped.
- The Scrivia was sunk by its crew on September 9, 1943 in La Spezia so as not to fall into German hands.
- The Tirso served in the Italian Navy until December 21, 1948, then was given to France as a reparation payment and sailed there under the name Herault until the late 1950s.
Notes and individual references
Web links
literature
- Enrico Cernuschi: Source cinque navi segrete e incomprese. Rivista Italiana Difesa (RID), December 1993 (ital.)
- Erminio Bagnasco, Enrico Cernuschi: Le navi da guerra italiane 1940-1945 / Italian Warships of World War Two. Ermanno Albertelli Editore, Parma 2003, ISBN 88-87372-40-3 . (Italian & English)
- Mariano Gabriele: Operazione C3: Malta. Ufficio storico della marina (USMM), Rome 1990. (Ital.)
- Vincent P. O'Hara, Enrico Cernuschi: Dark Navy: The Italian Regia Marina and the Armistice of 8 September 1943. Nimble Books, Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA) 2009, ISBN 978-1-934840-91-7 . (engl.)
- Karl von Kutzleben, Wilhelm Schroeder, Jochen Brennecke: Mine ships 1939–1945. The mysterious missions of the “midnight squadron”. Köhler, Herford 1974, ISBN 3-7822-0098-5 .