Save (ship)
 The Krossfonn when it was completed in Odense in 1935
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The Spichern was a former Norwegian motor tanker that was captured by the German Navy in World War II and then used as a supply tanker or auxiliary ship .
Construction and technical data
The ship was on 16 May 1935 on the Danish shipyard Odense Steel Shipyard in Odense with the hull number 56 from the stack and was in August 1935 under the name Krossfonn by the Norwegian shipping company Skibs A / S Dalfonn (Manager: Sigval Bergesen) in Stavanger in Service provided.
The ship was 146.46 m long and 19.81 m wide and had a maximum draft of 10.85 m . It was measured with 9,323 GRT and 5,550 NRT and had a carrying capacity of 14,225 dwt . The engine system consisted of two 7-cylinder four-stroke marine diesel engines from Burmeister & Wain in Copenhagen , had an output of 4700 hp and enabled a speed of 12.5 knots .
history
Norwegian Krossfonn
The Krossfonn chartered between oil ports in the Middle East , the Caribbean or Ecuador and Western Europe. The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 did nothing to change this. When the Wehrmacht occupied Norway on April 9, 1940 in the so-called Operation Weser Exercise , the ship, under Captain Simon Svendsen, was on its way from Port-de-Bouc near Marseille to Galveston (Texas) , where it was supposed to go into dry dock . off the coast of Florida and instead ran after receiving the invasion report to the British port of Kingston in Jamaica , which was reached on April 14, to await further instructions. With the formation of the Norwegian war shipping company Nortraship on April 22nd , the Krossfonn , like all Norwegian ships that did not fall into German hands, came under their management. She went on April 24th from Kingston to Galveston, which she reached on April 29th, was overtaken there as planned, left again on May 13th to load in Houston and then called at Bermuda on May 21st . On May 23, she joined the Bermuda contingent of the North Atlantic Convoy "HX 45", and on June 7, she reached Brest . From there she ran first to Saint-Nazaire and then to Donges to unload her cargo of crude oil at the local oil refinery .
The Krossfonn left Donges on June 12th and ran on June 13th with the convoy "50.BF" from Brest to Casablanca , which was reached on June 17th. On June 19, she left Casablanca alone and in ballast to go to Fort-de-France in Martinique . However, she no longer achieved this goal. On June 26th, it was raised in the western mid-Atlantic at about position 21 ° 33 ′ N , 45 ° 0 ′ W by the German auxiliary cruiser Widder , taken as a prize and then successfully sent as the first prize to France , which was now occupied by the Wehrmacht . She reached Lorient on July 7, 1940 .
German memories
The ship was put into service by the Navy on September 18, 1940 under the name Spichern . It was used as a so-called auxiliary ship to supply German naval bases on the French Atlantic coast and, as far as initially possible, German ships operating in the North Atlantic. The latter was rarely the case , however, in view of the Allies' increasingly oppressive air superiority . The best-known use of the Spichern was the supply, under their merchant ship captain Otto Kölschbach on 25/26. May 1941 in the North Atlantic, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen during the Rhine exercise operation , two days after Admiral Lütjens dismissed the cruiser on the Bismarck for an independent trade war . Within 13.5 hours, 2,915 m³ of heating oil were pumped over to the Prinz Eugen . Then the Spichern managed to return to western France on June 15.
The third and last attempt by the Spichern to get into the North Atlantic to supply German submarines at war, began on November 9, 1942 and ended just two days later. British air scouts discovered the tanker, which was secured by the four torpedo boats T 13 , T 19 , T 22 and Falke while sailing through the Bay of Biscay. On November 11, when the security forces were already on their way home, it was attacked by bombers and badly damaged. The ship then had to break off the voyage and call at El Ferrol in neutral Spain . After emergency repairs there, the Spichern managed to return to Brest from January 10th to 15th, 1943.
There she was in an air raid of the RAF Bomber Command again severely damaged on August 9, 1944, and then on August 31 as a block ship scuttled .
post war period
Norwegian Ringfjell
The wreck was lifted in two parts in 1947, sold to Ringdals Rederi A / S (Manager: Olav Ringdal) in Oslo in February 1948 , and the two sections were towed to Kiel , where the ship was welded back together and repaired at the Howaldtswerke . In May 1949 it was measured again with 9640 GRT and 5509 NRT and with 14,375 tdw load capacity under the new name Ringfjell .
On September 3, 1952, there was an almost catastrophic fire in Sydney Harbor when petroleum spilled from the tanker was ignited by the sparks of a welding torch and in a matter of seconds the fire enveloped the 800 m stretch in White Bay from the welding torch to the ship Endangered not only the Ringfjell , but also several corvettes of the Australian Navy, three coastal freighters and the Atlantic Co. oil depot. The flames hit 60 m high, but were brought under control after about 15 minutes.
In 1955 the ship was converted into a bulk carrier at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard in Grand-Quevilly near Rouen . It was then measured with 9789 GRT, 5000 NRT and 14,000 tdw load capacity.
Norwegian Ringsaker
At the end of 1960 there was another sale, this time to Sameiet Ringsaker (Manager: Elisabeth Bruun & Co.) in Tønsberg , Norway, and the company was renamed Ringsaker . In October 1962, the ship was chartered to Norsk Hydro , which used it as a storage ship in the Frierfjord near Porsgrunn .
The ship was sold for demolition in February 1964 and scrapped at Eckhardt & Co. in Bremen from March 1964 .
Footnotes
- ↑ http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/hx/index.html
- ↑ http://warsailors.com/convoys/hx45.html
- ↑ http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/misc/index.html?yy.php?convoy=@.50.BF!~miscmain
- ↑ Named after the Battle of Spichern on August 6, 1870 in the Franco-German War .
- ↑ Commander of the security west: top issue "Elm": departure of the auxiliary supply ship "Spichern" (29 Aug. 1942 - 13 Jan 1943)
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/42-11.htm
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/43-01.htm#0101-0702
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/44-08.htm#0101-0702
- ↑ Townsville Daily Bulletin , Friday September 5, 1952, p. 1: Disastrous Port Fire Averted
- ↑ This shipyard was founded in 1893 as Chantiers de Normandie and bought in 1901 by Chantiers de Sant-Nazaire-Penhöet.
- ↑ Sameiet = corresponds roughly to a community of hands .
