Surcouf (NN 3)
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The submarine cruiser Surcouf (NN 3) (named after the French privateer captain Robert Surcouf ) was the largest submarine in the French Navy during World War II and the largest submarine in the world until the Sen Toku class of the Imperial Japanese Navy was introduced .
Constructive features
The submarine was a conventional two-hull boat design with Sulzer diesel engines for surface travel and electric motors for submersible travel. The hull was designed for diving depths of up to 80 m. The alarm dive time of the U-cruiser was very long at two minutes. Nevertheless, the Surcouf was considered fast and agile for its size.
A special feature of the design was the ability to carry an aircraft on board . In the rear area of the tower was a pressure-resistant hangar , in which a seaplane of the type Besson MB-411 was housed. The aircraft had to be dismantled to store it in the narrow hangar. The time required for unloading and assembling or dismantling and loading was around 30 minutes each.
Originally it was planned to take a motorboat. The boat would have had a range of 70 nautical miles and a speed of 18 knots and was supposed to be used for artillery observation. Another task would have been to translate prize commands. However, the dinghy was later abandoned.
The artillery armament of the lightly armored boat consisted of two 203 mm guns in a limited pivoting twin turret . The guns were ready to fire two and a half minutes after surfacing and could fire at a rate of fire of three rounds per minute. The largest possible pipe elevation was 30 °. The range of the guns was 27,500 m. The ammunition reserve was 600 rounds. One bullet weighed 123.2 kg. The fire control center was equipped with a 4-meter spatial distance meter with a range of 12,000 m. Only the British M-Class had larger deck guns . The caliber of the guns can be traced back to the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which allowed a gun armament of no more than 203 mm for ships that were not battleships . The guns of the U-cruiser were of the same model as the main armament of the 10,000 t French Washington cruisers . The Surcouf was the only submarine construction after the Washington Naval Treaty that used the largest caliber allowed.
The anti-aircraft defense of the submarine had two 37-mm anti-aircraft guns in single mounts and four 13.2-mm machine guns in double mounts .
The torpedo armament consisted of eight 550 mm and four 400 mm torpedo tubes . Four 550 mm tubes were in the bow and were internally reloadable. In addition, as was common with French submarines at that time, four 550 mm and four 400 mm tubes were added in sets of four (swiveling) outside the pressure hull in the middle and rear part of the boat.
The unfolded pipes hindered the trimming of the submarine and increased the flow resistance. However, this design could not be dispensed with, as the automatic control of the French torpedoes of the time, especially the 400 mm torpedoes, was very unreliable. The Surcouf was the only French submarine that could reload the external pipes on the high seas without assistance.
Due to its enormous size, the U-cruiser was able to hold up to 40 prisoners of war . The Surcouf was intended for the privateer war in accordance with the prize law . That is why space was planned for the crews of the enemy ships to be raised.
The Surcouf was with its long range, heavy armament, the high speed and good maneuverability as a technically successful design. In practice, however, it could not fulfill its actual task, the trade war, since there was no longer any significant German deep-sea merchant shipping.
history
The construction of the boat was approved in 1926. The objective of the gigantic design was to disrupt enemy merchant shipping. Originally two more U-cruisers of this size were planned. However, this project was not implemented. Between 1927 and 1934 the ship was built at the Cherbourg Naval Shipyard (Arsenal de Cherbourg).
In the summer of 1940, the U-cruiser escaped German access by fleeing to Plymouth in England. After the armistice between Germany and France on June 22, 1940, the British boarded the U-cruiser on July 3, 1940 as part of Operation Grasp. During the British takeover, a firefight broke out between the British and the French crew, which resulted in several deaths demanded. The British later made the submarine available to the Free French Navy under General Charles de Gaulle .
On December 24, 1941, the ship played a key role in the non-fighting takeover of the colony of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, which was under Vichy-French control, by the Free French armed forces. In contrast to Great Britain, the USA refused to employ the Free French in this way, as the United States diplomatically recognized the Vichy-French government of France under Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain after entering the war in December 1941 and officially ignored the Free French for the time being.
Then the Surcouf went to Canada . After a shipyard stay in the British Bermudas , the Surcouf was lost on February 18, 1942 on the march to the French colony Martinique as a result of a collision with the US freighter Thomson Lykes near the Panama Canal .
All 130 seafarers (other estimate: over 150) on board were killed in the sinking. This is the largest number of casualties ever recorded in a total loss of a submarine. The sinking of the Surcouf counts in addition to the losses of the USS Thresher (1963, 129 dead), Kursk (2000, 118 dead), USS Scorpion (1968, 99 dead), HMS Thetis (1939, 99 dead), K-129 (1968, 98 deaths) and the so-called Battle of the Isle of May (1918, 105 deaths) among the worst accidents in submarine history .
See also
Web links
literature
- Erminio Bagnasco: Submarines in World War II. 5th edition. Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-613-01252-9 .
- Janusz Piekałkiewicz : The Second World War. Komet, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-89836-472-0 .