Tanga (ship, 1937)
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The Tanga was a speedboat escort of the German Navy , after the Tsingtau the second ship of this type, which served the crews of the speedboats as accommodation and the boats as a fuel, ammunition, fresh water and food depot.
Construction history and technical data
The ship was originally in the AG Neptun in Rostock been given as a mother ship for the Chinese navy in order and ran there on 4 December 1937 by the stack . In 1938 the German Navy bought the unfinished ship and had it completed as a speedboat escort. By order of December 12, 1938, the ship was named Tanga , after the port city of Tanga in the former German colony of German East Africa (today's Tanzania ) and the battle of Tanga that was fought there in November 1914 . The ship was put into service on January 21, 1939 and assigned to the 2nd Schnellbootsflotilla, which was set up on August 1, 1938.
The ship was 96.2 m long and 13.63 m wide and had a draft of 4.14 m. The water displacement was 2,190 tons (standard) and 2,620 tons (maximum). Two MAN four-stroke diesel engines with 4100 hp each and with a Vulcan gearbox enabled a top speed of 17.5 knots . The radius of action was 8,450 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 9 kn or 5,000 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 15 kn. The armament consisted of two 10.5-cm guns, two 3.7-cm flak and four 2-cm flak. The crew numbered 225 men.
Second World War
At the beginning of the war in 1939, the 2nd Schnellbootflotilla was under Lieutenant Rudolf Petersen , the later commodore and leader of the Schnellboot, with S9, S10, S14, S15, S16 and S17 and her escort ship Tanga (under Lieutenant Reinhold Bening) in the submarine port of Helgoland . From here, the flotilla undertook a reconnaissance attempt on September 4, 1939, but had to break off the operation due to bad weather. The boat S17 suffered so severe damage that it had to be retired. On September 10th the flotilla moved to Kiel , then to Swinoujscie , Saßnitz , Rostock and again to Kiel. Above all, training was carried out, for example torpedo shooting off Schleimünde . In addition, the flotilla operated submarine protection for the heavy cruisers Admiral Hipper and Blücher and searched in vain for Polish submarines that were trying to break out of the Baltic Sea in the western Baltic Sea, the Great and Little Belt and in the Oresund . When the Baltic Sea began to freeze, the flotilla moved back to the North Sea.
On March 1, 1940, the Tanga was assigned to the newly established 6th Schnellbootsflotilla, which was initially used in the southern North Sea and then during the German western offensive in the English Channel . On October 15, 1941, the ship was made available to the new Admiral Nordmeer, Vice Admiral Hubert Schmundt , and then moved in November, together with the 8th destroyer flotilla, to Kirkenes in Northern Norway . There the Tanga Admiral Schmundt served as a staff ship until May 1942. Then she was assigned to the S-Boat School Association in the Baltic Sea, where she stayed until the end of the war.
Post-war service: German mine clearance service
After the end of the war, the Tanga was used by the German mine clearance service from May 10, 1945 , before it was decommissioned on December 3, 1947 and confiscated as American spoils of war .
Danish Navy
On June 8, 1948, the ship was sold to Denmark , where it was put into service after conversion in Copenhagen on December 12, 1951 and under the name Ægir and with the registration A560 served as a tender, command ship and training ship in the Danish Navy .
The ship now displaced 2,379 tons and until 1957 was armed with two 12.7 cm guns from Rheinmetall , six 40 mm automatic cannons and two 37 mm guns. After conversion and re-armament from October 1956 to February 1958, the main armament consisted of two British 10.2 cm rapid fire guns. There were also two depth charges. The two 37 mm guns and one of the original six 40 mm automatic cannons were removed in 1956 and 1963, respectively. The ship could load up to 24 torpedoes for submarines. The crew consisted of 44 officers and 183 men and (as a training ship) up to 122 trainees.
The Ægir served mostly in native waters, but made a trip to Canada in 1958 and one to the Mediterranean in 1961. In September 1964 she served as the flagship of the royal Danish flotilla, which went to Greece to celebrate the wedding of the Greek King Constantine II with the Danish Princess Anne-Marie . After that she was officially reclassified as a training ship.
Whereabouts
The ship was decommissioned on January 10, 1967, sold for scrapping on July 20, 1967 to Paul Bergsøe & Son in Jernhaven on the island of Masnedø and scrapped in the same year.
Web links
- Escort ship Tanga, at Förderverein Museums-Schnellboot eV ( Memento from March 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Ægir (1951-1967), at Danish Naval History (English) ( Memento from January 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
literature
- Erich Gröner: The ships of the German Navy and their whereabouts 1939-1945 , JF Lehmanns, Munich, 1976, ISBN 3-469-00297-5
- Hans-H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German Warships , 10 volumes, Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, ISBN 3836497433 , ISBN 978-3836497435
- Volkmar Kühn: Schnellboats in use 1939-45 , Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart, 3rd edition, 1997, ISBN 3879434506 , ISBN 978-3879434503
- Siegfried Breyer: Special and special ships of the Kriegsmarine (I), Marine-Arsenal Volume 30, Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Eggolsheim-Bammersdorf, 1995, ISBN 3-7909-0523-2