Tannenfels (ship, 1938)
 The fir rock
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The third Tannenfels, which was put into service in 1938 by the German steam shipping company “Hansa” (DDG “Hansa”), was one of the Ehrenfels- class motor ships that were put into service from 1936 onwards .
The Tannenfels sought when the war began in 1939 the port of Kismayo in the Italian colony of Somaliland as a refuge. In 1941 she managed to escape from there to Bordeaux . The ship was used as a blockade breaker in 1942 and ran to Japan and back. On the way back it met the auxiliary cruiser Stier and took over its crew when the incapable of maneuvering auxiliary cruiser had to be abandoned after the battle with the armed Liberty freighter Stephen Hopkins on September 27, 1942. On November 2, 1942, the Tannenfels reached Bordeaux again. There she was badly damaged by a British commando on December 12, 1942. Despite repairs, the ship was no longer used and was finally sunk as a block ship in August 1944 off Bordeaux .
History of the ship
The Tannenfels was one of the Ehrenfels- class motor freighters that came into service with the DDG "Hansa" from 1936. By the beginning of the war in 1939, the DDG "Hansa" received eight freighters of this type for their services to the Persian Gulf and Burma . Suppliers were three shipyards on the Weser . The Tannenfels was the only ship in the series that was manufactured by Deschimag , Seebeck plant. There she was under the hull number 581 and ran on April 9, 1938 as the sixth ship of the series of stacking .
The new Tannenfels came into service with DDG "Hansa" on June 11, 1938 as the seventh ship of the Ehrenfels class, after the type ship and three other newbuildings from the Deschimag Weser plant and two newbuildings from the Bremer Vulkan . The new building was 155.47 m long, 18.69 m wide and had a draft of 8.26 m. Measure was the ship with 7840 GRT and could carry up to 10,663 dwt. It was powered by two 6-cylinder double-acting two-stroke diesel engines from the AG Weser- MAN type, type D6 to 53/76, which together made 7600 hp and acted on a screw via a gearbox . They enabled a speed of 16 knots .
The Tannenfels was used on the shipping company's liner services to the Middle East. At the beginning of the war in 1939, she sought refuge in the port of Kismaayo / Chisimaio in the south of what was then the Italian colony of Somaliland.
Fate of war
The Tannenfels remained in the port of the Italian ally, who joined the war in June 1940, until the beginning of 1941. When the occupation of Italian East Africa by British troops threatened, she left Chisimaio in time on January 31, 1941. On board was also the prize crew under Lieutenant ZS Emil Dehnel, who had brought the old Yugoslav steamer Durmitor with 260 prisoners from the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis to Somaliland in the autumn of 1940.
On February 10th, the Tannenfels met the Atlantis with her pinch of Speybank , which the angry tanker Ketty Brøvig joined on the 11th . All four ships had certain deficits in their equipment, and the commander of the auxiliary cruiser tried to distribute the existing equipment and supplies according to the tasks of the individual ships. The Speybank was supposed to go to Europe as a prize because of its valuable cargo after a temporary assignment as companion and reconnaissance ship for the auxiliary cruiser. The Ketty Brøvig was to serve as a supply tanker and auxiliary ship for other German units, but her crew was largely replaced by the returning Atlantis under Lieutenant Dehnel. The Tannenfels , which was in poor condition due to the long stay in the port, was supposed to break through to western France with the (new) prisoners of the Atlantis .
On February 12, the exchange and supplies were ended and, in order to share the excess fuel, the march south to a meeting with the ironclad Admiral Scheer , which was hit on the 14th in very bad weather. From February 14th to 17th, the German ironclad, the auxiliary cruiser with its prize ships Ketty Brövig and Speybank and the Tannenfels about 1000 nm east of Madagascar stayed together to supply and exchange messages. The Admiral Scheer took contrary to the recommendation of the SKL 1200 tonnes of diesel from the Ketty Brövig which then also the auxiliary cruiser and Tannenfels fueled. The hijacked tanker then headed for Australia to supply other German units there. When they met Coburg , who had broken out of Massaua, on March 4th, the Australian cruiser HMAS Canberra surprised the two ships, which had been set on their trail by radio reconnaissance. Taken under fire, the German ships sank themselves, since escape seemed impossible, especially since the cruiser HMNZS Leander arrived next to the Canberra .
The Tannenfels was released with the prisoners to western France and reached Bordeaux on April 19, 1941. There, after a short cooperation with the Atlantis , the Speybank arrived on May 10 , which was led by the former 1st Watch Officer of the Tannenfels , Lieutenant Paul Schneidewind who then continued to command them as the auxiliary ship Doggerbank of the Navy .
Blockade breakers
Parts of the predominantly civilian crew of the Tannenfels received military awards after reaching France. The ship was overhauled and became a submarine stage supply ship. It was assigned to the Marine Special Service, which endeavored to establish a regular cargo service to and from Japan. The Tannenfels left Bordeaux on February 2, 1942 under Captain Haase with a cargo of military equipment and machine tools and met in Yokohama on May 12, 1942. It was the seventh departure of a blockade breaker from Bordeaux and the fifth successful journey from western France to Japan. On August 8, 1942, the return trip from Yokohama to Bordeaux began as the 16th ship from Japan with a cargo of essential raw materials such as rubber , tungsten , titanium , copper , opium and quinine as well as cooking oil and fats. On the way the blockade breaker was supposed to meet the auxiliary cruisers Thor , Michel and Stier .
On August 29, 1942, she met the Thor in the Indian Ocean and took her prisoners from the three last victims, the Norwegian tankers Herborg and Madrono (both sent to Japan as prizes) and the sunk British reefer ship Indus . On September 21, she met the Michel in the South Atlantic and also took over her prisoners, but also gave supplies to the auxiliary cruiser. On September 25, she also met the bull for whom she had a new Nakajima seaplane on board, but which on closer inspection turned out to be unusable.
The bull and the fir rock were stopped together in the early morning of September 27th when they spotted a ship, which was fleeing, in poor visibility and heavy seas. It was the American Liberty ship Stephen Hopkins (7181 GRT) on its maiden voyage. The main purpose of the American ship's “escape” was to be able to use the freighter's only heavier weapon, a 102 mm cannon mounted on the stern. The bull succeeded in sinking the Stephen Hopkins , but it was hit so badly that it too had to be abandoned. Your rudder was unusable and the engine's oil supply and electrical system were badly damaged. A fire that could no longer be stopped with on-board resources threatened to trigger an explosion of the ammunition that was still available, in particular the torpedoes , so that the evacuation of the auxiliary cruiser was ordered.
The Tannenfels had not taken part in the battle because it had only light weapons and was only trying to interfere with the Stephen Hopkins radio . She then took over the crew of the abandoned auxiliary cruiser and reached the Gironde estuary on November 2, 1942, despite the few supplies for the number of people on board and the low fuel stocks. The auxiliary cruiser Michel called for help did not run to the scene of the battle because he suspected a British trap.
The end of the fir rock
The Tannenfels should continue to serve as a blockade breaker. However, on December 12, 1942, she was badly damaged by a British commando raid attacking folding boats and sank on the quay like the Alabama (5641 BRT), the Portland (7132 BRT), the Dresden (5576 BRT) and the Sperrbrecher 14 ( Bockenheim) ex norw. Tai Ping , 7019 BRT). With six folding boats, 12 commandos were supposed to enter the port of Bordeaux and sink as many ships as possible. One of the boats failed while trying to bring it to the water from the submarine Tuna , so that only five boats with ten men paddled into the Gironde. Two more boats were lost in the first night in heavy seas, so that only three boats actually reached the coastal waters. Another boat was lost the following day.
The two remaining boats carried out the planned attack after a day of rest on the night of December 12, four days after leaving the Tuna , and tried to install their detention mines in different places on both banks of the port. By chance both boats met on the way back. The commanding officer decided to sink the boats and to reach the Spanish border separately on foot. Only two of the men deployed made it home. The Germans took six men, only two of whom had reached Bordeaux. The crew arrested on the march in the Gironde estuary was shot during the night when the remaining boats brought out their detention mines, which only exploded with their time fuses the following morning. The crew of the second rescue boat was caught just three days after the attack, plus the crew of a boat that was driven away on the approach and was able to save itself on land before the end of the year. These four soldiers were shot in Paris in the spring of 1943.
The Tannenfels was, like most of the damaged ships repaired and was ready for use with other ships for a renewed drive to end Japan 1,943th However, the high loss rate of trips by the special marine service in 1943 led to the abandonment of the use of surface units.
Like other former blockade breakers, the Tannenfels was sunk in the Gironde in August 1944 as a block ship to prevent the Allies from using the port .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Predecessors in its name were the first Tannenfels of 5462 BRT / 8280 tdw, which was delivered in 1898 with four sister ships by Wigham Richardson & Co. , and the second Tannenfels of 3048 BRT / 5588 tdw, which was delivered in 1923 with two sister ships from the Lübeck ship and dock builder Flender AG. which was originally ordered by the German Levante Line . The first Tannenfels had stood from 1898 to 1914 in the service of DDG "Hansa" and was then in 1933 as Waganda the DOAL been scrapped. The second Tannenfels was sold to the Soviet Union with her sisters in June 1935 . The engine of this ship, since then called Sima , was built by the Seebeck shipyard.
- ↑ These two shipyards built two more newbuildings, which were only put into service as Neidenfels and Moltkefels in 1939 and 1940.
- ↑ February 10–25, 1941 Indian Ocean / East Africa
- ↑ The auxiliary cruiser was built in peace as the sister ship Goldenfels der Tannenfels near the Bremer Vulkan.
- ↑ After the Benno (ex Ole Jacob ), the Rio Grande , the Kota Pinang (which sank on October 3, 1941 near the Azores off HMS Kenya on the sixth day of departure ), the Rhakotis , again the Benno (which on December 24, 1941 was sunk off northern Spain on the second day of their renewed departure by British aircraft) and the Doggerbank (ex Speybank ).
- ↑ 10–11 September 1942 South Atlantic
- ↑ 27.9.1942 South Atlantic
- ↑ 7-12 December 1942 Biscay with a map
- ↑ The British raid was officially called Operation Frankton , was known as the "cockleshell raid" and was made into a film in 1955. As a suicide mission he came to German cinemas.
Web links
literature
- Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa - from liner service to special shipping , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1976, ISBN = 3-7822-0105-1
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH (Herrsching 1968), ISBN 3-88199-0097
- Reinhardt Schmelzkopf: The German merchant shipping 1919-1939 , Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X .