Technical Brigade Mineral Oil
The Technical Brigade Mineralöl (TBM) was a specialized unit of the Wehrmacht set up in Templin in winter 1941/42 as Mineralölbrigade K (K for Caucasus) during the German-Soviet War . The TBM was to take possession of the oil wells in Maikop , Grozny and Baku in the course of the planned 1942 summer offensive on the eastern front on the south wing behind the armed forces' attacking spiers. After that, oil production should be restarted and the fields exploited. After a military basic training and further education in the Romanian oil area of Ploiesti , the units of the brigade were equipped with technical equipment which was seized partly in French companies and in part by the Continental Oil Company came together with other German companies, and the direction of Rostov-on-Don in March set.
At this point in time the brigade consisted of 6,500 men, its commanding officer was Lieutenant General Erich Homburg , and Günther Schlicht was the head of the specialist department . Their equipment included 100 deep drilling rigs, 225 conveyor systems and ten portable distillation systems with a total weight of 80,000 tons and a value of 80 million Reichsmarks .
The first to be conquered on August 9, 1942, were the oil fields around Maikop, whose production facilities had been completely destroyed by the Red Army before they withdrew. The other goals, Grozny, Baku and Iraq , could not be achieved during the offensive, which was finally canceled in December 1942. During the subsequent retreat to the Crimea via the Kuban bridgehead , much of the brigade's technical equipment, which was disbanded a little later, was lost.
literature
- R. Karlsch / R. Stokes: The Oil Factor - The Mineral Oil Industry in Germany 1875 to 1974 , Munich 2004.
Individual evidence
- ↑ R. Karlsch / R. Stokes: The Oil Factor - The Mineral Oil Industry in Germany 1875 to 1974 , Munich 2004, p. 216 f.