Thore Horve

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Thore Horve (born October 6, 1899 in Hetland near Stavanger , Norway , † August 15, 1990 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian naval officer , most recently vice admiral , and businessman. He became known for his achievements in World War II , the leadership of the Norwegian Navy from 1946 to 1949 and again in 1951, his role in the attempted establishment of the Abyssinian Navy and his later efforts to provide financial support for the Norwegian naval veterans .

family

Thore Horve's parents were Samuel Horve Olsen (1868-1951) and his wife Karen swine (born 1873). He himself married Bergljot Sollie (1903-1994), daughter of the lawyer and member of parliament Harald Bredo Sollie (1871-1947) and his wife Marie Louise Nygaard (1875-1945) in 1927.

Early career

Horve grew up in Stavanger and, after finishing school, went to sea in 1915 at the age of 16. His first ship was the Bark Carmanian , which was sunk on April 25, 1916 by the German submarine U 19 . Ten men of the crew , including Horve, managed to escape to the Irish coast; three men were killed when the second lifeboat capsized . Then Horve served on the four-masted barque Sovurain , later on the barque Hippen . In 1917 he joined the Norwegian Navy as an officer candidate . After graduating from the Naval Academy ( Sjøkrigsskolen ) in 1920 and being promoted to secondary lieutenant , he served as an officer on watch and later as a commander on various ships. In 1923 he was promoted to prime lieutenant. In the years up to 1940 he served on torpedo boats , submarines and the miner Olav Tryggvason .

Second World War

German invasion of Norway

The Draug

When the Second World War broke out , Horve, promoted to frigate captain in 1939 , was appointed commander of the old destroyer Draug , which, after years as a trailer in Bergen , was reactivated on September 5, 1939 to help ensure Norwegian neutrality . The Draug was stationed in Haugesund and carried out security and escort tasks along the Norwegian west coast. On April 8, 1940, the day before the German invasion of Norway , they escorted the German station wagon Seattle (7369 BRT ), which had broken  through from Curacao north around Iceland to Norway, south to prevent a violation of Norwegian neutrality . After this task Horve immediately got to run to Haugesund and coals there, the command bunker . There he learned on the afternoon of April 8th of the march of German naval forces through the Danish straits, of the sinking of the German transport ship Rio de Janeiro by the Polish submarine Orzeł off Lillesand and of British mine-laying operations off the Norwegian coast. The commander of the 2nd maritime defense section, Rear Admiral Carsten Tank-Nielsen , informed Horve that he had given the ships stationed in the Bergen area the order to armed resistance against all foreign warships attempting to enter Bergen, and that Horve had in the following hours should follow his own assessment of the situation.

On the night of 9 April, the patrol Draug in Karmsund . At around 2:00 a.m. the news came that the coastal batteries in the Oslofjord had opened fire on enemy forces of unknown origin. At 4:00 a.m., after warning shots , the Draug landed a ship sailing north through Karmsund without a flag, which during the investigation in Haugesund turned out to be the German motor freighter Main (7624 GRT). Your shipping papers said the Main was bringing 7,000 tons of coke to Bergen, but the cargo consisted of war material for the German invasion troops in Trondheim , including 2000 mines in particular  . Since reports of the German occupation of Bergen and Stavanger arrived in the meantime , Horve decided to escape to Great Britain with the Main as a prize ; he ignored an order to run to the Hardangerfjord and deny German naval units entry there. The master of the Main initially refused to take a course for the British Isles, but had to give in after several warning shots and the threat of torpedoing . About 40  nautical miles from Haugesund, the two ships were attacked by an Air Force bomber on April 9 at 9:00 a.m. The attack was aimed at the Main , and although the bombs missed their target, the captain, in view of his dangerous cargo, immediately gave the order to sink and leave the ship. After the crew had gone into the boats in great haste (the boatswain drowned in the process), the Draug fired about ten grenades into the waterline of the prize in order to finally sink it.

With the 67 crew members of the Main on board as prisoners of war , Horve went to Sullom Voe on the Shetland Islands , where the German seamen were put ashore in the evening. The Draug then moved with the French destroyer Boulonnais to Scapa Flow , where she arrived on the morning of April 11th. There a number of their crew members were transferred to various ships of the Royal Navy , on which they served in the further course of the Norwegian War. Only the chief engineer initially remained on board with around 20 technical personnel to keep the ship ready for navigation.

Service in the Royal Navy

On June 28, 1940, Horve took over command of the destroyer Sleipner , which he had also escaped from Norway , as the successor to frigate captain Ernst Ullring , and which he commanded until December 1941. The ship was used in escort and security service along the English and Scottish east coast as part of the British Royal Navy . Then Horve served until the end of May 1942 in the high command of the Norwegian Navy in London. From June 1, 1942 to June 1, 1943, he commanded the escort destroyer Glaisdale , which was already on loan from the Royal Navy during construction, and which he officially put into service on June 12 for the Norwegian Navy and with which he served as escort from August 1942 English east coast and in particular in the English Channel . In November 1942 he was ordered with his ship to secure an escort during the British-American invasion of French North Africa ( Operation Torch ). The rescued Glaisdale on November 15 about 120 nautical miles north-west of Gibraltar total of 517 sailors of the current from Gibraltar to England Allied convoy MKF 1Y whose vessels from the German submarine U 155 under Lieutenant Piening had been torpedoed: 312 survivors of the sunken British Troop transporter Ettrick (11,279 GRT), 12 survivors of the also sunk escort aircraft carrier HMS Avenger , as well as 193 men from the severely damaged US transport ship USS Almaack (AKA-10), which was brought to Gibraltar with a hull crew . From December 1942 Horve and his ship were back in service on the English south coast.

On June 1, 1943, Horve was appointed commander of the Norwegian MTB flotilla stationed in the Shetland Islands . Their boats were used by larger ships such as B. the old Draug dragged near the Norwegian coast and back again so that they could carry out attacks on German convoys off Norway. From mid-1944 until the end of the war Horve served again at the Norwegian naval command in London, first as head of the organization department, then as head of the marine special services ( Marinens Spesialtjeneste ). As such, he traveled to Sweden in 1945 to organize the deployment of the specially designated naval officers who were supposed to prevent German sabotage of Norwegian port facilities in the last months of the war ( Operation Eisbär ).

post war period

Naval Commander in Chief

After the end of the war, Horve was Chief of Staff at the Norwegian Naval Command South for a few months and then head of the planning staff of the Naval High Command. In 1946 he was promoted to rear admiral and appointed commander of the Norwegian Navy. In 1947 he was promoted to vice admiral. At that time, the navy owned mostly ships of British origin and of various types that did not meet Norwegian conditions and requirements and caused high maintenance and operating costs. This, the high expectations of the Naval Officer Corps for an efficient post-war Navy and the strong influence of the politicians made great demands on him in the development and implementation of a new structure and strategy for the Norwegian Navy. From 1949 to 1951 Horve was in command of the Northern Naval Command and military commander in chief in Northern Norway and at the same time head of the Norwegian delegation to the North European Planning Group, one of the five regional planning groups of NATO established from October 1949 , in London . In the summer of 1951 he was again Commander in Chief of the Navy, as the successor to the resigned Vice Admiral Danielsen . However, he resigned from this office in October 1951, as Danielsen had already done, due to differences with the young Defense Minister Jens Christian Hauge and in protest against what he believed to be inadequate tasks which, according to Hauge, should be assigned to the Navy within the framework of NATO. At his own request, he was honorably discharged from service.

Further career

He went into the private sector and worked until 1954 as the head of the seaweed harvest at A / S Protan. Then, at his request, he was reassigned to the Navy, with the rank of Rear Admiral. Shortly afterwards he went to Ethiopia on behalf of the Norwegian government and at the invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie , where he was to lead the reconstruction of the local navy with Norwegian support. He resigned from this position in 1956 because he was dissatisfied with the Ethiopian leadership culture and the progress of the project. Nor had he been able to arrange the sale of outdated Norwegian war material to Ethiopia - a prerequisite for the state to continue to participate in the project. From 1956 he was back in business. From 1961 to 1964 he was Managing Director of the Norwegian Philips A / S.

Supply of naval war veterans

After retiring from the navy, Horve became intensely involved in the interests of war veterans from the war and merchant navy, and in 1968 he became chairman of the Association of War Sailors. In particular, he demanded that part of their wages be paid out , which had been kept in the so-called Nortraship secret fund during the war on the basis of an agreement made with Great Britain , so that Norwegian wages were not too high above English wages. The fund held a total of NOK 43 million at the end of the war  . Efforts by the veterans in the first post-war years, led by Leif Vetlesen , to pay out these funds directly to the seafarers and not, as intended by the government and the seafarers' union, to provide for needy seafarers or their widows, had failed after a long legal battle when the Colonel Norway's court in February 1954 denied the veterans' claims. This decision caused considerable and long-lasting bitterness among those affected. After Horve took up the matter again and campaigned for it for years, a final solution was found in 1972 when the parliament, the Storting , decided on payments totaling NOK 155 million, with which the surviving seafarers of the Nortraship and their widows a monthly allowance of 180 Received NOK. To Horve's disappointment, however, navy veterans were excluded from this regulation.

At Horve's instigation, a national monument for the members of the Norwegian merchant navy who died in the war was erected at the Norwegian Maritime Museum on the Bygdøy peninsula (Oslo).

Honors (selection)

Horve has received several awards for his services in war and peace:

In 1977, the Association of Marine Veterans erected the Horve Memorial in Stavanger, thanking them for their efforts for their welfare.

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Harald Bredo Sollie, at PolSys - Data om det politiske system (norweg.)
  2. ↑ The Seattle came the next day in the drive to Kristiansand in the defensive fire Norwegian coastal artillery against the oncoming there German warship Group 4 , was on fire and had given up.
  3. ↑ NAVAL EVENTS, APRIL1940, Part 2 of 4 - Monday 8th - Sunday 14th . Naval History . (English)
  4. ↑ On loan to Norway in December 1941, bought by Norway in 1946 and used as a frigate under the name Narvik , scrapped in 1961.
  5. ↑ Thore Horve . uboat.net .
  6. ^ Naval War, November 1942 .
  7. ↑ 514 men of his crew were killed; HMS Avenger (D 14) . uboat.net (English)
  8. ↑ Almaack . Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships . (English)
  9. ↑ Thore Horve - utdypning (Norsk biografisk leksikon) . Store norske leksikon . (Norwegian)
  10. ↑ The mirror 3/1955, January 12, 1955
  11. ^ Jon Anton Johnson: Det norske marineprosjektet i Etiopia: Norge og norske marineoffiserer i oppbyggingen av den kiserlige etiopiske marine 1954-1957. (M. Phil. History thesis, University of Oslo, 1996) Hovedoppgave i historie, Oslo, 1996.
  12. ^ In April 1940, after the German invasion, Norway grouped the ships in its merchant fleet outside the occupied territories in the state shipping company Nortraship (Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission). With around 1,000 ships and 30,000 seafarers, Nortraship was the largest shipping company in the world. After the war, the ships were returned to their original owners.
  13. ↑ In response to pressure from the British government, an agreement was signed on June 20, 1940, according to which the wages of Nortraship seamen were brought into line with the much lower wages of the British merchant navy. The retained difference was paid into the so-called Nortraship secret fund, which was to be paid out after the war.
  14. ↑ Leif Vetlesen, in Store norske leksikon , accessed on March 10, 2012.

literature

  • Guri Hjeltnes: Krigsseiler: Krig, Hjemkomst, Oppgjr. Grøndahl og Dreyers, Oslo, 1997, ISBN 82-504-1896-4 .
  • Svein Carl Sivertsen: Viseadmiral Thore Horve from Stavanger: Glimt from et eventyrlig liv i krig and fred. (Volume 3, Norsk tidsskrift for sjøvesens skriftserier), Sjømilitære Samfund, Oslo, 1997, ISBN 82-91008-17-5 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Horve, Thore
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Norwegian naval officer (vice admiral) and naval commander in chief
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Hetland (near Stavanger ), Norway
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 1990
Place of death Oslo