Thorglimt (ship)
Myosotis , sister boat of the Eglantine
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The whalers Thorglimt grew out of a Corvette Flower class of Royal Navy , the British under her name Eglantine in World War II by the Norwegian Navy was used.
In 1946 Norway bought the corvette that had been left during the war. Renamed to KNM Sørøy , she was used by the Navy as a fishing protection boat until 1956 .
In August 1956, the Norwegian whaling shipping company bought Thorndahl the Sørøy and her sister boat KNM Nordkyn (ex HMS Buttercup on) and allowed the Corvette to whalers retrofitted with diesel engines. Under the new name Thorglimt , the boat was part of the last whaling expedition of a Norwegian factory ship to the Southern Ocean in 1967/1968.
Service in World War II
The HMS Eglantine was launched on June 11, 1941 at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast . She was the 33rd Flower corvette completed by the shipyard. When it was commissioned on August 29, 1941, it was taken over by the Norwegian Navy in Exile while retaining the British name and was the first Flower corvette in their service, followed by five more with Montbretia , Acanthus , Rose , Potentilla and Buttercup by the end of the war . During the war, the Montbretia was lost on November 18, 1942 and the Rose on October 26, 1944 after torpedoing and collision. The Eglantine , which was the first Norwegian warship to be equipped with radar, made its first significant use at the end of 1941 when she was involved with the Acanthus in the British operation “Anklet” against the Vestfjord . With the destroyer escort HMS Lamerton, the two corvettes secured the landing of 300 commandos (including Linge Company ) from the landing ship Prince Albert , which destroyed a fish oil factory and a radio station. When retreating after the surprise attack, the boats also took 266 Norwegian volunteers with them.
The first five Norwegian corvettes were initially intended for an American escort group of the Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF), but then formed the British escort group B.6 with the old British destroyer Viscount . On May 7, 1942, the group with Viscount , Eglantine , Acanthus , Rose and Potentilla took over the convoy SC 83 of 63 ships in Halifax as the first task, which was followed by securing further convoy without special incidents. In August 1942, when ON 122 (36 ships) were secured, the first attack by a German submarine group ( Lohs ) with nine boats, which succeeded in sinking four ships with 17,227 GRT. The group (this time with the Montbretia, but without Rose ) succeeded in repeatedly pushing the submarines away and damaging six of them, the Eglantine firing at U 605 with artillery. Four German boats had to cancel their operation and U 705 was lost on the march back. In September the group was assigned to the destroyer Fame , whose commander took over the lead.
Between October 12 and 17, 1942, the group defended the convoy SC 104 of 48 ships against the Wotan submarine group . The convoy lost eight ships, including the largest ship, the whaling mother ship Southern Empress , which was used as a tanker and which, in addition to a cargo of oil, also carried a deck cargo of landing craft. The destroyers Fame and Viscount dropped out after they rammed and sank the attacking submarines U 353 and U 661, respectively . The commandant of the Potentilla , the Norwegian lieutenant captain Christian Monsen, had to take over the leadership of the group, to which only Montbretia , Acanthus and Eglantine were available. The corvettes were able to avoid further losses and finally reached the area of effective air support, where the submarines, which had now been reinforced, broke off the attack, as two other boats were badly damaged in addition to the two losses.
On the march back west, EscortGroup B.6 secured convoy ONS 144, which was attacked by 16 submarines of the Kreuzotter group from November 15 to 21, 500 nm south of Greenland . Five of the 33 ships in the convoy were lost. The securing of the convoy under Monsen by the four Norwegian corvettes Potentilla , Eglantine , Montbretia , Rose (replacement for the Acanthus ) and the British Vervain (K190) assigned as reinforcement were praised because they prevented greater losses and prevented many attacks without a fast warship . The Monbretia was lost, of which Monsen was able to take in 25 castaways, two of whom died after the rescue. Of the sunk ships, only the coal freighter Widestone sank with the entire crew. Another 42 men drowned with the other ships, but 184 men were saved. In addition, the Potentilla succeeded in sinking U 184 .
The next task for the group with the remaining three Norwegian and British corvettes was to secure the 33 ships of the convoy HX 217 . The command was taken over by the operational HMS Fame and the Polish destroyer Burza was assigned as reinforcement. From December 8th, the Panzer group launched attacks with seven submarines, which were joined by other boats from the Daredevil group . The convoy lost only three ships, one of the attacking submarines was sunk by aircraft, others were badly damaged and one was lost in a collision with another boat.
In the first months of 1943 the Eglantine in group B.6 was still defending the convoys ON 165 against the submarine group Hardegen (2 losses of the convoy, two submerged submarines) and HX 227 against the group Neptune (lost 2 stragglers of the convoy, two badly damaged submarines). Until June 1943, when the German submarines withdrew from the convoy battles, the convoys secured by Eglantine and EscortGroup B.6 were no longer attacked.
The Eglantine served after the dissolution of the Escorts Group in the spring of 1944 continued in Liverpool Escort Force until November 29, 1944 and was used to protect convoys to the invasion front.
The Eglantine then ran together with the newer corvette Tunsberg Castle , which had replaced the Potentilla in April 1944 , in convoy JW 62 from Loch Ewe to Kola Bay . The corvettes had material on board to support Norwegian units that were involved in the liberation of northern Norway. Since the Tunsberg Castle was already lost on December 12, 1944 due to a mine hit at Makkaur , on a lock set by Z 33 , and other ships of the Norwegian Navy were not moved to Northern Norway, the Eglantine remained the largest Norwegian warship in this sea area and with the Isles-class trawlers Karmøy , Tromøy and Jeløy supported Soviet naval units in securing coastal transports on the North Sea coast until the German surrender in May 1945.
Peace service
In 1946, the Norwegian government bought the three Flower-class corvettes still in service. The Eglantine was renamed KNM Sørøy (Südland) on August 10 and served as a fisheries protection boat together with her sister ships Nordkyn (ex Buttercup , since late 1944 in Norwegian service) and Andenes (ex Acanthus ) until 1956 . In 1950 the boats were given the NATO IDs F 307 to F 309.
In August 1956 the Sørøy (F 308) was sold to be converted into a whaler.
Civil use as a whaler
In 1956, the fishery protection boats Sørøy and Nordkyn were bought by the Norwegian whaling company "Thor Dahl" in Sandefjord and prepared as whalers at the Framnæs Mekaniske Værksted shipyard belonging to the group . With Thorgeir (ex HMS Lobelia ), Thorslep (ex HMS Dianthus ) and Thorørn (ex HMS Myosotis ), the shipping company already had three whalers made from Flower corvettes, which had been converted to diesel propulsion by Framnæs and Smith's Dock .
Under the name Thorglimt , the former Sørøy / Eglantine was commissioned as a whaler with a 2400 HP Sulzer diesel engine in November 1957 and sent to the Antarctic on the factory ship Thorshøvdi . After five fishing trips, the Thorglimt switched to the fishing fleet of the shipping company's second factory ship, the Thorshavet , until their last fishing trip in 1966/1967. On this voyage, the harpooner Leif Fon shot the last whale on April 6, 1967 for the shipping company Thor Dahl and A / S Ørnen, which gave up whaling, which had begun in 1908 and 1903 respectively, after the season, as no profits had been made for ten years .
In 1967 the Thorglimt took part in the last voyage of a Norwegian factory ship in the Southern Ocean. It was carried out by the Kosmos IV , the former German factory ship Walter Rau . The last Norwegian fishing fleet consisted of the whalers Kos 55 and the rented Thodr (ex Thomas W. Vinke ), Thorarinn (ex Inga Vinke ), the Thorglimt and her sister boat Thoris (ex KNM Norkyn, HMS Buttercup ) as a tugboat . Of the more than 1,100 whales hunted on this last fishing trip by a Norwegian factory ship, the Thorglimt only hunted 48 and returned to Sandefjord with the fishing fleet in May 1968.
Final fate
After this fishing trip, the Thorglimt was launched in Sandefjord in May 1968 and then sold to Grimstad for demolition in June 1969 with its sister boats Thoris , Thorslep , Thorgeir and Thorørn .
literature
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH (Herrsching 1968), ISBN 3-88199-0097
- Johann N. Tønnessen, Arne Odd Johnsen: The History of Modern Whaling , University of California Press (1982), ISBN 0-520-03973-4
Web links
- Image of the Eglantine
- HMS Eglantine on the Arnold Hague database at convoyweb.org.uk.
- The whaler Thorglimt
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rohwer, pp. 205f.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 274
- ↑ Rohwer, pp. 290f.
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 303, other sources consider the loss of U 184 to be unexplained
- ^ Rohwer, p. 308
- ^ Rohwer, pp. 328, 333
- ^ Rohwer, p. 503
- ^ Rohwer, pp. 516, 546
- ↑ Thorgeir's curriculum vitae
- ↑ Thorslep's curriculum vitae
- ↑ Thorørn's curriculum vitae
- ↑ THORSHØVDI's curriculum vitae ( memento of the original from March 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ resume the THORSHAVET
- ↑ a b Tønnessen, p. 630
- ↑ Tønnessen, p. 631
- ^ Curriculum vitae of Kos 55
- ↑ Thorarinn's curriculum vitae
- ↑ Thoris's biography
- ↑ Bjørn Jørgensen: Siste gang
