Togo (ship, 1938)
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The Togo was built for the Woermann shipping company as a general cargo and combination ship for 12 passengers, it was launched on August 13, 1938 and, after delivery on September 22, 1938, was used in liner service to West Africa together with the sister ship Cameroon . In August 1939 she was in Douala , Cameroon . Shortly before the start of the Second World War, your captain Eugene Rousselet received a corresponding warning and the order to go home. The ship broke through the Allied naval blockade and reached Hamburg on November 23, 1939. Shortly afterwards, it was requisitioned by the Navy as ship 14 for military service .
Transporter, mine ship, auxiliary cruiser
The ship was used in April 1940 as a transport and workshop ship to support the German invasion troops fighting in Norway and was damaged on April 21, 1940 by a mine laid by the British submarine HMS Narwhal in the Kattegat east of Skagen . After repair, it was renamed Coronel and on August 14, 1940, the Navy returned to service as a mine ship ( Schiff 14 ) and stationed in Cherbourg to support the planned invasion of England from there .
After this had been postponed indefinitely, it was converted to an auxiliary cruiser . Under the designation Handelsstörkreuzer 10 ( HSK 10 ), the ship was supposed to wage a trade war against the Allies ; with the British Royal Navy was Coronel as Raider K referred. However, her use as an auxiliary cruiser from late 1942 onwards was only brief and unsuccessful. When attempting to cross the English Channel , she hit the ground twice, and a bomb hit in early February 1943 finally led to the abandonment of the company.
Night fighter guide ship
equipment
Thereafter, the Coronel was converted into the Togo night fighter guide ship in order to lead night fighter squadrons of the Luftwaffe against enemy bombers in the Baltic Sea . To the ship with a radio tracking device was Freya FuMG 321-328 , a radar apparatus and fire control radar device Würzburg-Riese (type FuSE 65G), two Y-direction finders "Heinrich", two e-measuring devices "Hans", a beacon , a Beacon , two 60 cm headlights and two 35 cm headlights. There was also a strong anti-aircraft weapons with three 10.5-cm-L / 63 - Flak , four 3.7-cm-L / 57 -Flak twins, four (later five) 2-cm-L / 65 -Flak- Quadruplets, three (later two) 2 cm L / 65 flak in single mounts and four 8.6 cm rocket launchers (M 42 rocket launching frame).
Mission history
The Togo entered service on August 18, 1943. The Navy provided the seafaring personnel, and the 22nd Company of the Air Force Air Force's 222 Air Intelligence Regiment provided the communications personnel. After test and training trips, the ship went back to the Deutsche Werke in Kiel on November 5 for remaining work . From November 18, further tests took place. The ship was hit by a total of 12 incendiary bombs on December 16, 1943 in the port of Kiel , but only slightly damaged. Further trials went as far as Aarhus and Reval .
On the night of March 5, 1944, after the three major Soviet bombings of Helsinki (February 6/7, 16/17 and February 26/27), the Togo was sent to the Gulf of Finland to be there until the 4th May 1944 to support the air defense of Helsinki and Reval. She then operated in Kopli Bay , immediately west of Reval, until May 12 , without night fighters being able to be guided from there, and on May 12 the ship therefore returned to the Gulf of Finland. From June 1st to June 26th the ship was in Gotenhafen for shipyard work . On July 1, the Togo left Gotenhafen and moved to Nötö in the southeast of the Åland Islands off the Gulf of Bothnia , where it took over the radio measurement protection of the naval units there, including in particular the three heavy cruisers Lützow , Admiral Scheer and Prinz Eugen ; for this purpose, the ship was operationally under Air Fleet 1 . The cruisers left the base on July 8th, but the Togo remained as a floating flight reporting point in Nötö until July 20th. Then she was replaced by the destroyer Z 28 . On the march back to Libau , she took over from the torpedo boat T 196 about 400 survivors of the anti-aircraft cruiser Niobe , sunk by Soviet aircraft near Kotka on July 16, 1944 , with which she reached Libau on July 21. During the German evacuation of Libau on July 29, the Togo brought supplies, 246 wounded and around 450 refugees to Gotenhafen, which it reached on July 31.
After that she was back on duty as a fighter command ship, although neither day nor night fighters were available. On 23/24 October moved the Togo to Pillau , where it was made available to the fighter pilot (Jafü) East Prussia and used in the Königsberg See Canal . From December 21st, Togo was subordinate to the Luftflotte Reich and the 2nd Jagd-Division .
From January 1st to 4th, 1945, the ship's tracking systems in Kiel were converted to track low-flying aircraft. After that, the ship went to a deployment position in the Great Belt on January 21, but then moved to Pillau on January 28 , which was reached on January 31. There the Togo took over the staff of Jafü East Prussia and a large number of refugees. Already on February 1st, the staff of Jafü East Prussia was discharged again, as it was to be used in ground combat. Instead, more refugees were taken in. On the evening of February 1, the ship left Pillau with around 2,000 refugees on board and reached Gotenhafen on February 3. On February 4th, the Togo ran back to Pillau to take in more refugees and returned with them to Gotenhafen on February 5th. The refugees could not be disembarked in Danzig until February 8th . On February 11th, the Togo returned to Pillau to take over the air detection and hunter command duties. On March 15, she first moved to Hela and then anchored in the roadstead of Gotenhafen. On March 20, she took over the wounded and ran from March 21 to 23 together with the liner Schlesien to Swinoujscie . Since the wounded could not be disembarked there, the Togo continued on March 25 to Kiel, where the soldiers were unloaded. On April 4, the ship was damaged in an air raid on Kiel . Due to a lack of fuel, it could not expire in the following days either. With the help of a tug it was moved to the northern port on April 10th. As of April 20, both parts of the air force crew and parts of the regular crew were given ashore to be used in ground combat. On May 3rd, the Togo left Kiel to anchor in the Kiel roadstead. There it was taken over by the British on May 4, 1945. A remaining crew remained on board until mid-August.
Whereabouts
After the war, the Togo was initially confiscated by Great Britain as spoils of war, but on January 15, 1946, it was given to the United States , which used the ship to bring home former Polish prisoners of war . On March 14, 1946, the ship was handed over to Norway . The Norwegian Navy , which renamed it Svalbard in December , used it as a troop transport until 1954. Its passenger capacity had meanwhile increased to 900 people, and from December 1947 to December 1949 the Svalbard was chartered by the International Refugee Organization to transport displaced persons from Europe to North America and Australia.
After two years of use from 1954 to 1956 by Norwegian shipping companies under the names Tilthorn (April 1954) and Stella Marina (July 1954), Deutsche Afrika-Linien bought the ship back in November 1956 and, after being completely renovated, put it back under its old name until 1968 Africa service one.
In March 1968 Togo was sold to Taboga Enterprises Inc. in Panama and renamed Lacasielle . In April 1976 there was another sale, this time to Caribbean Real Estate SA in Panama, and the name was changed to Topeka . A last sale took place in 1984 to Lineas Agromar Ltd. As tramp drove Topeka then to 21 November 1984, when it on the Mexican coast near Coatzacoalcos in position 18 ° 10 ' N , 94 ° 19' W stranded in a storm. Two of their 27-strong crew were killed.
Web links
- gyges.dk (route, photos)
- harhaus.de (PDF; 737 kB) (sectional drawing)
- radarworld.org.
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 3 : U-boats, auxiliary cruisers, mine ships, net layers and barrier breakers . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7637-4802-4 , pp. 164 f .
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 8 : Ship biographies from Undine to Zieten . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, S. 213 f . (Approved licensed edition by Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg approx. 1990).
- Otto Georg Erich Mielke: Night hunting lead ship "Togo". The strangest ship in the Navy. Edited by Walter Lohmann. Moewig-Verlag, Munich 1954, ( Fates of German Ships 51).
- August Karl Muggenthaler: German Raiders of World War II. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1977, ISBN 0-7091-6683-4 .
- Kurt Petsch: Togo night hunting guide ship. 1943-45. The history of the ship and its crew, based on official and private diaries, memories and photographs. Preussischer Militär-Verlag, Reutlingen 1988, ISBN 3-927292-00-1 .
- SW Roskill: The War at Sea. 1939-1945. Volume 2: The period of balance. Her Majesty's Stationary Office, London 1956, ( History of the Second World War - United Kingdom military series - Campaigns ).
- Paul Schmalenbach: German Raiders. A History of Auxiliary Cruisers of the German Navy. 1895-1945. Stephens, Cambridge 1979, ISBN 0-85059-351-4 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Jochen Brennecke: Black ships, wide seas - The mysterious journeys of German blockade breakers. 4th edition, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-453-00103-6 , p. 36ff.
- ↑ deutschesatlantikwallarchiv.de
- ↑ skbgmbh.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF)
