Torpedo boat 1937
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The nine torpedo boats of the 1937 type were a further development of the twelve of the 1935 torpedo boats of the Kriegsmarine . The improvements in armament and range as well as manufacturing were minor. All boats of the 1937 type were built at the Schichau shipyard in Elbing . Although the order for the first boats was placed in 1938 and the first four were launched in 1939 , the boats did not come into service with the Navy until May 1941. Originally this was to receive 36 torpedo boats. This planning was given up in 1939 in favor of the new " Flottentorpedobootes 1939 ", and the orders for the units still to be built were canceled. When the last boat of this type, the T 21 , came into service in July 1942 , the T 22 and T 23 were the first of the considerably larger and more versatile fleet torpedo boats in service.
Four boats of the "Type 1937" were lost in World War II . The five remaining were distributed among the Allies.
Building history
The boats of the "Type 1937" were a replica of the "Type 1935" with some improvements. Like these, they were supposed to undermine the destroyer quota of the fleet contracts with an official 600 ts displacement and be used as torpedo carriers in the North and Baltic Seas with better sea properties and greater range than the small speedboats . Since the boats of the "Type 1935" did not come into service until the end of 1939 and their deficiencies only became apparent late and the removal was only possible to a very limited extent, the boats of the "Type 1937" were no real improvement on the previous boats. The attempt at improvements led to further construction delays. This foreseeable fact also led to the early start of construction of the following and fundamentally changed "Flottentorpedoboote 1939", whose first boats were completed by the same shipyard before the last boat of the "Type 1937".
The new boats of the "Type 1937" had a length of 85.2 m, a width of 8.87 m and a draft of up to 3.1 m and were thus slightly longer and wider than the previous series. Under normal operating conditions they displaced 853 t (max. 1,098 t) and could run 35 kn over two shafts with the 31,000 HP turbine system fed by four boilers . The oil supply of 216 t gave the boats a range of 1400 nautical miles at 19 knots. The armament consisted of a 10.5 cm L / 45 cannon of the type C32 at the stern, a 3.7 cm L / 83 C / 30 nose gun, three 2 cm L / 65 anti-aircraft guns Automatic cannons on the sides of the bridge and on the aft deckhouse as well as six 53.3 cm torpedo tubes in two sets of triple on the center and stern on the center line of the hull. When they came into service, escort duties were in the foreground, so that 32 depth charges and two launchers came on board. The transport and dropping of up to 30 mines was possible in calm seas, but severely restricted the use of other weapons.
The armament was significantly increased in the course of the war and more anti-aircraft weapons came on board. The first retrofit on all boats from 1942 was the installation of a 2 cm L / 65-C / 38-Fla quad on the spotlight position on the rear mast. At the end of the war, the majority of the boats only had the front torpedo tube set, some had a 4 cm anti-aircraft gun, most of them two fully automatic 3.7 cm anti-aircraft guns, two 2 cm anti-aircraft quadruplets and up to four 2 cm anti-aircraft guns -Flak twin guns.
The keel laying of the nine boats of the "Type 1937" took place at the Schichau shipyard in Elbing between September 1938 and March 1940. On June 15, 1939, the first boat of the class, the T 13, was launched on July 21, 1939 , the T 13 followed even before the outbreak of the Second World War. All twelve boats of the "Type 1935" were still in the final equipment at Schichau and at Deschimag in Bremen, which was involved with six boats in the first series. The last boat of the "Type 1937" was the T 21 on November 21, 1940. From May 1941 to July 1942, T 13 to T 21 were put into service by the Navy and assigned to the 3rd torpedo boat flotilla, which remained the main flotilla of the boats until the end of the war, even if other submissions were made at times.
Mission history
The first major operation involving the torpedo boats of the "Type 1937" was the Cerberus company on February 12, 1942, when the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau moved with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen von Brest through the English Channel to Germany and Norway. The 3rd torpedo boat flotilla under Korvettenkapitän Wilcke reinforced the safety shield around the heavy ships from Dunkirk with T 13 , T 15 , T 16 and T 17 . British planes in search of the unit damaged T 13 at the Gravelines height .
From March 19 to 27, 1942, the T 15 , T 16 and T 17 with the destroyers Z 24 , Z 26 and Z 30 secured the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper when it was moved to Trondheim, and from May 18 to 20, T 15 secured the Lützow from Kiel via Kristiansand to Trondheim. T 15 with T 7 and four destroyers secured the relocation of battleship Tirpitz and Admiral Hipper from Trondheim to Northern Norway on July 2, 1942 for the planned use against convoy PQ 17 ( Operation Rösselsprung ).
From July 8 to 10, 1942, the two torpedo boats with the destroyers Friedrich Ihn and Z 24 secured the return of Lützow, which had been damaged by grounding, from the bow bay near Narvik to Trondheim.
The 3rd torpedo boat flotilla, the "Type 1937" regular flotilla, was deploying the " Rhein", "Stein" and "Masuren" defensive mine barriers in the English Channel with T 13 and T 14 and "Type 1935" boats.
On 13./14. In October 1942, the attempt to bring the auxiliary cruiser Comet from Le Havre through the English Channel failed . Despite strong security by minesweepers and the 3rd T-Flotilla with T 4 , T 10 , T 14 and T 19 , a British group of eight motor torpedo boats and five escort destroyers of the Hunt class intercepted the German formation at Cap de la Hague . An MTB sank the auxiliary cruiser with its entire crew by two torpedoes. The bridge of T 14 was hit by the defense fire of the Komet .
From the end of October 1942, the third T flotilla presented with T 13 , T 14 , T 18 , T 19 and T 21 and T 5. flotilla each some boats to secure nine German and Italian ships which from Bordeaux to East Asia ran out as a blockade breaker or supplier.
In March 1943, the boats of the class were in service in both Norway and western France. From March 8 to 24, T 16 , T 20 and T 21 secured the relocation of the battleship Scharnhorst from the Baltic Sea to Northern Norway with the destroyers Friedrich Ihn , Erich Steinbrinck and Richard Beitzen and the torpedo boats Greif and Jaguar off southwest Norway.
On March 28, T 18 from Royan with T 2 , T 12 and Falke as well as the new fleet torpedo boat T 23 secured the Italian blockade breaker Himalaya from Gironde to Japan . Discovered by British aerial reconnaissance, the Himalayas broke off the voyage and was guided back to Bordeaux by the torpedo boats Kondor , T 5 , T 9 and T 19 , which had left Brest .
At the beginning of May 1943, the 2nd T-Flotilla put three more mine barriers in the English Channel and had T 2 , T 5 , T 18 , T 22 and T 23 boats of all three types of torpedo boats commissioned by the Navy in use.
From June the incoming and outgoing submarines were accompanied by destroyers or torpedo boats in the Bay of Biscay . In addition to the destroyers Z 24 , Z 23 and Z 32, which were completed during the war, the "Elbing destroyers" T 22 , T 24 and T 25 as well the torpedo boats T 5 and T 19 and the falcon , griffin , seagull , jaguar and condor already procured by the Reichsmarine were used and formed changing groups of two to four boats.
In autumn 1943, only T 19 of the "Type 1937" appeared to have remained in the west. The boat was used in the 5th T-Flotilla in September in the English Channel to lay the mine barriers "Taube", "Parthuhn" and "Talsohle" together with fleet torpedo boats and boats of the raptor class .
On December 13, 1943, a boat of the "Type 1937" was lost for the first time when the 8th Air Force of the USAAF attacked Kiel with over 600 bombers and sank the T 15 torpedo boat in the German works (1 fatality).
In 1944, the operation area of the boats relocated to the Baltic Sea . When the Finnish Prime Minister Hackzell demanded the withdrawal of German troops from Finland on September 2, 1944 and the Finns stopped fighting against the Soviet Union on September 4, the Wehrmacht tried German soldiers, wounded people and vehicles in the period allowed up to September 21 and to evacuate Wehrmacht goods via Finnish Baltic ports. In order to distract attention from the retreat of the German freighters, the 3rd T-Flotilla carried out an advance into the Åland Sea with T 13 , T 18 and T 20 from September 15 to 17 . On the march back, T 18 was destroyed off Baltischport by Soviet Douglas A-20 bombers . 30 men lost their lives in the sinking of T 18 at 59 ° 23 ′ N , 23 ° 50 ′ E.
At that time, the Wehrmacht also had to evacuate parts of Estonia . On September 23, the last German convoy left Reval with more than 9,000 people on six ships that were secured by destroyers Z 28 and Z 25 and the 3rd T-Flotilla with T 20 , T 13 , T 17 and T 19 . The convoy was picked up at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland by the heavy cruisers Prinz Eugen and Lützow and the destroyers Z 35 and Z 36 .
In the following months, the torpedo boats secured the remaining heavy German ships during their artillery missions in support of the army and were partly exposed to Soviet air raids. When Soviet troops broke through to the Baltic Sea between Libau and Memel from October 6 to 10, the heavy cruisers Prinz Eugen and Lützow and the 6th destroyer flotilla fired at Soviet deployments near Memel, securing the unit against air and underwater attacks the 3rd T-Flotilla was supposed to do with T 21 , T 13 , T 16 and T 20 . On 23/24 October T 13 , T 19 and T 21 accompanied the Lützow with destroyers during the bombardment of Soviet positions on Sworbe and near Memel.
Despite the evacuation of Estonia and the breakthrough of the Red Army as far as the Baltic Sea, Hitler ordered that the Baltic Islands be maintained ( Aster company ), which from the beginning of October 1944 was limited to the Sworbe peninsula. This led to the deployment of the so-called II. Combat Group under Vice Admiral Thiele with the Prinz Eugen and the 3rd T-Flotilla with T 21 , T 13 , T 16 and T 19 on 20./21. November and then the Admiral Scheer with two destroyers and the 2nd T-Flotilla with T 3 , T 12 , T 5 , T 9 , T 13 and T 16 . The Lützow , who came to be relieved, had to turn back because, contrary to Hitler's instructions, the peninsula was evacuated on the night of November 24, 1944 and the remaining troops were transferred to Courland .
The 3rd T-Flotilla was then moved to the west of the remaining operational area and in mid-January 1945 brought T 19 and T 20 and the light cruiser Nürnberg , the mineship Linz , the destroyers Friedrich Ihn and Theodor Riedel and the 8th clearing boat flotilla in the Skagerrak the defensive mine barrier No. 39 "Titus I", whereby the German unit was attacked by British aircraft.
At the beginning of March, the T 17 and T 20 were also involved in deploying the “Titus II” barrier with the three mine ships Ostmark , Lothringen and Linz as well as the destroyer Karl Galster . On the night of March 18, 1945, the mine ships Ostmark and Lothringen , secured by the destroyer Friedrich Ihn and the torpedo boats T 17 , T 19 and T 20 , threw another defensive mine barrier in the western Skagerrak.
On April 10, 1945, British planes attacked a German escort in the Kattegat southeast of Laesö and sank the Transporter Hansa I (1923 BRT) and the torpedo boat T 13 at 57 ° 15 ′ N , 11 ° 37 ′ E (7 dead). T 16 was brought to Frederikshavn , badly damaged , but completely destroyed there by an air raid.
On April 14, 1945, the T 17 mistakenly sank the German submarine U 235 with its entire crew with depth charges in the Skagerrak .
Last missions
After the capitulation in north-west Germany and Denmark came into force , a number of German ships outside of German territorial waters ran back to Hela on May 5, 1945 and evacuated another 45,000 refugees. Unloaded again on the roadstead in front of Copenhagen on May 6th , the fast warships called Hela again on May 7th and took another 20,000 soldiers and refugees on board by May 8th, early in the morning before the ceasefire, who arrived in Glücksburg on May 9th were disembarked. The torpedo boats T 17 and T 19 were involved in both trips .
Final fate
Five boats of the type were in a reasonably operational condition in May 1945 and were handed over to the British. At the turn of the year 1945/46 they were distributed among the Allies. Three boats ( T 14 , T 19 , T 21 ) were assigned to the American armed forces, T 20 to the Royal Navy and T 17 to the Soviet Union .
The T 17 torpedo boat assigned to the Soviet Union was used by the Red Fleet until 1959. The British surrendered the T 20 to France in February 1946 . The Americans were loading T 21 with gas ammunition and left it on 16 December 1946 at the Skagerrak at 57 ° 52 ' N , 6 ° 15' O sink. T 14 was handed over to France in October 1947. T 19 was made available to the Danish Navy in November 1947 ; a conversion planned there was not carried out.
| Surname | Launch | in service | Final fate |
|---|---|---|---|
| T 13 | 06/15/1939 | 05/31/1941 | sunk in the Kattegat by British planes on April 10, 1945 |
| T 14 | 07/21/1939 | 06/14/1941 | January 1946 to the USA, October 1947 to France: Dompaire , canceled in 1951 |
| T 15 | 09/16/1939 | 06/26/1941 | Destroyed on December 13, 1943 during an Allied air raid on Kiel |
| T 16 | 11/20/1939 | 07/24/1941 | Badly damaged by British planes in the Kattegat on April 10, 1945, separated in Frederikshavn |
| T 17 | March 13, 1940 | 08/28/1941 | January 1946 to the USSR: Poryvistyi , later UC 6 , separated in 1959 |
| T 18 | 1.06.1940 | 11/18/1941 | Sunk by Soviet Douglas A-20 near Tallinn on September 17, 1944 |
| T 19 | 07/20/1940 | December 18, 1941 | January 1946 to USA, November 1947 to Denmark, planned renovation abandoned, scrapped in 1952 |
| T 20 | 09/12/1940 | June 5, 1942 | February 1946 to France: Baccarat , abandoned in 1951 |
| T 21 | 11/21/1940 | 07/11/1942 | December 1945 to USA, 16 December 1946 sunk in the Skagerrak with gas ammunition |
Remaining after 1945
The five boats that survived the war were divided among the victorious powers as described. However, the USA and Great Britain in particular did not have any serious interest in this type of boat, which had not stood out on the German side either.
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The T 17 , handed over to the Soviet Union, was renamed Порывистый / Poryvistyy and is said to have been converted into a control ship for remote-controlled target ships in 1949. In addition, since 1946 the Red Fleet still had the similar Подвижный / Podvizhnyy> (ex T 12 ), on which experiments with atomic explosive devices are said to have been carried out.
The French Navy received in February 1946 the torpedo boat T 20 , which was renamed Torpilleur Baccarat , and the similar T 11 of the "Type 1935", which was renamed Bir Hakeim . In October 1947 the T 14 was added, which was named Dompaire . The boats remained in reserve in Cherbourg and were canceled and scrapped in 1951.
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The third end customer of surviving German torpedo boats was the Danish Navy , which received T 19 of the "Type 1937" in November 1947 and T 4 of the "Type 1935" in June 1948 . Plans to rebuild the boats were abandoned and British Hunt-class destroyers were adopted as replacements . The formerly German boats were demolished in 1952.
literature
- Harald Fock: Z-before! International development and war missions of destroyers and torpedo boats , vol. 1. 1914 to 1939. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7822-0762-9 .
- Erich Gröner / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945. Volume 2. Munich 1999. ISBN 3-7637-4801-6
- Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford,
- Anthony Preston: Destroyers , Bison Books Ltd. 1977, ISBN 0-600-32955-0
- MJ Whitley: Destroyer in World War II . 2nd Edition. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1997. ISBN 3-613-01426-2
Web links
- Torpedoboot 1937 on http://german-navy.de (accessed on February 10, 2015)
- A-20 in the Soviet Air Force on Vladimir Kotelnikov, airwar.ru, (Russian, accessed on February 10, 2015)
Individual evidence
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , p. 219
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 228
- ^ Rohwer, p. 247
- ^ Rohwer, p. 258
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 264 20./22. July
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 266 1./2. August
- ^ Rohwer, p. 292
- ^ Rohwer, p. 344
- ^ Rohwer, p. 356
- ^ Rohwer, p. 365
- ^ Rohwer, pp. 381, 391
- ^ Rohwer, p. 407
- ^ Rohwer, p. 479
- ^ Rohwer, p. 483
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 490f.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 485
- ^ Rohwer, p. 502.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 544
- ↑ sinking U 235
- ^ Rohwer, p. 551
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↑ PORYVISTYY destroyer
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