Company Vikings
The Wikinger company was an operation by the German navy during World War II .
Due to serious omissions by the naval command and unfortunate circumstances, the German association lost two of the six destroyers deployed before reaching the area of operation, whereupon the company was canceled.
Preparations
On the night of February 22nd to 23rd, 1940, a German unit consisting of destroyers Z 1 Leberecht Maass , Z 3 Max Schultz , Z 4 Richard Beitzen , Z 13 Erich Koellner , Z 6 Theodor Riedel and Z 16 Friedrich Eckoldt was supposed to Advance into the Dogger Bank area and take action against British fishing trawlers discovered there by aerial reconnaissance . It has been suggested that many of these ships were camouflaged outpost boats. Landed trawlers should either be sunk or brought to Germany as a prize . For this purpose, additional soldiers were embarked on the destroyers as prize squads .
At the same time, the 10th Air Corps of the Air Force prepared air strikes against British merchant shipping on the English east coast. The Air Force informed the Navy at noon on February 22nd that individual or small groups of aircraft would be operating on the British coast during the night. In the late afternoon, the Air Force also asked the Navy to pull in the balloon locks during the night so that returning machines would not accidentally fly in. The Navy notified the balloon locks, but took no further action to inform the fleet of the air operations.
In order to support the destroyer association, the navy asked the sea air reconnaissance for reconnaissance flights in the target area as well as for hunter support for the departing destroyer on February 22nd and for the arrival on February 23rd. The Luftwaffe complied with both requests; Since the X. Fliegerkorps had nothing to do with sea air reconnaissance or with the hunters (it was a practically independent unit from an organizational point of view), it did not notice anything. It was only informed when, in the early evening, the Navy asked the X. Air Corps to provide a combat squadron to support returning destroyers. This then led to the questioning of the Fliegerkorps asking the Navy whether returning home meant that their own destroyers would operate in the North Sea during the night . Only now, six hours after being informed of the planned air operations by the Air Corps, did the Navy inform the X Air Corps about the "Operation Vikings" and asked that the bombers be prohibited from attacks in the Doggerbank target area and on the approach. However, this was no longer possible because the bombers were already taking off at this point. The bombers were not notified by radio because the instructions (with complete details of the area of operation) were very complex and the available encryption means were not considered secure enough (it was feared that the British could become aware of the destroyers as a result). Informing the destroyers about the air operations, however, would have been possible without any problems, this message would have been simpler and the Enigma machines on the destroyers would have ensured an encryption that was considered sufficient. However, the Navy did nothing of the sort.
procedure
On February 22, 1940, the 1st destroyer flotilla ran out of Wilhelmshaven under the leadership of its chief, Frigate Captain Fritz Berger . The German destroyers drove in Kiel line on the mine open path I. This was a top-secret 6 nautical miles (11 km) wide alley through the German mine warning area, which made large Seeminenfeldern existing Western Wall at sea . However, two British destroyers had laid mines in the mine-free path on the night of January 9-10, 1940. This went unnoticed because there were not enough deminers available on the German side to check the mine-free routes.
The flagship Friedrich Eckoldt marched in front, followed by Richard Beitzen , Erich Koellner , Theodor Riedel , Max Schultz and finally Leberecht Maass . At 7.13 p.m., aircraft engine noises were heard on the Friedrich Eckoldt . It was a German He-111 bomber of Group II of Kampfgeschwader 26 , which in turn noticed the German destroyers. The crew, hardly trained in observing ships, believed they saw a single 4,000-ton merchant ship. Since she was not informed about German ships in this area, but at the same time was only allowed to attack ships that were definitely recognized as hostile so far in the east, the bomber circled the destroyers for closer identification.
At 7:21 p.m., the destroyers, who were also not informed of the presence of German machines, classified it as hostile and fired at it. The crew of the He 111 were then convinced that they were dealing with an enemy ship and initially turned away.
At 19.40, the aircraft flew from astern an attack on the final ship Leberecht Maass , which is four 50-kg by 19:44 bomb throwing. One of them hit the Leberecht Maass between the bridge and the first chimney. The destroyer swerved out of the keel line and asked the flotilla chief for help with a signal, whereupon the remaining destroyers turned around at 7.46 p.m.
The flagship Friedrich Eckoldt had already approached the Leberecht Maass within 150 m when it broke apart with a spectacular explosion at 7.56 p.m. Due to the shallow water, parts of the stern and bow remained afloat. The Erich Koellner ran immediately to the rescue operation and began rescuing survivors. At 8:04 p.m. there was a severe explosion on the Max Schultz . Subsequently, a submarine alarm was given on the other four destroyers.
This created confusion on the rest of the destroyers. Lookouts always believed they were seeing torpedo tracks, whereupon the destroyers carried out evasive maneuvers or attacks. After the depth charges were dropped, all destroyers expired, only the Erich Koellner stayed with the Leberecht Maass wreck to continue the rescue operation. At 8:16 p.m. the Erich Koellner started her voyage, and the lifeboat attached to the port screw guard capsized with the rescued persons inside , who all fell into the sea and drowned. At 8:28 p.m., the Erich Koellner arrived at the wreck of the Max Schultz . At 8.30 p.m. the submarine alarm was given, whereupon the destroyer approached the supposed submarine. At 8.36 p.m. the chief of the flotilla gave the order to turn back. With this the rescue of survivors still floating in the water was finally canceled. At 9:05 p.m., the Erich Koellner was the last destroyer to march back to Wilhelmshaven .
As a result, ultimately only 60 survivors of the Leberecht Maass were rescued, one of whom died on the way back. No survivors were rescued from the Max Schultz , and a crew member of the Erich Koellner died when the destroyer ran over the motorboat that was being rescued during an evasive maneuver in front of alleged torpedoes. A total of 578 crew members lost their lives.
On the morning of February 23, 1940, the remaining boats arrived in Wilhelmshaven.
Aftermath
Z 1 Leberecht Maass and Z 3 Max Schultz were the first destroyers that the Navy lost in World War II. The fact that the destroyers, who in the past had carried out risky mine operations off the English coast without losses, had been destroyed by their own armed forces, caused a great sensation in the command staff up to the Führer headquarters (the incident was kept secret from the public). In addition, at around 12:25 a.m. on February 23, a He-111 bomber returning home was shot down by anti-aircraft batteries of the Navy stationed on Borkum . A commission of inquiry was then set up to meet on the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper . Since nothing was known about the British mines and the statements of the survivors of the Z 1 Leberecht Maass were contradicting (none of the officers had survived), the commission came to the conclusion that the He 111 would also have sunk the Max Schultz with the second attack . Leberecht Maass must have been lost to an internal explosion after the first attack. The commission considered the insufficient information from the Navy to be the main cause of the sinking of the two destroyers.
Grand Admiral Erich Raeder wrote to Adolf Hitler on March 15, 1940 : "The fact that Fliegerkorps X was not informed in time by the Marine Group Command West about the intended destroyer enterprise contributed to the fateful development ..."
Ultimately, no conclusions were drawn from this, no one was held responsible and the coordination between the air force and the navy remained inadequate throughout the war because of Göring's uncooperative attitude.
It is certain that Max Schultz was detonated by a mine. With Leberecht Maass it could never be fully clarified whether the detonation was another bomb hit or whether the destroyer hit a mine.
literature
- Cajus Bekker: Damn Sea. A war diary of the German Navy . Bechtermünz Verlag, Eltville 1998, ISBN 3-8289-0307-X .
- Wolfgang Harnack: Destroyer under the German flag: 1934 to 1945 . 2. revised and exp. Edition. Koehler, Herford 1994, ISBN 3-7822-0616-9 .
- Rudi Schmidt: Attention - Torpedo go! The torpedo squadron of the German Air Force in World War II. Bernard & Graefe Verlag Bonn, ISBN 3-7637-5885-2 , there p. 45 ff. And Appendix 10 “Report by Major iG Martin Harlinghausen, at the time chief of the staff of the X. Fliegerkorps, on the events and connections on February 22nd 1940 on the Doggerbank "(from the perspective of the Luftwaffe)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Maritime War 1939–1945, February 1940. Retrieved on January 24, 2017 .