Company wonderland
The Wunderland company is a Navy company in the Second World War against Soviet merchant ships on the Northeast Passage . In the summer months, the Soviet Union transported large quantities of armaments material from the USA and raw materials from the Far East to the front and to the industrial centers off the Urals by sea. The convoys were not at all or only weakly secured by military means, could only be carried out for three navigable months and had to use narrow ice-free corridors, which promised great success for an attack on them. Shutting down the big icebreakers would make it impossible to use this sea route. The very slow convoys, in which even old paddle steamers or barges were used, also seemed to be easy prey.
planning
The originator of the plan was Admiral Rolf Carls as Admiral "Nordmeer". The operational elaboration was in the hands of Admiral Hubert Schmundt , the person responsible for naval warfare in Arctic waters. He also had the records of the auxiliary cruiser Komet , which had crossed the Northeast Passage with the help of Soviet icebreakers in the days of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact in 1940. Since the sea route could only be kept open for about three months a year, it was easy to determine the position of the convoys at any given time. The Japanese Admiralty reported that on July 26, 1942, a convoy consisting of 19 merchant ships had passed through the Bering Strait . In mid-August 1942, the German intelligence reported that a large convoy was leaving Arkhangelsk in an easterly direction. The bottleneck was Wilkizkistraße , which was kept open by the largest Soviet icebreakers during the summer months. Soviet warships were not in the Arctic Ocean .
The enterprise
As part of the Wunderland company, a small fleet set out from the port of the Norwegian city of Narvik for the Barents Sea on August 16, 1942 . This association consisted of the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer under the leadership of Captain Wilhelm Meendsen-Bohlken and the three destroyers Z 16 Friedrich Eckoldt , Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck and Z 4 Richard Beitzen . On August 17, however, the destroyers turned back south of Bear Island , and Admiral Scheer now went on alone. Complete radio silence was maintained. The reconnaissance of the ice surfaces was carried out by the German submarines U 601 and U 251 . The course initially ran eastwards through the Barents Sea. On August 18, the Admiral Scheer met with U 601. The submarine reported that the ice line ran 80 nm further north.
After the Admiral Scheer had passed the northern tip of Nowaya Zemlya , she always ran hard on the ice border towards the island of Solitude - Wilkizkistraße. The Admiral Scheer had to navigate very carefully so as not to get caught in the pack ice . That would have been her end, since she was not fit for ice. The armored hull would hardly have been damaged in the drift ice, but the ship's propellers and oars were not designed for the loads in the ice and the ship would have been lost in the suddenly appearing pack ice. According to the operation plan, it shouldn't be able to come to that.
Although the reconnaissance plane made two flights a day, it did not succeed in making out the Soviet convoys. The Admiral Scheer drove a plurality of loops at the output of Vilkitsky Strait and sought in vain for the time being the Soviet convoys. On August 20, there was a meeting with U 251 in the Kara Sea , who had to walk alongside due to the agreed radio silence and in particular reported ice observations.
Admiral Scheer's on- board reconnaissance aircraft reported for the first time on August 20, 1942 near the island of Krakowka and on August 23, 1942 in Wilkizki Street, the sighting of units of three ship convoys, which were escorting along with the icebreakers Lenin and Krasin . Heavy fog and the ice layer prevented a quick approach. On August 24, the reconnaissance aircraft crash-landed and then had to be sunk. This significantly reduced the company's chances of success.
Around noon on August 25, the lookout recorded thick clouds of smoke over the horizon. The Admiral Scheer met the Soviet Arctic freighter Alexander Sibirjakow northwest of the Nordenskiöld Archipelago , with which - coming from Port Dikson - radio stations were set up on lonely islands at that time in order to improve the weather forecasts in the Kara Sea area. The coal-fired steamer Sibirjakow was built in 1908 as a whaler in Scotland, was acquired by Russia in 1914 and was the first Arctic freighter to sail the northeastern sea route in one navigation period in 1932.
This encounter with a solitary ship could endanger the entire operational plan, which was based on complete secrecy of the presence of Admiral Scheer in these waters. When the ship turned out to be quite small, the cruiser ran towards him and asked him to identify himself by means of a signal light in Russian. On board the Sibiryakov , the identity of the foreign warship was requested several times by radio, because the ship's command was aware that there were no warships of the then very small Soviet Northern Fleet in these waters. Ultimately, the Admiral Scheer responded with light signals Tuscaloosa - the name of a US heavy cruiser that had anchored in Arkhangelsk some time before . In addition, the US flag was waving on the ship and the Siberyakov was only shown the bow of the ship to make identification more difficult. The Siberyakov was asked to stop using the radio and, in particular, to stop radio communications with Port Dikson. At that time, communication between ships within sight was usually carried out with flag or light signals. In this respect, the warship's request was not unusual.
Instead of answering, the ship, which was alien to Admiral Scheer, made an emergency call to Port Dikson, in which it reported an enemy auxiliary cruiser and identified itself as the icebreaker Aleksander Sibiryakov . Since this radio message on Admiral Scheer was intercepted, the cruiser immediately opened fire at a distance of twelve kilometers with its 28 cm guns, which the Aleksander Sibirjakow returned with her 7.6 cm guns. At the same time the icebreaker tried to reach the Belucha Island, which is only about ten nautical miles (corresponds to approx. 18.52 kilometers) at full speed. Admiral Scheer fired six full volleys. With four hits observed, the icebreaker burned and began to sink. Although the commander of the Admiral Scheer, Meendsen-Bohlken, did everything possible to save the crew, only 28 of the 131 people survived the sinking. In the evening a Soviet reconnaissance plane was sighted, which was obviously looking for the sunk icebreaker. In addition, a tapped Soviet radio message was sent to shipping in the Kara Sea, warning of an enemy auxiliary cruiser. The Soviet convoys led by the large icebreakers turned north into the pack ice, where the German warship could not follow them because it was not fit for ice.
Since the secrecy with regard to the actual goals, the Soviet convoys and their icebreakers, had failed and these goals had moved into inaccessible distance for the Admiral Scheer , the Admiral Scheer attacked the naval main base Port Dikson on August 27, 1942. This is where the data from all Soviet weather stations in the Arctic and the ice reports from the Arctic Ocean converged. The base had long since been warned by the radio messages from the Siberyakov . All civilians and documents were evacuated onto the tundra on reindeer sleds . The leadership of Admiral Scheer , however, had serious problems. It is true that the ship could have disembarked 230 crew members for a land attack without the ship's combat strength having suffered as a result; However, the leadership only had outdated British maps of the port and the offshore coast on a scale of 1: 200,000, which was completely useless for this attack due to its scale. The channel to the port was not known. The Soviet defenders were able to remove appropriate buoys for marking the fairway in good time. You could not allow yourself to hit an underwater rock when attempting to land so far away from your own bases. The Soviet crew was estimated at 60 men (which was roughly true), whose available armament would not be up to the warship. In fact, the defenders had only a few smaller cannons that would not be able to penetrate Admiral Scheer's armored belt, since up to now they only had to repel the occasional attacks by much poorer armed and much less armored submarines. With such heavily armed and heavily armored surface ships, no station or base of the Northern Fleet had previously had to fight so deep in the Arctic Ocean.
After a few shots at the port facilities, the Admiral Scheer was shot at from land. Admiral Scheer did not succeed in locating the guns on land and fighting them. Admiral Scheer was also firing at the Admiral Scheer , which was poorly equipped with two land guns each, the freighter Deschnew and the outdated steamer Revoluzioner . Their defensive fire remained practically ineffective, but Admiral Scheer did not succeed in sinking the auxiliary ships either. The shells of Admiral Scheer, designed to penetrate massive armored walls, often only penetrated the auxiliary ships and only exploded behind them in the sea. In the end, the auxiliary ships suffered considerable damage, but they could not be sunk and remained a risk that should not be underestimated for the unarmored barges with which the landing party would disembark. However, the management of Admiral Scheer already knew from the radio messages intercepted beforehand that the base had been warned and that, when it was conquered, it would probably not be possible to find any important records about the use of the northern sea route, the routes, ice behavior or long-term weather observations. In view of the great risk of running into underwater obstacles and the little benefit of a risky land attack, but also because of the constant fire from both land and the two auxiliary ships, the mission was canceled.
The main operation ended on August 30, 1942 with the arrival of Admiral Scheer in the port of Narvik . Measured against the high expectations, the company could be described as a complete failure. Neither had it been possible to sink the large Soviet icebreakers, thereby making the Northeast Passage impossible to navigate or making it difficult, nor had Admiral Scheer succeeded in sinking the space of the Arctic freighters worth mentioning. Port Dikson could not be permanently damaged either, and it was not possible to steal documents that could be used for future operations in the Arctic Ocean.
A few ships of the two German support submarines U 601 and U 209 were sunk in the Kara Sea area. On August 24, for example, the Soviet freighter Kuibyshev (2,332 GRT) was struck east of Port Dikson . On August 17, U 209 sank a tow of the Soviet secret service NKVD near Novaya Zemlya . This included the two tugs Nord and Komsomolez as well as the lighters Sch-III and P-IV . A total of 328 political prisoners were on their way to Siberian camps on the NKVD ships. 305 prisoners died in this attack. On the march back to Narvik, U 209 fired at the radio station of Chodowaricha with its on- board cannon on August 28, 1942 .
A repetition of the undertaking under the name "Wunderland II", which was planned with the heavy cruiser Lützow from August to October 1943, was no longer scheduled, since no convoys were reported in the Siberian sea area during this period.
Prisoners
The survivors of the Sibirjakow , including the captain Anatoli Katscharawa, the party secretary Sarajew and the radio operator Sharschawin, came via Kiel and various intermediate camps to the Stutthof concentration camp , 37 km east of Danzig. Here the radio operator was betrayed to the Gestapo by a crew member from another ship. He withstood all interrogations and was shot just two months before the camp was liberated by Soviet armored troops. The captain and many of the other prisoners survived and went back to the Arctic Ocean on various ships after the war .
literature
- Hans Baeuerlein: cruiser Admiral Scheer - memories of "Sophie Caesar". 2nd edition: EA 1988.
- Jochen Brennecke, Theodor Krancke: RRR - The happy ship. 3rd edition, Biberach / Riss 1955.
- Jochen Brennecke, Theodor Krancke: Heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. 4th edition, Herford o. J. (1975?).
- Ulrich Elfrath: The German Navy 1935-1945. Volume 1, Friedberg, Augsburg 1994.
- Uwe Greve u. a .: Heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. Double volume 137/138 of the series SMS - Ships-People-Fates. Kiel 2005.
- Jens Janssen: Heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. In: SOS fates of German ships. No. 190, Munich 1960.
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: The armored ships of the Germany class. Volume 4, Bonn 1993.
- Franz Kurowski: Airplane in action 1939–1945 - With the Navy on the enemy. Berg am See 1984.
- Wilhelm Meendsen-Bohlken: Personal statements about the Wunderland company (contemporary witness).
- Wilhelm Weischenberg: Personal statements and reports on his participation in the company Wunderland (contemporary witness).
- Gustav Zawada: Chronicle of the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. Cologne 1960.
- Erwin Bekier among others: Operation “Wonderland”. 1st edition, Berlin (VEB) 1989.
- Arseni Grigoryevich Golowko: Between Spitzbergen and Tiksibucht. 2nd edition, Berlin (VEB) 1989.
- Authors group: Operation Wunderland. Military publishing house of the GDR, ISBN 3-327-00706-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the Sea War 1939–1945: August 1942 , accessed on July 3, 2013.
- ↑ MARINE, Heft 3 (1986), p. 6