Wandsbek (ship, 1938)
The Wandsbek was a German steam turbine ship built in 1938 , which was sunk in Narvik in 1941, but was lifted and used in 1943 and delivered to the Soviet Union after the end of the war in 1946 .
Construction and technical data
The combi ship ran on August 5, 1938, Moss Værft & Dokk in Moss ( Norway ) for the Hamburg shipping company Knöhr & Burchard from the stack . It was 91.93 m long (96.62 m LüA) and 14.56 m wide and had a draft of 5.61 m . It was measured at 2388 GRT and had a load capacity of 4074 tons . The speed was 11 knots .
fate
Second World War
The ship was put into service in 1938. It was in Germany at the beginning of the Second World War and was requisitioned by the Navy on March 6, 1940 , to be used as a transporter for the Weser Exercise Company , the invasion and occupation of Denmark and Norway . The Wandsbek then belonged to the so-called 2nd sea transport squadron , which set out on April 8, 1940 from Gotenhafen and Königsberg with 11 ships to carry 8,449 soldiers, 969 horses and 1,283 vehicles to Oslo . After that, the ship continued to serve the Navy to supply German troops and bases in Norway.
On June 17, 1940, the ship was returned to the shipping company in Hamburg, but was already recorded again on August 14 and made available as a transporter with the designation H40 for the planned invasion of England , the so-called Company Sea Lion , on the Channel coast. After Hitler postponed the invasion on October 15, 1940 to spring 1941, the Wandsbek was sent back to Norway on October 18, 1940.
There she was hit by aerial bombs during an attack by Soviet planes on the port of Kirkenes on July 21, 1941 and set aground in a sinking state. The ship was lifted on March 23, 1943, towed to Helsingør in Denmark in June 1943 and repaired there. It was still there in the shipyard at the end of the war in May 1945.
Post-war years
On August 4, 1945 the ship was taken over by Great Britain and transferred from Copenhagen to Methill, then assigned to the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) on August 27 and subsequently managed by Ambrose, Davies & Matthews, Ltd. from London, used under the name Empire Medway as a so-called Empire ship to transport troops and material back to their homeland. In March 1946, it was in Barry launched .
After the ship had been awarded to the Soviet Union as spoils of war , it was handed over there in 1946. It then drove under the name of Aleksandr Pushkin ( Александр Пушкин ) in the Far East until it was scrapped in July 1966.
Web links
- Wandsbek, in the Historical Marine Archive
- http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/guides/Soviet_Merchant_Marine._German_Ships_in_Soviet_Merchant_Navy_after_WWII (English)
literature
- Roger W. Jordan: The World's Merchant Fleets, 1939: The Particulars And Wartime Fates of 6,000 Ships . Naval Inst Press, Annapolis 2006, ISBN 1-59114-959-2 , pp. 480 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
Individual evidence
- ^ Lloyd's Register 1945-46
- ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-04.htm
- ^ Jordan, p. 480
- ^ Jordan, p. 480