Westerwald (ship, 1938)
 As Nordmark supplying a submarine, 1941
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The Westerwald came into service with the Navy at the end of 1938 as the third supply ship of the Dithmarschen class. At the beginning of the war she supported the ironclad Germany in the North Atlantic. In 1939 the ship was renamed Nordmark . At the turn of 1940/41 she supported the Admiral Scheer in their advance into the Indian Ocean.
The Nordmark was captured by the British in Copenhagen at the end of the war and then kept in readiness as the Northmark . In Bulawayo renamed it was used from 1947 to 1950 as a fleet tanker and canceled 1955th
Building history
In order to use the possibilities of its Germany- class armored ships , the Kriegsmarine developed the type of the supply ship . These ships were supposed to ensure not only the supply of fuel, but the entire supply of the combat ships. You should carry ammunition, food and spare parts with you. The Kriegsmarine had gained the advantages of a supply from a ship on the training trips of their school cruisers, which had carried out their world trips from 1930 together with the chartered tanker Hansa (1929, 5,978 GRT, 11 kn). This was therefore converted into a supply ship at the beginning of 1937 and purchased on November 17, 1937 as the first naval supply ship and put into service under the new name Samland .
In June 1936 the first orders for three new “large supply ships” were placed with the Danzig shipyard of Schichau-Werke, which was then still abroad, and the Kiel Howaldtswerft , whereby the orders were presented to the outside world as tanker orders. The three ships were launched in 1937 and entered service in 1938. At the end of 1937 two more ships were ordered, but they were not completed until 1940 ( Warmia near Schichau) and 1943 ( Franconia ). Another four planned ships were not built, two orders placed in 1938 were canceled in 1941 before a keel was laid. The Dithmarschen built near Schichau was the first of the "large supply ships" to enter service on July 20, 1938, followed by the Altmark built near Howaldt on November 14, 1938 .
The Westerwald was launched as the second Schichau building on October 5, 1937 in Danzig and was put into service on December 16, 1938. Like her sister ships, the Westerwald had the typical tanker look with a bridge house in front and the engine with a chimney aft. The superstructures around the chimney and the forecastle were higher than on a normal tanker, as the additional cargo holds were located here. With a length of 179 m and a width of 22 m, the ship was about 30 m longer than the tankers supplied by German shipyards around the world at the time. The propulsion system also differed significantly from the civilian ships. Two high-pressure boilers drove geared turbine sets that enabled a top speed of over 20 knots (kn).
Mission history
The Westerwald's first long training mission took place in July 1939 , when it accompanied the new fleet flagship Gneisenau after its first conversion on a training voyage lasting several weeks near Madeira .
On August 22, 1939, she left Germany to support the ironclad Germany in the event that war was expected to break out in the North Atlantic. The supply ship took up a position south of Greenland and supplied the ironclad eight times until its mission was canceled. The Germany had sunk only two steamers after surgery released on 26 September. On November 22nd, the Westerwald returned home a week after the ironclad and was renamed Nordmark .
In March 1940, the ship, which was repaired in Hamburg, moved to Swinoujscie in the preparatory phase of the "Weser Exercise" company . On April 10, 1940, the Nordmark refueled the two battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst in the North Sea while they were waiting for the German destroyers to leave Narvik and then return home with destroyer security. The Nordmark remained in the Arctic Ocean and on May 13, 1940, off Jan Mayen, supplied the auxiliary cruiser Widder, which was sailing into the Atlantic . During the stay in the Arctic Ocean, the Nordmark had suffered damage to the bow and stern from the ice, but was still standing during operation "Juno" when the two German battleships with the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper advanced against the Allied forces evacuating Norway, available as a supplier and marched home at the same time. She was discovered and attacked by British aircraft on July 27, 1940 near the Jutian coast. The damage was repaired during the following shipyard layover in Hamburg.
Seven months in the Atlantic
Subsequently, on September 12, 1940 , the Nordmark was assigned to the armored ship Admiral Scheer, which was reclassified as a heavy cruiser, as the supplier for its trade warfare. On October 23, both ships left Gotenhafen and ran through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to Brunsbüttel . Secured by three torpedo boats, they drove to Stavanger and further north on the 27th . In very bad weather conditions, the commander of the cruiser, Captain Theodor Krancke , decided to attempt the breakthrough into the North Atlantic immediately on the heights of Bergen and released his companions to Bergen. The tanker that remained behind was supposed to suggest to the enemy that the Admiral Scheer was still in Norwegian waters.
After the successful breakthrough of the Nordmark into the North Atlantic, the two ships did not meet until November 14, west of the Azores, after the attack of the Admiral Scheer on the convoy HX 84 . The Admiral Scheer replenished its supplies; She had already taken fuel two days earlier from the Eurofeld tanker dispatched from Tenerife . The Nordmark was on the march for the first meeting with the Admiral Scheer on 9/10. November met the submarine U 65 and supplied it with fuel. The submarine was supposed to operate off the West African coast. It hit the submarine on 28/29. again and also took a prisoner from him. On December 6th, 350 nm east of Suriname , the supply ship met the Admiral Scheer again , who added to her supplies and carried out some repairs using the spare parts and the engineers from Nordmark . On the 7th U 65 was refueled again.
On December 14th, the Nordmark and the Admiral Scheer met 150 nm southwest of Cape Verde and the cruiser replenished supplies and fuel. The next meeting took place on December 26th in the South Atlantic west of St. Helena . The Admiral Scheer brought the refrigerated ship Duquesa (8,651 GRT), which had been hijacked a week earlier and had 14.5 million eggs and over 3,000 t of beef on board. The auxiliary cruisers Thor and Pinguin and the tanker Eurofeld also came to this meeting .
The Nordmark remained in the supply area while the combat ships sought out new operational areas. The last time the Thor left the supply ship after refilling the fuel and supplies was on January 6, 1941. At the same time, the Norwegian tanker Storstad arrived on October 7, 1940 by the Pinguin , from which the Nordmark took over 6,500 tons of diesel oil and which it finally bought equipped the breakthrough to France. The conversion of the Eurofeld into a prison ship then began , as this tanker had delivered its cargo. From January 10th to 13th, he took over 1,200 tons of fuel and over 100 prisoners from the Nordmark and began the march to France.
From January 15 to 17, Nordmark took over supplies from Duquesa . Little fuel was available for the coal-fired ship, as coal-fired ships had not been taken as a prize . The refrigerated ship, jokingly referred to as the Wilhelmshaven-Süd provision office , was therefore towed and only operated the refrigeration systems with their own machines, in which everything combustible on board was burned.
The Admiral Scheer returned on January 24th and replenished her supplies, followed by her pinch of Sandefjord . The tanker's oil load was unsuitable for the cruiser, but Nordmark took over part of it for suitable consumers. About 200 prisoners were accommodated by the German ships on the Sandefjord , and she then ran under a prize crew to Gironde , which she reached on February 27. Since the SKL had meanwhile decided that all whaling ships brought up by the Pinguin should be sent to France as prizes, the Admiral Scheer left suitable personnel behind on the Nordmark . This ran with the Duquesa in tow to the next agreed meeting point and gave 1,338 tons of fuel and other supplies to the auxiliary cruiser Kormoran from February 7th to 9th, 1941 and took over 170 of his prisoners from the auxiliary cruiser. The next ship she met on February 11 was the HAPAG combination ship Portland , which had been in Talcahuano since the beginning of the war and had left the Chilean port in January with a low fuel supply. It now brought fresh food and received the fuel it needed for the journey home.
On February 15th, the penguin arrived back at the Nordmark . She was given staff for the prize crews of her prey, and the prize Duquesa was left to her as there was no fuel left for her. The auxiliary cruiser and the supply ship Alstertor , which arrived on the 18th, took over supplies as far as possible, and the Pinguin then sank the refrigerated ship. The Nordmark left the supply area and ran north off the Brazilian coast north of the equator , where it was primarily supposed to supply submarines. First, however, on March 9th, she again supplied the Admiral Scheer and took over their prisoners before the cruiser marched back home.
From April 1 to April 4, the Nordmark took over fuel and supplies from the tanker Ill (7,603 GRT) sent from France , which was captured in Norway in 1940. Fresh food was then taken over from the tanker Rudolf Albrecht , who came from Tenerife . On April 7th, the Nordmark supplied the submarines U 105 and U 106, which operate off Rio de Janeiro and were supposed to secure the outgoing German blockade breaker Lech (3,290 GRT).
On the way back south to the supply area of Andalusia , the Nordmark was discovered by the Alcantara aircraft . She posed as the American ship Prairie , which was accepted. Before the British found out that this could not be the case, they had lost contact and could not find the German ship.
On April 16 and 17, the Nordmark supplied the Italian submarines Gugliemotti , Archimede and Galileo Ferraris , which broke out of Massaua on March 3 and were on their way from the Red Sea to Bordeaux . On the 22nd, the most recently erupted Perla was treated. The prisoners on board (apart from the injured) were handed over to the "prisoner transporter" Warmia , which was on the march from the Pacific to southern France with the prisoners of the auxiliary cruiser Orion . Then the Nordmark went north, met again with the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis and supplied U 105 and U 107 again on May 3, 1941 , in order to then finally end the mission.
On May 18, 1941, the destroyers Erich Steinbrinck , Bruno Heinemann and Friedrich Ihn picked up the returning supply ship Nordmark in the Bay of Biscay and guided it via Le Havre to Boulogne . There the minesweepers M 3 , M 4 and M 20 took over the security and brought the ship to Hamburg without damage until May 20, 1941. The three injured prisoners still on board were given ashore in Cuxhaven . In 212 days at sea, the Nordmark had covered 33,664 nautical miles and carried out 41 supplies. In addition to the Admiral Scheer and eight submarines, she had supplied the auxiliary cruisers Thor , Kormoran and Pinguin as well as ten auxiliary ships, prizes and blockade breakers.
Further missions
The ship was overhauled in Hamburg and assigned to the fleet for missions from Norway in March 1942. There she regularly supplied the fleet units and did not move back to Copenhagen until April 1945 .
In British service
On June 6, 1945, the cruiser Diadem and the destroyer Oribi led the Nordmark across the North Sea to Rosyth , where it was taken over by the Royal Navy as Northmark .
In July 1947, the ship was put back into service after an overhaul, with the name changed to Bulawayo . In 1955, the former German supply ship was decommissioned and scrapped from October.
literature
- 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 1979-1993, DNB 550720391 .
- Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching 1968. (1981, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 )
Web links
- The Nordmark on german-navy.de
- Supply trip of the supply ship Nordmark , September 12, 1940 - May 21, 1941
- RFA Northmark on historicalrfa
- History of one-stop replenishment
Footnotes
- ↑ Hildebrand, p. 90.
- ↑ Hildebrand, p. 91f.
- ↑ Hildebrand, p. 89.
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 11.
- ↑ Hildebrand, p. 91.
- ↑ Eurofeld ex Beechleaf (shipyard: Richardson, Duck & Company Ltd, Stockton-on-Tees , BauNr. 649, built in 1916), since 1938 as a Eurofeld under the German flag.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 85: U 65 (from Stockhausen) on the way to Freetown .
- ^ Report on the use of the Storstad engl, the tanker reached Bordeaux on February 4th with over 500 prisoners; in German service it was called the Passat .
- ↑ Eurofeld again supplied the Thor on the march and did not arrive in Saint-Nazaire until March 2nd .
- ↑ Data on Duquesa
- ↑ Motor tanker Sandefjord 8,038 GRT, 12,000 tdw, built in 1929 as Herbjørn in Gothenburg , later German supply tanker Monsun .
- ↑ Kludas: Passenger Ships , Vol. 4, p. 192, Portland 1928, 7.132 GRT, took over prisoners from the Admiral Scheer .
- ^ History of Turicum , then Ill , shipyard: 1928 Krimpen, Netherlands, 7,824 GRT, confiscated in Oslo in 1940.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 105.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 107.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 120.