Westmark (ship, 1923)
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The ship, originally named Panigaglia, was a mine and ammunition transporter built in 1923 as well as an auxiliary mine-layer of the Regia Marina . In September 1943, the Navy took over the ship and put it into service as a mine ship under the name Westmark . In April 1945, the crew sank the ship. It was lifted and finally sank in 1947. The ship was named after the Gau Westmark .
Construction and technical data
The Panigaglia was laid down at Ansaldo San Giorgio del Muggiano in La Spezia in 1923 as the lead ship of the three units of the Panigaglia class like her sister ships Vallelunga and Buffoluto . The launch took place on July 10, 1923, the delivery to the Regia Marina in December 1924. The name of the ship - like that of the sister ships - goes back to one of the large ammunition depots of the Navy.
Her length was 56.24 meters, she was 9.00 meters wide and had a draft of 3.00 meters. The design displacement was 916 tons standard and 1071 tons maximum. The drive consisted of two standing 3-cylinder triple expansion machines with two Thornycroft water tube boilers, which achieved 1400 hp and operated on two screws . With that she reached a speed of 11.0 knots and had a range of 960 miles. In addition to a capacity of 30 to 53 mines, the ship was armed with two 100 / 47mm cannons and a machine gun. The crew consisted of 3 officers and 61 men.
Ammunition transporter and auxiliary mine- layers Panigaglia of the Regia Marina
Their job was to transport ammunition and sea mines from the naval depots to the ports and ships that needed them. No further information is available on these routine tasks in peacetime.
At the time of Italy's entry into the Second World War on June 10, 1940, the Panigaglia was already being operated as an auxiliary mine- layer and was in Naples with her two sister ships. When the defensive barriers were set for Italy to enter the war in June 1940, only the Buffoluto was used.
The information on further missions also remains sparse. Only one mission is known in June 1941 in Greece. In mid-June 1941, the Panigaglia brought anti-torpedo nets to Greece. These were to be placed at the two ends of the Corinth Canal and in the entrance to Patras in order to protect the tankers loading and unloading there from submarines. In Greece, the Italian Navy made the ship available to the Kriegsmarine at the end of July 1941, which used the ship as a net layer in the newly established Netzsperrgruppe Süd. On August 3, Panigaglia, together with the motor sailers Margherita and San Giuseppe, put the first grid lock on Lemnos and then others, especially on Crete. In August 1942, the Navy returned the ship at the request of the Italian Navy.
The next notes refer to the period after the Italian surrender on September 8, 1943.
Mine ship Westmark of the German Navy
On September 8, 1943, the ship fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht in La Spezia. In October, the ship sank in the Bay of La Spezia after being hit by bombs and was lifted again from January 11 to April 20, 1944. It was not until September 1944 that the Navy put the ship into service as a mine ship under the name Westmark . The ship was manned by the crew and the commander Kapitänleutnant H. Luckey, of the mine ship Dietrich von Bern , which had previously sunk in the port of Genoa .
In the period that followed, Westmark carried out blocking operations south of La Spezia and in the Gulf of Naples. In November / December 1944, the ship's crew was deployed on land against partisans. At the end of the war, the crew sank the ship lying in La Spezia on April 19, 1945. In 1946 the ship was lifted and repaired. In 1947 it finally sank after an explosion.
literature
- Maurizio Brescia: Mussolini's Navy. A Reference Guide to the Regia Marina 1930-1945 . E-Book, Kindle Edition 2012, ISBN 978-1-84832-115-1 .
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 3: Submarines, auxiliary cruisers, mine ships, net layers and barrier breakers . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1985, ISBN 3-7637-4802-4 .
- Karl von Kutzleben, Wilhelm Schroeder, Jochen Brennecke: Mine ships 1939–1945. The mysterious missions of the “midnight squadron” . Köhler, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-7822-0844-7 .
- Reinhart Schmelzkopf: Foreign ships in German hands . Strandgut Verlag, Cuxhaven 2004.
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: Die Deutsche Kriegsschiffe, Volume 9: Historical overview, collective chapter landing craft, mine ships, minesweepers, speedboats, training ships, special ships, tenders and escort ships, torpedo boats, supply ships . Mundus Verlag, 1999.
- Plato Alexiades: Target Corinth Canal: 1940-1944 . Pen & Sword Books, Barnsley 2015, ISBN 1-4738-2756-6 .
- Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare (ed.): La Guerra di Mine . Roma 1966.
Web links
- wlb-stuttgart.de accessed on September 5, 2017
- wlb-stuttgart.de accessed on September 8, 2017
- wlb-stuttgart.de accessed on September 5, 2017
- naval-history.net accessed on September 5, 2017
- navypedia.org.Retrieved September 5, 2017
- xoomer.virgilio.it accessed on September 7, 2017
- antiqueprints-maps.com accessed on September 7, 2017 (photo of the sister ship "Buffoluto")
- naviearmatori.net accessed on September 7, 2017 (photo of the sister ship '' Buffoluto '')
- associazione-venus.it accessed on September 7, 2017 (photo of the sister ship "Buffoluto")
Individual evidence
- ↑ Brescia
- ↑ Gröner, p. 187; Schmelzkopf, p. 259; von Kutzleben, p. 250 f .; Brescia antiqueprints-maps.com
- ↑ naval-history.net wlb-stuttgart.de
- ↑ wlb-stuttgart.de
- ↑ Alexiades, p. 48
- ^ Peter Arndt, Peter Schenk: German network blocking associations . Edition Erich Gröner, Berlin 2010, ISBN 3-9813904-0-7 , p. 41 f., P. 49
- ↑ Gröner, p. 188, Schmelzkopf, p. 187; von Kutzleben, p. 227 names September 16 as the date when the German mine ship Pommern off Livorno.
- ↑ Gröner, p. 188, Schmelzkopf, p. 187; von Kutzleben, p. 227, Hildebrand, p. 42
- ↑ von Kutzleben, p. 227