Windhoek (ship, 1936)
.jpg) The Windhoek
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The Windhoek of the Woermann Line (WL) was the largest ship of the oldest German Africa shipping company. Her sister ship Pretoria went to the German East Africa Line (DOAL). Both ships were the top ships of the German Africa Service from 1937 to 1939.
The Windhoek was in Lobito when the war broke out in 1939 . In December 1939 she managed to escape to South America, where she was laid up in Santos . Confiscated by the Brazilian government in January 1942, it was sold to the USA in May. On March 26, 1943, she was first commissioned as the USS Lejeune . The ship, lying in Tacoma since February 1948 , was scrapped in Portland from August 1966 .
History of the ship
In June 1935 the two German Africa shipping companies (DOAL and WL) that remained after the state reorganization ordered two 16,500 GRT 18- knot steamers from Blohm & Voss. The German Reich was very interested in the use of the ships with a capacity of 500 passengers, which were intended to attract an international audience and thus gain foreign currency, an idea that the state supervisory bodies had already pursued when promoting the East Asian express steamers ( Potsdam , Scharnhorst , Gneisenau ).
The first new building to be completed was Pretoria , named after the South African capital . The second ship was named after the capital Windhoek of the former German colony of Southwest Africa and assigned to the Woermann Line. The ship with the hull number 507 was launched on 17 August 1936, a month after its sister ship, launched and was delivered on 12 March 1937, three months after the first ship. The Windhoek was 175.7 m long, had two turbine sets with gearboxes of 14,200 HPw , the steam of which was generated in two oil-fired high-pressure boilers of the Benson type . The service speed of the new building was 18 knots. There were 152 seats in first class and up to 369 in tourist class to accommodate passengers. Although belonging to the Woermann line, the Windhoek , like all ships used on the main line, carried the DOAL's chimney mark. Up to the chimney mark, the ship was practically identical to the DOAL's Pretoria that was first delivered .
On April 12, 1937, the Windhoek began her maiden voyage to South Africa. The newbuildings were used on the main line to South Africa, which they managed 17 days from Hamburg via Rotterdam and Southampton to Las Palmas and on via Walvis Bay and Lüderitzbucht to Cape Town and were four days faster than the ships previously used. The ships then went on via Port Elizabeth , East London and Durban to Lourenco Marques , which was reached after 26 days. On the return journey, which began after two days of rest, the journey from Cape Town led directly to Europe.
Since, as a rule, nine loading days were required in Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp when leaving the country, an eight-day advance trip to the two Benelux ports was introduced for the unloading and loading processes, which also contained an offer for German tourists as "Hansafahrten": the guests were Excursions to Delft , The Hague , Scheveningen and Amsterdam or Mechelen , Leuven , Tervuren , Brussels and Ghent as well as visits to the battlefields of Ypres and even a three-day trip to Paris are offered. After returning to Hamburg, the ships left for South Africa.
The Windhoek was in 1939 when war broke out in Angola's Lobito , where the Woermann steamship Wagogo (3118 BRT, 1915) and Wameru (4076 BRT, 1920) refuge had found. On November 15, 1939, five crew members of the Windhoek set off with a lifeboat equipped with sails and a motor to the Canary Islands , which belong to Spain , where they arrived on January 17, 1940 and then returned to Germany. In December 1939, the Windhoek moved from Lobito, superficially disguised as a Japanese ship, to South America and on December 7, 1939, she called at the Brazilian Santos . The crossing succeeded in spite of the Allied search groups against the Admiral Graf Spee in the Atlantic, which the Woermann ships Adolph Woermann on November 22nd and the Watussi on December 2nd and the Ussukuma of the DOAL on December 5th presented.
Other German ships had also sought refuge in Santos, and in September 1939 the Monte Olivia (13750 GRT, 1925) and the modern motor cargo ship Porto Alegre (6105 GRT, 1936) had escaped to Germany. On January 13, 1940, the older cargo ship Santos (5943 BRT, 1923) also escaped from the port and reached Hamburg on March 16. By February 1940 a total of 15 Hamburg-Süd ships tried to escape from Brazil to Germany, which ten of them succeeded.
In addition to the Windhoek, the motor ship Babitonga (1922, 4422 GRT, 12 kn) of Hamburg-Süd and the Dresden (1937, 5567 GRT, 15 kn) of Norddeutscher Lloyd in Santos, which only arrived from Chile on November 15, 1939 , remained both from of the Navy as a supplier. The Dresden , a combined ship of the NDL in the South America West Coast Service, left the Brazilian port on March 28, 1941 to supply the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis . The Babitonga followed on April 24, 1941.
The Windhoek , lying in Santos for more than two years , was confiscated by Brazil on January 29, 1942, as was the German cargo ship Montevideo (6075 GRT) of Hamburg-Süd, lying in Rio Grande two days earlier . In contrast to the First World War in 1917, Brazil was unable to seize a large number of ships again, as German ships had been to Brazil in previous years (e.g. Antonio Delfino , Cap Norte ) or to support German trade troublemakers (such as Dresden , Babitonga ) had left.
The Windhoek was not ready for use when it was confiscated because the German crew of the ship had thoroughly destroyed the machinery in anticipation of the measures taken by the Brazilian authorities.
Service as an American troop transport
The US Navy bought the damaged ship from Brazil on May 12, 1942 to use it as a troop transport. First the Windhoek was towed to Rio de Janeiro. The USA dispatched 200 men to get the Windhoek ready to sail again. Finally, a new diesel engine was installed, delivered by ship in February, so that the ship could be transported to the USA for repairs under its own power. At the end of March 1943 it was put into service as the USS Lejeune for the transfer and transferred in 30 days to Norfolk, Virginia , where the former German Africa liner arrived on May 22, 1943.
Maintenance and repairs continued there. The ship received new turbine sets from Bethlehem Shipbuilding , three Babcock and Wilcox -D-type boilers, new gearboxes and only one (new) chimney. The previous luxury equipment in the cabin and service area was largely removed and the ship was set up for a crew of almost 500 men and the transport of 4500 soldiers. The ship was also armed with a 5 "-127 mm / L 38 Mk.12 cannon , four individual 3" -76 mm / L 50 Mk.17 cannons , four 40 mm twin anti-aircraft guns and a further thirteen individual 20 mm anti-aircraft guns .
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On May 12, 1944, the now operational troop transport USS Lejeune (AP 74) was put into service. The name was given in honor of Lieutenant General John A. Lejeune (1867-1942), commandant of the Marine Corps from 1920 to 1929 , who was the only officer in the Marines who had also commanded a division of the US Army .
The ship's first voyage began on June 11, 1944 with 4,460 soldiers from New York to Glasgow . On the first return trip, German prisoners of war were transported to the USA. By the end of the war, the Lejeune carried out ten round trips, whereby from the end of January 1945 mainly Le Havre in Europe was called. As part of Operation Magic Carpet , nine more trips were made up to May 1946 to repatriate American troops from Europe and to repatriate German and Italian prisoners of war. On her voyages between 1944 and 1946, she called at eight different ports on the east side of the Atlantic: in addition to Glasgow and Le Havre, she also called Greenock , Southampton , Plymouth , Cherbourg , Marseille and Oran .
From May 9, 1946, the ship was overhauled and converted in Norfolk. A cabin area for 230 passengers was installed again, which should also be used by women and children. Mainly the ship remained a troop transport for now 2700 soldiers. The peace crew was reduced to 350 men.
On September 28, 1946, the Lejeune moved from the American east coast to the Pacific in order to transport troops and internees on another four voyages from San Francisco between October 19, 1946 and August 1, 1947 to Shanghai , Tsingtau and Yokosuka . Her last voyage with the Naval Transport Service ended on August 29th in her old home port of New York. She returned to San Francisco on September 25th.
On October 2, the former Windhoek continued to Bremerton, Washington, where it was decommissioned on February 9, 1948 and then assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet in Tacoma , Wash. In July 1957 the Lejeune was removed from the list of ships of the US Navy and from August 1966 the ship was demolished in Portland.
DOAL's sister ship Pretoria
| Surname | Construction no. | GRT | Launched in service |
further fate |
| Pretoria | No. 506 | 16662 | July 16, 1936 December 11, 1936 |
from 1939 houseboat of the Kriegsmarine, February 1945 hospital ship, transport of refugees from the Danzig Bay to Denmark , taken over by the Royal Navy in May 1945, used as British troop transport Empire Doon from October 1945, 1948/49 conversion, then 18036 BRT Empire Orwell , as Gunung Djati from March 1959 pilgrim ship, from 1979 Indonesian troop transport Kri Tanjung Pandan IMO 5138395, 1987 in Taiwan scrapped |
Web links
- Page on the history of the shipping companies Deutsche Afrika-Linien, John T. Essberger, u. a. as well as the trading house C. Woermann under construction
- the AP 74 USS Lejeune
- AP 74 USS Lejeune
- USS Lejeune (AP 74)
literature
- Arnold Kludas : The ships of the German Africa Lines 1880 to 1945 . Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1975, ISBN 3-7979-1867-4 .
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping Volume IV Destruction and Rebirth 1914 to 1930 , Writings of the German Shipping Museum, Volume 21
- Arnold Kludas: The History of German Passenger Shipping Vol. V An era comes to an end from 1930 to 1990 , writings of the German Maritime Museum, volume 22
- Hans Georg Prager: Blohm & Voss Koehler Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977, ISBN 3-78220-127-2 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH (Herrsching 1968), ISBN 3-88199-0097
- Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1919 to 1985 . Steiger Verlag, Moers 1987, ISBN 3-921564-97-2 .
- Reinhart Schmelzkopf: Die deutsche Handelsschiffahrt 1919–1939 , Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, ISBN 3-7979-1847-X
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schmelzkopf: Handelsschiffahrt , p. 187
- ↑ melt head, p. 206
- ^ Prager: Blohm & Voss , p. 165
- ↑ Kludas: Passenger Shipping , Vol. V, p. 96.
- ↑ a b Kludas: Passenger Shipping , Vol. V, p. 98.
- ↑ Kludas: Afrikalinien , pp. 86, 88: Wagogo u. Wameru were sold to Portugal in May 1943
- ↑ Fred Schmidt: With MR 12 over the ocean , Steiniger-Verlage, Berlin 1940
- ↑ Antonio Delfino (13,589 GRT, 1922, 15 kn) from Bahia in September 1939, escaped to Germany
- ↑ Cap Norte (13,615 GRT, 1922, 15 kn) from Pernambuco in September 1939, captured on October 9th
- ↑ Kludas: Passenger Shipping , Vol. V, p. 150.
- ↑ a b c Kludas: Passenger Shipping , Vol. V, p. 96.
- ↑ Rothe: Passenger Ships , p. 142.
- ↑ naviearmatori.net, with photo from 1980