Vitjas (ship, 1939)
| Vityaz | |
|---|---|
 The Vitjas as a museum ship in Kaliningrad (2017) |
|
| Ship data | |
| Ship type: | Combined ship / research ship |
| Flag: | Russia |
| Home port: | Kaliningrad |
| Measurement: | 2471 GRT |
| Displacement: | 5710 t |
| Length: | 109.44 m |
| Width: | 14.56 m |
| Draft: | 5.86 m |
| Drive: | 1 × diesel engine |
| Total output: | 3000 kW |
| Speed: | 14 knots |
| Team: | 66 |
| Builder: | Deschimag , Seebeck plant , Wesermünde |
| Delivery: | August 1939 to the steamship company "Neptun", Bremen |
The Vitjas ( Russian Витязь , "knight" or "Recke"; English transcription Vityaz ) is a former cargo ship that was built as Mars in August 1939 by Deschimag in the Wesermünde plant in Seebeck for the steamship company "Neptun" in Bremen .
history
As Mars by the Neptune line ordered and with the hull number 614 from the stack left, the ship was completed in August 1939 on the Seebeck Werft and initially from its shipping company to transport fruits from Spain used. In 1940 the Mars was confiscated by the Navy , returned to the owner in the same year, but again confiscated in 1942 and used for transport tasks in the Baltic Sea region until the end of the war. In December 1943, the ship was damaged in an air raid on Bremen , but was later repaired. Towards the end of the war, it saved an estimated 20,000 people from the advancing Red Army when transporting the wounded and refugees from the end of 1944 . The Mars was the last ship that left the encircled port of Pillau on April 14, 1945 with about 4,000 refugees for Copenhagen .
When the war ended in May 1945, located in Copenhagen Mars by the British Ministry of War Transport confiscated and as Empire Forth launched .
In 1946 the ship was handed over to the Soviet government and after being renamed Экватор ("Equator") with the number M-582, it was initially operated as a training ship. In 1948 another name was changed to Витязь .
By 1949 the Vitjas was converted into a research ship in Wismar . After a test in the Black Sea , the ship set sail for its first research voyage in the Japanese , Okhotsk and Bering Seas . During the voyage in the course of the International Geophysical Year 1957 , Witjastief 1, named after the ship, was discovered in the Mariana Trench , which at 11,034 m represents the deepest known point in the world ocean. In May 1959, the ship anchored at a depth of 9600 meters in the Mariana Trench. During the research trips, which mainly took the ship to the Pacific , the manganese nodules were discovered and explored on the seabed. After 65 research trips, on which more than one million nautical miles (almost two million kilometers) were covered, the ship was decommissioned in 1979.
The Vitjas as a museum ship
After a long layover, the Vitjas were finally put up as a museum ship from 1981/82. After the Vitjas were overhauled in the years 1991 to 1994 in the Jantar shipyard , the former Königsberg Schichau shipyard , and prepared for further museum use, it has been exhibited in the Kaliningrad Maritime Museum (Musei mirovowo okeana) since April 12, 1995 .
literature
- Heinrich Tamm: before MARS VITJAS became . In: Köhler's fleet calendar . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1993, p. 60-64 .
- Harald Joormann: Research ship “Vityaz” (ex “Mars”) reappeared . In: Schiffahrt International 1/96 . Schiffahrts-Verlag "Hansa", Hamburg 1996, p. 22 .
Web links
- Museum entry of the Vityas (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ a b The Vityaz on Miramar Ship Index (English)
- ↑ a b c Ships of the shipping company Neptun TheShipsList (English)
- ↑ Hans Jürgen Witthöft: The German merchant fleet 1939-1945 . tape 2 merchant ships * blockade breakers * auxiliary warships. Muster-Schmidt Verlagsgesellschaft, Göttingen 1971.
- ↑ a b Hartmut Ehlers: Museum Ships in Kaliningrad . In: Marine News , Vol. 56, No. 3, March 2002, pp. 146-147
Coordinates: 54 ° 42 ′ 22.1 ″ N , 20 ° 29 ′ 59.3 ″ E