Z 1 Leberecht Maass
 Z1 1938
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Z 1 Leberecht Maass was one of four destroyers of the destroyer class ofthe German Navy in 1934 .
The boat was named after Rear Admiral Leberecht Maaß . It was the first destroyer that the Navy put into service. When it was erroneously sunk by its own air force in the spring of 1940, most of the crew were killed.
history
attack on Poland
At the beginning of the Second World War , the Leberecht Maass was used against the Polish Navy and was part of the German blockade force in the Danzig Bay . On September 3, 1939, she and Wolfgang Zenker , under the command of Rear Admiral Günther Lütjens , fired at the Polish destroyer Wicher and the mine- layer Gryf in the port of Gdynia . A Polish land battery on the Hela peninsula intervened in the artillery duel and scored a 15 cm hit on the Leberecht Maass . Four sailors were killed and four wounded. Thereupon Admiral Lütjens broke off the attack.
Company Vikings
In early 1940 the boat was assigned to the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla in the North Sea . On the evening of February 22, 1940, Z1 marched together with five other destroyers as part of " Operation Wikinger " in the direction of Doggerbank . The flotilla was accidentally attacked in the dark by several German He 111s of Group II of Kampfgeschwader 26 . The air force had not been informed about the "Operation Vikings" and the flight crew assumed they were attacking a British destroyer unit. The Leberecht Maass was hit by a 50 kg bomb between the bridge and the chimney and swerved to starboard. A few minutes later, the destroyer broke apart after a detonation during a second attack and sank with 282 men. Only 60 survivors were rescued, one of whom died on the way home. It was never entirely clear whether the detonation was another bomb hit (the He 111 had flown two attacks) or whether the destroyer hit a mine that was part of a British minefield laid in January 1940.
During the rescue attempts, the sister boat Max Schultz probably ran into a mine in the same field and sank with the entire crew.
Commanders
- Corvette Captain Friedrich Traugott Schmidt - January 14th to September 29th 1937
- Corvette Captain / Frigate Captain Gerhard Wagner - October 4, 1937 to April 4, 1939
- Corvette Captain Fritz Bassenge - April 5, 1939 to February 22, 1940
Known crew members
- Carl-Heinz Birnbacher (1910–1991) was Deputy Commander of the Fleet from 1968 to 1970 as Rear Admiral of the German Navy
- Walter Heck (1910–1987), was from 1969 to 1970 as Flotilla Admiral sub-department head in the command staff of the armed forces
literature
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships - biographies. Volume 5.
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: German Destroyers of World War II - Warships of the Kriegsmarine . Seaforth Publishing, 2014, pp. 77 + 78.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The former Kriegsmarine referred to all vehicles up to and including destroyer size as boats, regardless of the fact that they were mostly ships. See: boat / ship
- ↑ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Maritime War 1939–1945, February 1940. Retrieved on January 24, 2017 .
Destroyer 1934: Z 1 Leberecht Maass | Z 2 Georg Thiele | Z 3 Max Schultz | Z 4 Richard Beitzen
Destroyer 1934A: Z 5 Paul Jacobi | Z 6 Theodor Riedel | Z 7 Hermann Schoemann | Z 8 Bruno Heinemann | Z 9 Wolfgang Zenker | Z 10 Hans Lody | Z 11 Bernd von Arnim | Z 12 Erich Giese | Z 13 Erich Koellner | Z 14 Friedrich Ihn | Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck | Z 16 Friedrich Eckoldt