Z 5 Paul Jacobi

**Z 5 Paul Jacobi**
	Paul Jacobi in an American identification manual
Ship data
flag	German Empire France;
Ship type	destroyer
class	Destroyer 1934A
Shipyard	AG Weser ( Deschimag ), Bremen
Keel laying	July 15, 1935
Launch	March 24, 1936
Commissioning	June 29, 1937
Whereabouts	Scrapped in 1951
Ship dimensions and crew
length	121 m ( Lüa )
width	11.3 m
Draft	Max. 4.23 m
displacement	3415 t
crew	325 men
Machine system
machine	6 Wagner-Deschimag steam boiler; 2 sets of Wagner-Deschimag steam turbines
Machine ; performance	70,000 PS (51,485 kW)
Top ; speed	36 kn (67 km / h)
propeller	2
Armament
	5 × 1 Sk-12.7-cm-L / 45 ; 2 × 2 flak 3.7 cm ; 6 × 1 (later 8) 2 cm L / 65 Fla-MK C / 30 ; 2 × 4 torpedo tubes Ø 53.3 cm; up to 60 sea mines ; Depth charges;

Z 5 Paul Jacobi was a class 1934 A destroyer of the German Navy . It was named after the boss of the 17th torpedo boat semi-flotilla, Kapitänleutnant Paul Jacobi, who was killed in the sinking of his guide boat V 25 off the Amrumbank on February 13, 1915. The destroyer survived World War II , was awarded to the Royal Navy , then joined the French Navy and was scrapped in 1958.

history

The destroyer built at Deschimag -Werft AG Weser in Bremen was put into service on June 29, 1937. This was followed by training trips in the Baltic Sea and, from April 1938, offshore testing in the northern North Sea. In October, the Paul Jacobi set sail with the ironclad Admiral Graf Spee on a trip to Spain and North Africa. As of February 1939, the destroyer was on schedule in the Kriegsmarine shipyard in Wilhelmshaven .

At the start of the war, Z 5 was still in the shipyard. The destroyer did not sail into the Baltic Sea until September 29. In October 1939 the Paul Jacobi and other destroyers waged a trade war in the Skagerrak . In April 1940 the boat took part in the occupation of Norway . On May 8, 1940, it was returned to Germany to go to the shipyard in Wilhelmshaven. The destroyer was operational again on June 11, 1940, marched to Norway and escorted the battleship Gneisenau , which was damaged by the Juno company, to Kiel .

After throwing mine barriers on the English coast, the Paul Jacobi returned to Wilhelmshaven for a scheduled layover time. In May 1941 the destroyer was operational again, but had to visit the shipyard again after a short time and was not operational until the end of the year due to technical problems.

In January 1942, the participating Paul Jacobi on companies polar night , the laying of the battleship Tirpitz from the German Bight to Norway. This was followed by relocation to France and participation in the Cerberus companies (repatriation of the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to Germany) and Sportpalast (relocation of the heavy cruisers Prinz Eugen and Admiral Scheer from Brunsbüttelkoog (Elbe) to Norway). This was followed in March 1942 together with the battleship Tirpitz and the destroyers Z 14 Friedrich Ihn , Z 7 Hermann Schoemann and Z 25 an advance into the North Sea. The ships just missed the northern sea convoys PQ 12 and QP 8 . Friedrich Ihn was only able to sink the straggler Izora (2815 GRT) . The boat then guided the cruiser Prinz Eugen , which was damaged after a torpedo hit, back to Germany ( company Zauberflöte ) and then went to the shipyard at the Deutsche Werke in Kiel until the end of November .

Z 5 was relocated back to Norwegian waters in January 1943, where the destroyer was mainly used in escort service. With the Hermelin company (return of the heavy cruiser Lützow to Germany), the Paul Jacobi returned to Kiel on September 30, 1943 and went back to the shipyard. The boat was damaged in two heavy air raids on the shipyard, so that the shipyard lay-in time was extended considerably and the destroyer was only ready for war again in December 1944.

At the beginning of 1945, Z 5 was involved in security tasks for the protection of refugee ships in the Baltic Sea. The destroyer attacked Soviet troops on land near Gotenhafen with its artillery on March 21 and 22 and was otherwise parked as security for the cruiser Prinz Eugen . On the first four days of April there was another attack on land targets, on May 3rd the boat moved back to the Flensburg Fjord.

On May 3, the destroyer reached the Geltinger Bay off Flensburg . During the night, some crew members tried to destroy the ship's gyro compass in order to prevent it from sailing east again. On May 4th, three main perpetrators were sentenced to death by a court martial on board the destroyer lying in front of Mürwik and then on May 5th they were shot at the shooting range on Tremmerupweg.

On May 7, 1945 the Paul Jacobi was decommissioned. The boat was delivered to Great Britain on January 15, 1946. On February 4, 1946, the Royal Navy handed the ship in Cherbourg to the French Navy , where it was in service as Desaix from 1947 to 1949 . In 1954 it was struck from the list of warships and scrapped in 1958.

List of commanders

No.	Surname	Beginning of the term of office	Term expires	Remarks
1.	Corvette Captain Rudolf Peters	June 29, 1937	November 3, 1938
2.	Corvette Captain Hans Georg Zimmer	November 4, 1938	March 31, 1941
-	Captain Karl Hetz	December 1940		entrusted with the conduct of business
3.	Corvette Captain / Frigate Captain Hermann Schlieper	April 1, 1941	July 9, 1944
4th	Corvette Captain Max Bülter	July 10, 1944	May 9, 1945
-	Corvette Captain Heinrich Erdmann	May 10, 1945		only nominated

Known crew members

Karl Hetz (1910–1980) was Vice Admiral from 1966 to 1970 in command of the fleet

literature

Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung [arr.]: The ships of the German Navy and Air Force 1939–1945 and their whereabouts. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 2000 (9th, revised and expanded edition), ISBN 978-3-7637-6215-6 .
Wolfgang Harnack: Destroyers under the German flag: 1934 to 1945. Koehler, Hamburg 1997 (3rd, revised edition), ISBN 3-7822-0698-3 .
Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: German Destroyers of World War II - Warships of the Kriegsmarine . Seaforth Publishing, 2014, p. 82 ff.
Volkmar Kühn: Torpedo boats and destroyers in action 1939–1945. The fight and destruction of a weapon. Flechsig, Würzburg 2006 (6th, ext. A. special edition), ISBN 978-3-88189-637-5 .
Mike J. Whitley: Destroyers in World War II: Technique - Class - Types. Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 978-3-613-01426-8 .
Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships - biographies . Volume 6

Individual evidence

↑ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Maritime War 1939–1945, March 1942 , accessed on August 6, 2013
↑ Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the Sea War 1939–1945 Index of the Enterprises in the Württemberg State Library , accessed on June 16, 2012
↑ Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships - biographies . Volume 6, p. 218
↑ Gerhard Mauz : You don't just sign something like that . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1965, p. 73 ( online ).
^ The downfall in Flensburg in 1945. (PDF) State Center for Civic Education Schleswig-Holstein , p. 12 f. , archived from the original on October 20, 2016 ; accessed on June 30, 2017 (presentation on January 10, 2012 by Gerhard Paul ).

[1] Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Maritime War 1939–1945, March 1942 , accessed on August 6, 2013

[2] Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the Sea War 1939–1945 Index of the Enterprises in the Württemberg State Library , accessed on June 16, 2012

[3] Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships - biographies . Volume 6, p. 218

[4] Gerhard Mauz : You don't just sign something like that . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1965, p. 73 ( online ).

[5] The downfall in Flensburg in 1945. (PDF) State Center for Civic Education Schleswig-Holstein , p. 12 f. , archived from the original on October 20, 2016 ; accessed on June 30, 2017 (presentation on January 10, 2012 by Gerhard Paul ).