Category Archives: World War One

Schlieffen, adjacent

Posted on by One comment

Lt. Gen. Friedrich Von Boettcher, the new German military attaché to Washington, is seen reviewing the horse soldiers of the 14th U.S. Cavalry during his visit to the World’s Fair, Chicago, in August 1933. These troops were stationed at Camp John Whistler in the Fair Grounds.

Signal Corps photo 111-SC-99762. National Archives Identifier 329583324.

A former artillery officer in the Royal Saxon Army (Königlich Sächsische Armee), during the Great War, Von Boetticher transferred to the German General Staff and ended the war as a major, with two Iron Crosses and the Hohenzollern Ritterkreuz. A buddy of Von Seeckt, he served on numerous disarmament commissions and was the German military plenipotentiary to the League of Nations during the Weimar era, then as head of the German Army’s Artillery School at Jüterbog, before being transferred to D.C. in April 1933.

He remained in Washington as something of a terribly ineffective attaché until he and the remainder of the German legation were shown the door in early 1942– leaving his adult children in America. Arriving back in Germany, he served a series of quiet roles on the OKW, earning a Kriegsverdienstkreuz and a Ritterkreuz during WWII. Captured in 1945, he cooled his heels in a POW camp in Luxembourg in Bad Mondorf in the former Palace Hotel with many other high-ranking German military officers for two years, then retired.

Meanwhile, his son Friedrich joined the U.S. Army in 1944, went to Japan with the Occupation forces, and became a U.S. citizen in 1946. His youngest daughter, Hildegard, later married the British officer Captain Horace Marsden, and the couple emigrated to Canada in 1951. Ironically, his New York-born grandson, from his physician daughter Adelheid, became a U.S. Army doctor who served as a physician in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam.

Post-war, Herr Von Boetticher rekindled relations with assorted American officers and worked on compiling historical resources. Assigned to the U.S. Army’s Military Foreign Studies Program until 1952, he undertook lecture tours to the States.

Von Boetticher was a noted author who wrote at least seven volumes of military history and theory. He was also a super fan of the late, great Prussian Field Marshal Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, besides penning three books on the man, going so far as to marry the man’s second granddaughter, Anna Josepha von Hanke, 25 years his junior, in 1953.

General der Artillerie von Boetticher died on 28 September 1967 in Bielefeld-Schildesche, aged 85.

Warship Wednesday, August 13, 2025:  A Long-Lived Tyne Built Ship

Posted on by Leave a comment

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, August 13, 2025:  A Long-Lived Tyne Built Ship

Photo: Naval History and Heritage Command NH 58988

Above, we see the fine Armstrong-built Asama-class armored cruiser Tokiwa of the Imperial Japanese Navy photographed in 1899 with a bone in her teeth.

Amazingly, this indomitable warship would serve nearly a half-century and be lost during her fifth war for the emperor, some 80 years ago this week.

The Asamas

The late 19th/early century Imperial Japanese Navy was very European in construction. Ten out of ten battlewagons carrying the Rising Sun flag against the Russians in 1904 were built in the yards of Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Vickers in Britain.

Of the Emperor’s armored cruisers, Izumo and her sister Iwate came from Armstrong, Yakumo hailed from the German yard of AG Vulcan, Kasuga and Nisshin from Ansaldo in Genoa, and Azuma from Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire in France. Ordered in 1897 alongside these six cruisers were another pair based on an improved design of the Chilean O’Higgins.

The Chilean armored cruiser O’Higgins was built in 1896-98 at Armstrong to the design of Sir Philip Watts for £700,000. The 8,500-ton 412-foot long three-piper could make 21.6 knots on a 30-boiler (16,250 ihp) plant and carried four 8″/40s and 10 6″/40s. She had a Harvey nickel steel armor belt that ranged from 5 to 7 inches, while her conning tower was protected with 8. She remained in Chilean service until 1933.

Sir Philip tweaked the one-off O’Higgins design to add more armor protection (2,100 tons all told) and horsepower to carry it all. Instead of a belt that maxed out at seven inches and the eight-inch CT, this new design rocked as much as 14 inches. It also used extensive compartmentalization with 163 watertight compartments, 32 of which were in the double bottom. This added 1,200 tons to the displacement and stretched the hull to 442 feet. The powerplant dropped the forest of 30 boilers seen on the Chilean ship for a dozen larger single-side cylindrical boilers and upped the ihp to 18,000 to keep the same (or better) speed.

Paid for out of a Chinese indemnity given to Japan as part of the spoils of the 1895 war, these two ships would be named Asama and Tokiwa, after traditional regions in the Empire.

The weaponry would also be stepped up a bit from O’Higgins.

While the Chilean ship carried four EOC 8″/40 Pattern T guns in single mounts, the new Asamas would carry two pairs of improved EOC 8″/45 Pattern U (41st Year Type in Japanese service) guns, the same type which would go on to be carried by the rest of Japan’s armored cruisers as well as the post Russo-Japanese War domestically built Ibuki-class armored cruisers. These were protected by six inches of armor over their gun houses and were serviced by electric hoists from the magazines.

Asama photographed during a visit to an American port between the wars. Note her 8″/45 forward turret. 80-G-188753

Asama photographed during a visit to an American port between the wars. Note her 8″/45 stern turret. 80-G-188754

The secondaries on the Asamas were also beefed up, from the 10 6″/40 QF EOCs on O’Higgins in five-inch turrets and casemates to 14 guns with 10 in casemates and four in single shielded mounts. Tertiary anti-boat armament included a dozen 3″/40 Armstrongs and seven 47/30 2.5-pounder Hotchkiss (Yamauchi) guns. Torpedo batteries included a 450mm tube in the bow and four on the beam. Likewise, two of her steam punts could be equipped with spar torpedoes.

The Asama class, 1914 Janes listing.

Meet Tokiwa

Laid down on 6 January 1898 at Elswick as Yard No. 662/armored cruiser No. 4 (her sister Asama was No. 661), Tokiwa took to the water on 6 July 1898 and was commissioned on 19 May 1899. She made a mean 23 knots on her speed trials.

Tokiwa conducting full power trials, Spring 1899, North Sea off Sunderland

On 19 May 1899, with Captain (later Admiral) Dewa Shigeto in command, Tokiwa left Britain for Yokosuka, completing the 11,000nm voyage in a handy 57 days– a heck of a shakedown cruise.

IJN Tokiwa Navy and Army Illustrated Feb. 10 1900

War (with China)!

Rated as a first-class cruiser, Tokiwa was dispatched on 19 June 1900 to join the Eight-Nation Alliance naval forces in Chinese waters during the Boxer Rebellion. While arriving around the time of the assault against the Taku Forts, she was not used in the assault there, standing by offshore with a dozen other large, allied vessels as smaller gunboats closed in for the work.

However, landing forces from the Japanese ships sent 329 armed sailors ashore to help storm and garrison the forts.

While 54 Japanese marines were dispatched as part of Admiral Seymour’s overland relief expedition to Peking, I can’t say whether any of those came from Tokiwa.

Admiral Seymour’s expedition: Japanese troops on the march by H. M. Koekkoch

Tokiwa returned to Kure on 20 August.

War (with Russia)!

Clustered with the armored cruisers Izumo, Iwate, Azuma, Yakumo, and Asama, along with the dispatch boat Chihaya, Tokiwa formed the 2nd Squadron under VADM Kamimura in 1903. This force proved a key left hook to the right cross of Togo’s 1st Squadron during the war against the Tsar.

Captain Shigetaro Yoshimatsu became Tokiwa’s eighth skipper on 19 January 1904. A professional officer who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1880, he had studied in France and England and fought as a gunnery officer on the second-class cruiser Yoshino during the 1894 war with China. He had been XO on Tokiwa’s sister Asama when she took part in the 1902 Spithead naval review celebrating the coronation of King Edward VII.

Tokiwa. Copied from “War Vessels of Japan,” circa 1905. NH 74381

Three Meiji-era armored cruisers at work. Iwate (left), Tokiwa (center), and Yakumo (right), from the 2nd Fleet during the late Russo-Japanese War. Of note, the 9,500-ton Yakumo was the only large German-built warship in the Japanese Navy, delivered in 1900 by AG Vulcan Stettin. Both Iwate and Tokiwa were built at Armstrong on the Tyne.

Offshore for the initial torpedo boat attack on the sleeping Russian anchorage at Port Arthur on 8 February 1904, she managed a few 8-inch shells lofted when the Russians sortied out the following morning, and thus began the blockade and later siege of that fortress city that would prove the hub on which the conflict revolved.

IJN Tokiwa in 1904

It was off that port that Tokiwa almost captured the Russian destroyer Steregushchiy in March and participated in rebuffing Marakov’s 13 April sortie that ended in his death upon the sinking of his flagship via mines.

Japanese destroyer IJN Sazanami, attempting to tow a sinking Steregushchiy, was lost in action against two Japanese cruisers, while Reshitel‘nyi managed to escape. In the fight, Reshitel‘nyi lost one killed and 16 injured– a third of her crew. William Lionel Wylie painting.

The Russian battleship Petropavlovsk sinks as Adm. Makarov stands bravely on deck. Tokiwa witnessed the scene. Japanese woodblock print

Relieved from the Port Arthur blockade in the summer 1904 to chase down a raiding trio of Russian armored cruisers (Rossia, Gromoboi, and Rurik) out of Vladivostok, Tokiwa, along with the armored cruisers Iwate, Izumo, and Azuma and protected cruisers Takachiho and Naniwa, finally clashed with the Russian cruisers off Ulsan on the early morning of 14 August. With the Russians outnumbered six hulls to three, the six-hour swirling artillery duel turned brutal, and Rurik was sunk, taking some 200 of her crew with her, while the severely damaged Rossia and Gromoboi managed to limp away.

Tokiwa landed some blows against Rossia and was slightly damaged by return fire, with three of her crew injured.

Rossia at Vladivostok after the Battle off Ulsan in August 1904. She suffered nearly 200 casualties from 28 hits delivered by the Japanese squadron, with a few of these coming from Tokiwa. Knocked out of the war for two months, her raiding career was capped.

Then, following the collapse of Port Arthur, came the Valkyrie ride of VADM Rozhestvensky’s 2nd Pacific (1st Baltic) Squadron through the straits of Tsushima. Tokiwa was there.

Battle of Tsushima. May 27, 1905, North of Oki Island. Following the 1st Squadron under the flag of Togo on Mikasa, a photograph was taken from the 2nd Squadron flagship Izumo, showing Azuma, Tokiwa, Yakumo, Asama, and Iwate turning to port at 15 knots.

During the battle, Tokiwa and her squadron engaged the Russians several times, most notably in the destruction of the 14,000-ton Peresvet-class battleship Oslyabya.

Death of the battleship Oslyabya in the Battle of Tsushima. (by Vasily Katrushenko)

When the smoke cleared, Tokiwa had suffered eight hits, mostly from smaller caliber shells, resulting in 15 casualties.

Post-war, she was a darling of the fleet, being chosen to escort Crown Prince Yoshihito (later Emperor Taisho) on his tour of Yamaguchi and Tokushima Prefectures in 1908.

IJN Tokiwa postcard 1908

The same year, she participated in the 1908 Kobe Fleet Review.

The 1908 Kobe Fleet Review (November 18th). From the left of the image: battleships Katori and Kashima, armored cruisers Izumo, Iwate, and Tokiwa, protected cruisers Soya (ex-Russian Varyag), Kasagi, and Chitose; from the right of the image: battleships Mikasa, Fuji, Asahi, Sagami (ex-Russian Peresvet), and Shikishima. A fleet review of the grand maneuvers attended by 48 warships, 52 destroyers, and 11 torpedo boats.

In 1910, both Asama and Tokiwa had their well-worn set of British boilers replaced with 16 more efficient 16 Miyabara boilers as part of a general mid-life refit.

War (with the Kaiser)!

When the Great War kicked off, British-allied Japan soon got involved in the rush to capture (and keep) Germany’s overseas colonies. As part of this, on 18 August 1914, she was assigned to the 4th Squadron along with Iwate and Yakumo, part of VADM Sadakichi Kato’s 2nd Fleet, detailed to blockade and seize the German treaty port of Tsingtao, an operation that began on the 27th of that month and stretched into early November.

A Japanese lithograph, showing the Japanese fighting German troops during the conquest of the German colony Tsingtao (today Qingdao) in China between 13 September and 7 November 1914. Via National Archives.

She was then dispatched to scour the West Pacific– along with other allied assets– in the attempt to run down Graf Spee’s East Asiatic Squadron. Once Spee was sent to the bottom along with most of his squadron in December and the last of his cruisers (SMS Dresden and the Hilfkruezer Prinz Eitel Friederich) were accounted for the following March 1915, the pressure eased and our aging cruiser was allowed to spend the rest of the war in a series of more pedestrian tasks, including a series of Grand Maneuvers.

Battleships Mikasa, Hizen, Shikishima, armored cruisers Izumo, Tokiwa, Azuma, and Nisshin during the Taisho 4 Grand Maneuvers in the Hyuga Nada Sea on October 25, 1915

Tokiwa photographed sometime after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and 1920.Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1986. NH 101759

NH 58987

NH 58681

Note the “mum” on her bow as she is clustered near U.S. Naval vessels. NH 58679

IJN Tokiwa, French postcard

She became active in a series of globetrotting training cruises, carrying naval academy cadets. This included the 44th class cadet training cruise to the U.S. with Yakumo from 5 April to 17 August 1917. A second cadet training cruise for the 46th class with Azuma from 1 March to 26 July 1919 jogged south to Australia. Azuma and Tokiwa teamed up for a third cruise with the 47th class that roamed to the Mediterranean from 24 November 1919-20 May 1920.

Montage, Practice Squadron with cruisers Tokiwa and Yakumo, 1917, during the cadet training cruise to the U.S. R.A. Iwamura. NH 111677

Ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Katori, Izumo, Iwate, Tokiwa, Asama, 1919, with HIH Crown Prince Hirohito aboard Katori off Korea. San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive.

Treaty rebuild

By 1921, both Asama and her sister Tokiwa, too slow for fleet operations, were reclassified as coast defense vessels. At the same time, many of Japan’s old armored cruisers were disarmed as part of the Naval Limitation Treaties, and their weapons were reduced.

The 8″/45s removed from Tokiwa and her fellow armored cruisers in the 1920s were recycled for use as coastal artillery, including two twin turrets at Tokyo Bay, four single guns mounted at Tarawa, and another four at Wake Island.

Between 30 September 1922 and 31 March 1923, Tokiwa was converted to a cruiser minelayer. In this, she landed her rear 8″/45 turret, her torpedo tubes, six of her 6″/40s, and all her obsolete 3-inch and 2.5-pounders. She then picked up accommodation for 300 mines on deck tracks for over stern sowing. A similar conversion was done to the old armored cruiser Aso (ex-Russian Bayan).

It was in this mine role that, on 1 August 1927, while training with mines in Saeki Bay, Kyushu, after returning from overseas service in China during the Shandong Intervention, Tokiwa suffered from an explosion that left 35 dead and another 65 injured. Through a combination of magazine flooding and assistance from nearby vessels, a complete disaster was avoided, and she was quickly repaired and returned to service.

The incident led to the redesign of the No. 5 Kai-1 mine to install safety features and a further redesign of several classes of new Japanese light and heavy cruisers to better handle damage.

October 1928, Kure. View from the stern of the battleship Nagato shows the Fuso directly ahead, with the mast and funnel of the Tokiwa, then a mine layer, visible in the background. To the left, the cruiser Nagara is moored in the foreground, with the Furutaka behind it

War (with China, again)!

Once repaired, Tokiwa spent most of the next decade in Chinese waters and frequently landed her sailors and marines for strongarmed use ashore, especially after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

Cruiser Tokiwa Rikusentai 2nd Co Cmd Plat in front of the Japanese Middle School (their HQ) on Range Rd, Shanghai, February 11th, 1932, photo by Austin Adachi

CM Tokiwa. View taken at Shanghai, China, 1932, by G.J. Freret, Jr., probably from USS Houston (CA-30). NH 51896

Cruiser minelayer Tokiwa. Passing USS Houston (CA-30), at Shanghai, China, on the Whangpoo River. Photographed by G.J. Freret, Jr., in February 1932. Note the ship’s boat being hoisted aboard by crane. NH 51877

She returned home in 1937 to have her 16 Miyabara boilers, which had been installed in 1910, replaced by 8 Kampon boilers, reducing her speed to 16 knots. During this refit, she hung up the pretext of being a cruiser, and remaining 8″/40s and 6″/40s were removed. This allowed for her mine storage to be bumped to 500 “eggs”, and she had a couple of 40mm and 10 twin 25mm AAA guns installed. Likewise, by this time, her sister Asama had been converted into a training ship.

Tokiwa was on hand in Yokohama Bay with 98 other IJN ships in October 1940 for the largest (and last) grand fleet review in Japanese history.

Battleship Yamashiro and the Type 97 flying boat Yamashiro firing the Imperial salute at the 2,600th Anniversary Fleet Review are the heavy cruiser Suzuya, the armored cruiser Tokiwa, and the seaplane tender Chiyoda.

War (with the Allies)!

On 29 November 1941, Tokiwa sailed from Truk as part of Operation “GI,” the invasion of the British Gilbert Islands, which began on 8 December (Japan time).

The following January, Tokiwa was part of Operation “R,” -the Invasions of Rabaul, New Britain, and Kavieng.

She felt her first Allied sting in a carrier raid at Kwajalein in February from USS Enterprise. Damaged in four near misses from 500-pound bombs, she suffered eight killed and 15 wounded. This sent her to Sasebo for three months of repairs.

Dispatched to respond to the Marine Raiders’ sweep of Makin Island in August 1942, she managed to pull quieter duty for (most of) the rest of the war, narrowly avoiding torpedoes from USS Salmon (SS-182) in 1943 on her way back to the Home Islands. There, she led a minelaying squadron (the 18th Sentai) that sowed over 6,000 mines.

Striking a mine off the Hesaki lighthouse in the Kanmon Strait in April 1945, Tokiwa put into Sasebo again for repairs and added another 10 25mm guns, giving her a final fit of 30 of these weapons (some reports state 37). She also had depth charge racks and throwers installed along with a Type 3 sonar and was fitted with primitive (2-shiki 2-go and 3-shiki 1-go) radars.

After laying minefields in her old 1905 stomping grounds in the Tsushima Strait, she was ironically damaged by a B-29-sown aerial mine on 3 June 1945 off Maizuru harbor. The damage was slight, and she left Maizuru after makeshift repairs for Ominato. In all, between 24 January 1944 and 30 June 1945, she laid 17 series of anti-submarine minefields in Japanese waters.

Five elderly (and mostly disarmed) Russo-Japanese war era cruisers were still afloat in Japanese home waters in the last days of the war: the everlasting sisters Asama and Tokiwa, along with Yakumo, Izumo, and Iwate. All were pummeled by American and British carrier-borne aircraft strikes in late July and early August 1945, with three of the five damaged so extensively they bottomed out in shallow water.

Japanese cruiser Iwate seen sunk off Kure in October 1945. She had been sunk by air attacks on 24 July. Photo by USS Siboney (CVE-112). 80-G-351365

It was at Ominato that Tokiwa was caught by aircraft from USS Essex and Randolph on the afternoon of 9 August. She suffered at least four direct bomb hits and at least that many near misses, crippling the ship and killing or wounding half of her crew. Towed to shallow water off Cape Ashizaki, she was beached, and her crew attempted repairs.

With the end of hostilities, her crew was relieved on 20 September, and she was removed from the Naval List on 30 November.

All these battered old bruisers were unceremoniously scrapped shortly after the war, and only one, Tsushima veteran Yakumo, ever sailed again under her own power– as an unarmed repatriation transport to bring 9,000 Japanese troops home from KMT-occupied Formosa in 1946.

Asama (Japanese training ship, ex-CA) at Kure, circa October 1945. She was scrapped along with her sister and the rest of Japan’s legacy armored cruisers by 1947. Collection of Captain D.L. Madeira, 1978. NH 86279

Epilogue

Today, there are few remains of Tokiwa despite her nearly 50 years (okay, 46 years, 11 months, 17 days) of service.

She is remembered in a variety of scale models

Between 3 October 1898 and 20 September 1945, she had 52 skippers. At least seven of these became admirals.

These included her Russo-Japanese War skipper, Capt. Shigetaro Yoshimatsu, who went on to become a full admiral and the sixth commander of the Combined Fleet (Rengo Kantaishireichokan) in November 1915, a post he held through October 1917.

Shigetaro Yoshimatsu, seen as the skipper of Tokiwa in 1904 and then as Admiral of the Navy in 1915. He passed in 1935, at age 75, having spent 37 of those years in uniform.

Another was Naoma Taniguchi, who, after serving as Tokiwa’s skipper in 1916-17, rose to become a full admiral and commander of the Combined Fleet, then Chief of the Naval General Staff in the early 1930s. Head of one of the IJN’s more rational factions, he was instrumental in the ratification of the Treaty of London and later refused to send ships to respond to the Manchurian Incident. For this, he and his deputy officers were forced into retirement in 1933, leaving more hawkish officers in charge. He passed soon after.

Then there was the Viscount Ogasawara, who translated Mahan into Japanese in 1899, served as Togo’s aide, and wrote several popular works on the Russo-Japanese war at sea, one of which was turned into a movie in 1930. Ogasawara later served as the director of the school that educated then Crown Prince Hirohito and, moving to the retired list in 1921 as a vice admiral, became a naval advisor to the throne through November 1945.

VADM Viscount Naganari Ogasawara was Togo’s aide and Hirohito’s teacher and advisor, taking a break between the two to command Tokiwa in 1912. He passed in 1958, aged 90, having spent 56 years in service. He was one of the last surviving Tsushima vets.

In 1989, the Japanese government recycled the name of the old cruiser for a new Towada-class replenishment ship (AOE-423). The Hitachi SC built vessel almost immediately clocked in on one of modern Japan’s first overseas naval deployments– Desert Shield/Storm, now some 35 years in the rearview. The oiler delivered non-combatant material to Saudi Arabia as part of Japan’s contribution to the coalition effort and has been a familiar consort to allied vessels underway in the WestPac in the past few decades.

A starboard bow view of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force fleet support ship Tokiwa (AOE-423) as she pulls away from the destroyer USS Decatur (DDG 73) (not shown) after an underway replenishment 15 March 2006. CTR3 Ryan C. Finkle, USN, Photo 330-CFD-DN-SD-06-16313 via NARA

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

If you like this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Swashbuckling Baltic Baron of Boxer Fame

Posted on by Leave a comment

Some 125 years ago this month, this guy was the biggest hero in Russia, having recently picked up not only the St. George Cross but also five foreign orders “in recognition of exemplary bravery and selflessness.’

I give you 37-year-old Lieutenant Baron Ferdinand (Vladimirovich) Arthur Lionel Gotthard von Rahden, of the Tsar’s Navy, who commanded the Russian naval infantry unit drawn from the crews of the battleships Navarin and Sisoy the Great during the defense of the Peking Legation Quarter during its 55-day siege in the Boxer Rebellion.

Hailing from a family of hereditary Baltic barons (he inherited the title from his late father, Vladimir, the former vice-governor of Estonia, in 1881), Ferdinand graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1886 and from 1889 onward held down spots on Russian warships drifting further and further East. From the Black Sea Fleet to the Caspian Flotilla and the cruiser Admiral Kornilov in the Indian Ocean. By 1891, he was a navigator on the cruiser Vladimir Monomakh in Vladivostok. By the time of the Boxer Rebellion, he was head of the 01 Division on Navarin and was selected to lead the 71-member company to Peking.

Of the 445 foreign soldiers, sailors, and Marines holding the Legation wall, the Russians had the third-largest force, just behind the only slightly larger British (79 Marines) and the French (75 sailors) contingents.

Russian sailors on a barricade before the Peking Legation Boxer Uprising, Niva magazine, No. 43, 1900

During the siege of Pekin, Baron von Rahden received several wounds, including a contusion of the cranial bone, but, importantly, his force captured four guns from the besieging Boxers, which were of great use to the defenders.

“Peking, China. 1900. A Russian officer, Baron Randen [sic], and four armed soldiers behind a barricade, probably at the Russian Legation, during the Boxer Rebellion.” Note he appears armed with a Steyr M.95, which may have been borrowed from Austrian Marines in the Legation, while his men have Mosin M.91s (AWM A05909)

Baron von Rahden, as portrayed in 55 Days at Peking, albeit in a much nicer costume, complete with sword belt sash, than the uniform he actually wore

After the Boxer Rebellion, Von Rahden, promoted to Captain (2nd rank), rode a wave of good assignments, including XO of the gunboat Koreets and command of the destroyer Ryany, which operated out of Vladivostok during the Russo-Japanese War. A scouting mission with his greyhound along the Korean peninsula during the conflict earned him an Order of St. Stanislav and a promotion to Captain (1st rank).

Then came a position as port captain of Vladivostok, followed by what would be the pinnacle of his naval career, that of skipper of the cruiser Askold in 1910.

Russian cruiser Askold in Vladivostok

At that point, Von Rahden’s star burned out.

Dismissed from his post on embezzlement charges, the Vladivostok Naval Court handed down a sentence of 3.5 years in the brig and the removal of all ranks, orders, and privileges. After serving 22 months, the Tsar commuted his sentence in light of his past record, and he was dismissed from the Navy, ending his 26 years in the fleet with a squish.

When Russia marched to war again in 1914, Von Rahden repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, applied to return to service.

It was only after the twin seismic military disasters of 1914 and 1915 that, on Valentine’s Day 1916, Von Rahden was appointed from ignoble retirement to become a colonel and second in command of the 205th (Shemakha) Infantry Regiment, then part of the 52nd Division on the mud of the Austrian front. In January 1917, he was made commander of the 82nd Infantry (Dagestan) Regiment, on the Romanian front. In April 1917, he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree with swords, one of the last issuances of that decoration.

Von Rahden, somewhat redeemed, was the 85th’s final colonel, and on 23 November 1917, he was promoted to major general, setting him up for command of a division. It was a position he held only briefly, being cashiered at the end of the year, following directives from the new Bolshevik military commissars who were eager to separate from the service any nobles still in uniform.

Returning home to Estonia in 1918, Von Raden soon fell in with the German-allied Baltic Landeswehr, a proto-Freikorps-style force led by his fellow Couronian and Livonian nobility. Leading a company in that force, he fought with the Landeswehr against the Reds at Windau, Tukkum, and Mitau.

Once Riga was captured, with the Landeswehr being strongly disfavored by the recently arrived British and French military missions to the Baltic, he and his company moved over to General Yudenich’s White Russian Northwestern Army during what had become the full-blown Russian Civil War.

Leading the battalion-sized 17th Libau Regiment of the 5th Division during Yudenich’s failed push on Petrograd, Baron Von Rahden, formerly of the Tsar’s Navy, was killed in action in the village of Russkoye Koporye on 25 October 1919, aged 56 hard years.

Polish Pociag Pancerny Proclivity

Posted on by Leave a comment

The Polish military in the first half of the 20th Century cultivated a rich armored train (Pociag Pancerny) tradition that started in early 1918 with Polish units formerly serving in the Russian Army and newly independent.

This early train, Związek Broni (Arms Association), was created at the Bobruisk (Babrujsk) fortress using captured Russian rolling stock and armed with a combination of Pulitov 76.2mm M1902 field guns and Maxim machine guns. At the same time, a flatcar carried a damaged Austin armored car.

Zwiazek-Broni’s Austen armored car flatcar

Polish armored train near Arkhangelsk – 1918 during the Russian civil war. Note the Polish national eagles on their helmets. Signal Corps image via NARA

With 90 armored locomotives constructed by the Poles, this was later expanded to over 40 named war trains in the 1919-21 period of combat against the Reds, Balts, and Ukrainians in the East and German Freikorps types in the West.

During the Third Silesian Uprising, Polish insurgents used no less than 16 armored trains, such as “Kabicz,” seen here, against the German irregulars. The train consists of a T37 armored steam locomotive and two 2-axle iron coal wagons. NAC PIC_1-H-446-2

Once the wars were over, the better trains were retained and, eventually, modernized.

Just in case.

Polish armored train (Pociąg pancerny) Danuta in July 1935. Note the flatcar with motorcycles. NAC PIC_107-738-67

Polish armored train, 1939

By September 1939, the Poles had at least a baker’s dozen war trains in their arsenal, each typically supported by a dedicated supply train that included sleeping and coal cars, repair workshops, and flatbeds carrying light tanks. The allowance for a full crew of an armored train (with its support train) in 1939 consisted of 8 officers, 59 non-commissioned officers, and 124 riflemen, with most cross-trained in repair and maintenance tasks.

The Polish armored train PP 11 Danuta from 1939. From the left: artillery wagon, infantry assault wagon, armored Ti3 steam locomotive, artillery wagon. The train carried two 100mm wz. 1914/19 howitzers and 75mm wz.1902/26 field guns mounted on rotating turrets as their primary armament, while secondary armament was composed of nine 7.92 mm wz. 08 machine guns. She fought against the Germans for two weeks until trapped and scuttled by her crew.

Then, in Britain…

With this tradition behind them, it was logical for the Free Poles evacuated to Britain from France and elsewhere post-Dunkirk to man some armored trains. After all, there was a cadre of men among them familiar with their operation.

Starting in July 1940, troops of the 1st Polish Corps soon manned a series of 12 armored trains, organized into four dedicated battalions. The idea was that these trains could race up and down the coastline and form a mobile reserve in the event of German amphibious landings, or shuttle inland to tackle paratrooper insertions.

Produced in the Derby Carriage and Wagon Works and by the LNER works at Stratford in London, the trains were dubbed A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, K, L, and M. While these varied in length, construction, and armament, they were usually much shorter than the type the Poles had operated 1918-1939, typically of just 4-5 cars with an engine in the middle.

A few images exist in the IWM with good detail.

Troops pictured manning an armored train on a line at North Berwick in Scotland, 4 February 1941. The train was armed with a QF 6-pounder 6 cwt Hotchkiss gun recycled from a Great War-era Mk IV “Male” tank, two Boys anti-tank rifles, and six Bren machine guns. Photo by Walter Thomas Lockeyear IWM H 7033

Official caption: “Polish troops are manning an armored train in Scotland. They are used for patrolling lines along the coast, reinforcing any threatened point, and dealing with tank attacks where the railway offers the best means of reaching them. Each of two engines with one 6-pounder, six Brens, and 2 AT rifles. A speed of 50 mph, range of 30 miles without refueling.” Photo by Walter Thomas Lockeyear IWM H 7034

As noted by one publication,

Armoured train K, powered by a single locomotive, No 7573, was armed with two 6-pounder guns, as well as six Bren machine guns, two Vickers machine guns, four Thompson sub-machine guns (Tommy guns) and numerous rifles carried by the crew. Initially, the train carried some 14,000 rounds of ammunition, which was later increased to some 38,000 rounds of varying calibers.

Polish Armored Train K

By 1942, with the chance of invasion of the British Isles slipping away and the Poles better used in North Africa, they left their trains behind for Home Guard use and pulled stumps for warmer, and more German-rich, climes.

As detailed by Brian Osborne’s The People’s Army:

In their Home Guard role, the trains were each initially armed with two Hotchkiss 6-pounder cannon, a Vickers machine-gun, and four Bren guns. They were manned by 16 Home Guardsmen under a captain, with a lieutenant as weapons training officer, two signalers, and a train crew of four. In addition, there was a mobile base consisting of a passenger coach and brake van to provide crew transport and catering. This came under the charge of the second in command, along with a company sergeant major, a train crew of three, and a fighting crew of six deploying two Bren guns and a Boys anti-tank rifle – an armorer and a further three men, making a total in the mobile base of 14. Thus, each armored train had a total complement of 38 officers and men. The mobile base would be detached from the train when going into action.

However, after the war, the Poles continued to use armored trains into 1952 when the Dywizjon Artylerii Kolejowej (Railway Artillery Division) was finally disbanded and its inherited German and Soviet trains placed in reserve, capping a winding 34-year run.

Polish Dywizjon Artylerii Kolejowej armored train, in the late 1940s, a recycled Wermacht Panzerzug with French M1890 194mm naval guns

Nottingham, found

Posted on by Leave a comment

The 5,400-ton Town-class cruiser HMS Nottingham was the Royal Navy’s only remaining lost cruiser from the Great War era, whose wreck was previously undocumented.

Was.

Lost to three torpedoes from U-52 (Kptlt. Hans Walther, Pour le Mérite) on 19 August 1916 during a missed connection between the RN’s Grand Fleet and the Kaiserliche Marine’s High Seas Fleet, HMS Nottingham had an extensive service record.

She served in most of the key fleet actions, including the battles of Heligoland Bight (1914), Dogger Bank (1915) and Jutland (1916) where, at the latter, Nottingham was heavily engaged, alongside her fellow light cruisers of the 2nd Squadron, HMS Birmingham, Southampton and Dublin, in a major close-quarters battle with the cruisers of Germany’s 4th Scouting Group –SMS Stettin, München, Frauenlob, Stuttgart and Hamburg. On 20 June 1915, she even missed two torpedoes from U-6.

In April 2025, ProjectXplore divers Dan McMullen, Leo Fielding, and Dom Willis, supported by skipper Iain Easingwood of MarineQuest, loaded the dive charter MV Jacob George with a C-MAX CM2 side scan sonar and 300m or armored towing cable and documented the wreck they believed to be Nottingham on the bottom at 262 feet, 60 miles off the coast of Scotland.

Earlier this month, 10 divers from the UK, Germany, and Spain gathered, and outfitted with JJ-CCR rebreathers on trimix/O2 fills, dove the wreck, clearly documenting “Nottingham” on her stern, as well as her four distinctive funnels, which are intact, as well as gun arrangement, and other facets that solidified the discovery.

And thus we remember:

Warship Wednesday, July 16, 2025: Flat Iron Warrior

Posted on by Leave a comment

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, July 16, 2025: Flat Iron Warrior

Above we see the Norwegian Gor-class gunboat-turned-minelayer KNM Tyr, all 102 feet long with a 4.7″/40 EOC gun forward and mines stowed aft. Downright ancient when the Germans came in 1940, she nonetheless proved a serious thorn in their side.

Norwegian Rendels

Starting in the 1870s, the Norwegians embarked on a program of modern warship construction, including steam engines and iron/steel hulls. Constructed locally at Carl JohansVærns Værft, Horten, they ordered eight 2nd class gunboats (Kanonbåt 2. kl) running between 250 and 420 tons, three first class gunboats of between 720 and 1,280 tons, a 1,045-ton steam corvette, an armed 350-ton minelaying “crane vessel” (Kranfartøy), and 14 assorted (45 ton-to-107 ton) 2nd class torpedo boats by 1902. Meanwhile, four 4,000-ton coastal battleships (Panserskibe) with 8.2-inch guns and up to 8 inches of armor would be ordered from Armstrong in the 1890s.

The eight 2nd class gunboats were all of the “flat iron” or Rendel type, a common format introduced by Armstrong in 1867 and built under contract for or copied by over a dozen fleets around the globe, including Norway’s neighbors Denmark and Sweden. Short and stubby, typically about 100 feet long with a 30-foot beam, they were flat-bottomed and drew a fathom or less, even under a full load. This hull form and their anemic compound steam engines only allowed for a speed in the 8-10 knot region, leaving these as defensive vessels ideal for guarding strongpoints and key harbors.

Armament was typically a single large (8-to-15-inch!) gun that could be lowered and elevated inside a shielded battery but not traversed, with the gunboat coming about to aim the horizonal.

The Norwegian Rendels included KNM Vale and Uller (1874, 1876, 250t); Nor, Brage, and Vidar (1897-1882, 270t); Gor and Tyr (1884, 1887, 289-294t); and Æger (1893, 420t). The first five carried a single Armstrong 26.67 cm (10.5-inch) RML forward and two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns amidships.

Kanonbåt 2 kl Brage’s crew with her Armstrong 26,7cm RML.

Æger toted a more modern 8.3-inch Armstrong breechloader and three small (one 10-pdr and two 4-pdrs).

Æger. This 109-foot 420-tonner was the pinnacle of Rendel development. A one-off design, she was decommissioned in 1932 and her name recycled for a new Sleipner-class destroyer. NSM.000460

Gor and Tyr each carried a single breechloading Krupp 26 cm (10.2 inch) L/30 gun (606-pound shell, 192-pound charge, m/v 1805 ft/secs), the same model gun used on the 3,700-ton Japanese Armstrong-built protected cruisers Naniwa and Takachiho, backed up, like most of the other Norwegian Rendels, by two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns.

Kanonbåt 2. kl. Gor (b. 1884, Karljohansvern Verft, Horten), note the large Krupp gun forward. NSM.000459

Japanese officers of the protected cruiser Naniwa posing near one of her 26 cm (10.2″) Krupp guns, 1885

Meet Tyr

Constructed as Yard No. 67 at Horten, Tyr was named for the one-handed Norse god of war who sacrificed his other hand to trap the wolf Fenrir. Laid down in 1884, she launched on 16 March 1887 and, fitting out rapidly, joined the Norwegian fleet shortly after.

Norwegian gunboat KNM Tyr from 1887

After 1900, with the looming formal separation from Sweden on the horizon and the prospect of a possible fight on their hands, the Norwegians upped their torpedo boat numbers rapidly to nearly 30 boats as their four new bathtub battleships arrived on hand from Britain. With that, the Rendels transitioned to more static support roles around this time, such as minefield tenders at strategic coastal fortifications and depot ships.

Around this time, most landed their obsolete main gun in exchange for something more contemporary, with most picking up a trainable QF 4.7″/40 Elswick 20-pounder behind a shield. This allowed the removal of their armored bow bulwark. Gor and Tyr also picked up a high-angle 76mm mount, while some of the older boats received a 47mm mount.

Gor as minelegger with mines aft. 

After Norway got into the submarine business in 1909 with the small (128-foot, kerosine-engined) German-built KNM Kobben, Tyr became her tender until 1914.

K/B 2 kl Tyr as tender with Norwegian submarine Kobben alongside. MMU.944062

Tyr plan 1913, slick-decked as tender.

With the mine warfare lessons reverberating around the globe after the Russo-Japanese War, it became obvious how easy these broad-beamed shallow-draft craft could be converted to minelayers. This typically meant installing twin port and starboard rail tracks on deck running about 65 feet to the stern for easy planting either via boom over rail drop. On the Gor and Tyr, this allowed for as many as 55 mines stowed on deck.

Tyr as mine planter with her 4″/40 forward and two 37mm 1-pounders on her amidships bridge deck. Model in the Horten Marinemuseet.

Same model, note the mine arrangement. The model omits her 6-pounder 76mm gun.

mines on converted Norwegian 2c gunboat, pre-1940

Same as above

Same as above

1929 Jane’s abbreviated listing of seven of the old Rendel gunboats, including Tyr. Note that Gor is still listed with her old 10-inch Armstrong. The larger Aegir was listed separately and was disposed of in 1932.

War!

September 1939 brought an uneasy time to Scandinavia. The remaining seven Norwegian Rendals, all by this time working as minelayers, bided their time and clocked in on the country’s Nøytralitetsvakt (Neutrality Watch).

Tyr was placed under the command of Orlogskaptein (LCDR) Johan Friederich Andreas Thaulow “Fritz” Ulstrup and stationed at the outer ring Lerøy Fortress overlooking the narrow Lerøyosen south of Bergen. Ulstrup, 43, was a career naval officer who was minted in the Great War and, having studied in France from 1922 to 1924, was serving as an instructor at the Naval Academy in Bergen when the war started.

Ulstrup, who doubled as fortress commander at Lerøy, also had a flotilla of five small armed auxiliary guard boats– Haus (135grt), Lindaas (138grt), Alversund (178grt), Manger (153grt), and Oygar (128grt)– and an old (circa 1898) torpedo boat, Storm, under his control. However, the fort itself, slated in 1939 to receive a 120mm gun battery with four old L/40 French-built Schneider weapons from the decommissioned border forts of Vardasen and Gullbekkasen pointing toward Sweden, instead only had a couple of 65mm Cockerill guns and searchlights.

On the early morning of 9 April 1940, just after midnight, two cruisers appeared off Bergen and flashed that they were the RN’s HMS Cairo and Calcutta, when in fact they were the German Kriegmarine’s light cruiser sisters Koln and Konigsberg, each with nine 15 cm SK C/25 (5.9-inch) guns, as the Gruppe 3 invasion force under RADM Hubert Schmundt. The cruisers were followed by 600 troops of the Wehrmacht’s 69th Infantry Division on the 1,800-ton gunnery training ship (Artillerieschulschiff) Bremse with four 12.8 cm SK C/34s, the torpedo boats Wolf and Leopard, and the E-boat tender Carl Peters shepherding S19, S21, S22, S23, S24, and naval trawlers Schiff 9 and Schiff 18.

Tyr, loaded with live and armed mines picked up at Laksevåg, was at the ocean-front fishing village of Klokkarvik, directly in the path of the Germans.

Klokkarvik harbor during the neutrality watch in 1939/40. In the picture, you can see a mine-armed KNM Tyr at anchor with a Draug-class destroyer at the quay. Note the Royal Norwegian Navy’s Hover M.F.11 floatplane in the foreground. (Source: Naval Museum Horten)

When the Germans began to creep into the fjord and with word of other sets of foreign warships in the Oslofjord, Ulstrup, who had been arguing with Bergan’s overall commander, RADM Carsten Tank-Nielsen all day on the 8th to be able to sow his mines, finally obtained clearance at 0030 for Tyr to hurriedly drop eight mines between Sotra and Lerøy, closing Lerøyosen. However, the 10-14-hour time-delay safety features on the magnetic contacts of the mines meant they were still dormant when the German cruisers passed harmlessly over them. Storm, meanwhile, fired a torpedo at Carl Peters at 0220 but missed.

Ulstrup closed to shore so he could place a quick phone call to Tank-Nielsen to apprise him of the situation, then returned to his minelayer to beat feet toward Bjørnefjord, playing a cat and mouse game with German E-boats and reportedly landing a hit from her 4.7-inch gun on one, receiving several 20mm hits from the Schnellbooten in exchange.

Further up the fjord, batteries at the now-alerted Norwegian inner ring Forts Kvarven (3 x 210mm St. Chamond M.98s) and Sandviken (3 x 240mm St. Chamond  L/13s) opened up on the passing Germans at 0358 and soon landed hits on both Konigsberg and Bremse in the darkness of pre-dawn, leaving the former adrift with flooded boiler rooms. While Tyr, Ulstrup, and company managed to withdraw further into the fjords– laying another 16 mines in the Vatlestraumen approaches north of Bergen–  Bergen itself fell to the German seaborne force just hours later.

However, the crippled Konigsberg would be hammered by a strike of RNAS Sea Skuas out of Orkney once the sun came up and caught five 500-pound bombs, sinking her in the harbor on 10 April.

Meanwhile, Tyr’s mines near Vatlestraumen sank the packed German HSDG freighter Sao Paulo (4977grt) on the evening of the 9th, sending her to the bottom in 260 feet of water.

The 361-foot Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampschiffahrts-Gesellschaft steamer Sao Paulo was lost to one of Tyr’s mines.

In trying to sweep the mines, the German naval auxiliary Schiff 9 (trawler Koblenz, 437grt), and the auxiliary patrol boat Vp.105 (trawler Cremon, 268grt), along with two launches from Carl Peters, were lost on the 11th. Some sources also credit the German steamer Johann Wessels (4601grt), damaged on 5 May, and the German-controlled Danish steamer Gerda (1151grt), sunk on 8 May, as falling to Tyr’s eggs.

Withdrawing down the 114-mile-long Hardangerfjord, Ulstrup was appointed the commander of this new sector on 17 April and, moving ashore to Uskedal, left Tyr to her XO, the 47-year-old Fenrik (ensign) Karl Sandnes. Ulstrup, stripping the 37mm guns from Tyr and two 65mm guns from auxiliary gunboats, mounted them on flatbed trucks as improvised mobile artillery.

A 1937 Chevy flatbed with a 65mm L35 Hotchkiss under Ulstrup’s dirt sailors, April 1940

The next two days saw a series of skirmishes around Uskedal, in which Tyr closed to shore to use her 4.7-inch gun against German positions in improvised NGFS, coming close enough to get riddled by German 8mm rifle fire in return.

A naval clash on the 20th involving the advancing Germans in the Hardangerfjord saw Tyr, under the command of Sandnes, shell the German auxiliary Schiff 18, which beached at Uskedal to avoid sinking. The same battle saw the Norwegian Trygg-class torpedo boat Stegg sunk by Schiff 221 while the Norwegian armed auxiliary Smart was sunk by Bremse. The German minesweeper M.1 went on to capture five Norwegian-flagged steamers that were hiding in the fjord.

With Ulstrup and his force ashore getting ready to displace inland under fire, and Tyr trapped in the fjord, Sandnes brought his command to the shallows and, attempting to camouflage her, hid the breechblock for her 4.7 and evacuated the old minelayer. By forced march, they made it to Matre, some 14 miles on the other side of the mountain, and soon rejoined Allied lines.

Meanwhile, Tyr was soon discovered by the Germans, who towed her back to Bergen and, along with her fellow Rendel gunboat-turned-minelayer cousin, Uller, were soon pressed into service with the Kriegsmarine.

On 30 April, Tyr and Uller left occupied Bergen with German crews on a mission to mine the entrance to Sognefjord, barring it to British ships. This service would be short-lived as a Royal Norwegian Navy Heinkel He 115 seaplane spotted the pair, now under new management, and bombed Uller seriously enough to have her crew beach on a reef and evacuate on Tyr. Uller later lifted off the reef and sank near Gulen, becoming a popular dive spot.

As for Tyr, she saw no further direct combat, although the Germans likely continued to use her in some form of coastal service for the rest of the war.

Post-war

Tyr was still afloat in 1945 when the Germans were run out, and was subsequently sold on the commercial market. Her old hull still in good shape, she was converted to an economical diesel plant and sailed for a time as a heavy lift steamship.

By 1951, she had been converted to the car ferry Bjorn West, a task she fulfilled for three decades. Further converted for service in a salmon farming operation.

Found in poor condition ten years ago, she recently passed to a consortium of Vestfold county municipality, the KNM Narvik Foundation in Horten, and the Bredalsholmen Shipyard and Preservation Centre, who, with Tyr safely in drydock in Kristiansand, plan on restoring her to her 1940 condition. At this point, she is believed to be the last Rendel-type gunboat.

They plan to make her sailable, which isn’t that far-fetched.

Epilogue

The Norwegian Navy has recycled our gunboat/minelayer’s name at least twice.

The first was an Auk-class minesweeper, ex-USS Sustain (AM-119), which was transferred in 1959 and served as KNM Tyr (N47). Three Auk-class sisters transferred with her (ex-USS Strive, Triumph, and Seer) were named Gor, Brage, and Uller, in a nod to the old Rendel boats that saw WWII service.

Ex-USS Sustain (AM-119) as KNM Tyr (N47). Commissioned 9 November 1942, she earned eight battle stars for her World War II service from North Africa to France to Okinawa, helping to sink at least one U-boat in the process. She served the Norwegians from 1959 to 1984.

The third KNM Tyr in Norwegian service, N50, was bought commercially in 1995 and spent two decades mapping and filming dozens of historic wrecks in the country’s waters with her ROVs, including Scharnhorst and HMS Hunter (H35).

The intrepid LCDR Ulstrup continued to resist the Germans after leaving Tyr in April 1940. He crafted a makeshift shoreside torpedo battery, the only torpedo available being salvaged from the wreck of an old torpedo boat, and managed to caravan mines from a storage facility in Sogn to Ulvik to surprise the occupation forces. Once the Allies pulled out in mid-June, he was left to his own devices with a resistance group that became known, logically, as the Ulstrup Organisasjon.

With the heat getting too close for comfort, Ulstrup and a dozen other patriots crowded on the sailing trawler MK Måken (M 366 B) on 19 September 1940 and set out from Alesund for the Shetlands, arriving at Baltasound 11 days later. Welcomed as a hero in London, he was soon in command of the old four-piper HMS Mansfield (G76) (former USS Evans, DD-78), which in April 1941 carried commandos for a raid on Oksfjord, Norway, where the herring oil factory was destroyed.

“HNMS Mansfield, Norwegian Town-class destroyer. She is an ex-U.S. destroyer (USS Evans) and is manned entirely by the Norwegian Navy.” Circa 1941. Note her Norwegian flag. Photo by Harold William John Tomlin, IWM A2725

Once Mansfield was passed on to the Canadians in March 1942 after the Norwegians rode shotgun on 17 Atlantic, Ulstrup, promoted to Kommandørkaptein, was given command of the 11th Department in the Ministry of Defense in London, then subsequently placed in command of the Norwegian forces in Iceland, where he spent the rest of the war.

Returning to Norway with a War Cross with Swords, Ulstrup was promoted to rear admiral in August 1952. After escorting Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie on his tour of Norwegian naval bases, including the Horten shipyards in November 1954, he was made a Grand Officer of the Order of the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II, rounding out his international awards.

Kontradmiral Johan Fredrik Andreas Thaulow Ulstrup, retired, passed in 1956, age 60, having wrapped up a 41-year career.

Tyr’s best-known “kill” of the war, the HSDG steamer Sao Paulo, packed with German military vehicles and stores that never made it to shore, is a favorite of wreck divers.

Meanwhile, in Klokkarvik, a memorial, complete with a mine and a seagull, was dedicated in 2021.

As noted in the town:

The seagull that takes off from the mine is a symbol of optimism. We should be aware of what war brings, but be most concerned with how we can secure peace. We should learn from history, – because it tends to repeat itself. The seagull draws our attention to the sea, the source of everything, our future.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Goodbye, horses

Posted on by One comment

No, not the Q Lazzarus song made infamous by Ted Levine, we are talking about the Army’s latest initiative to divest itself of equines, something it has been doing in slow motion since 1917 despite a few half-hearted returns.

It could be argued that 1916 was the height of the U.S. Army’s post-Civil War (when the Union Army fielded 6 regular army and 266 volunteer cavalry regiments as well as 170 unattached squadrons) horse cavalry. At the time, during Pershing’s Punitive Expedition into Northern Mexico to chase Villa, the Army had 17 regiments of regulars– with the 16th and 17th Cavalry Regiments only organized in Texas in July 1916.

U.S. 5th Cav in Mexico, 1916

Add to this “practically all the serviceable cavalry” from the mobilized National Guard that included three cavalry regiments, 13 separate squadrons, and 22 separate cavalry troops, a force that required the immediate purchase on the open market of 1,861 cavalry horses by quartermasters to take to the field as most units were called up with less than half their stables full.

One Guard cavalry unit had no horses on call-up day except one privately owned mount, and in another that had 92 state-owned horses, only 23 passed inspection by a U.S. Cavalry remount officer.

“Making cavalry horses out of outlaws!”

While nearly 2 million Doughboys went “Over There” in the Great War, few were horse soldiers (just the 6th and 15th Cavalry Regiments arrived in France in March 1918, and were later sent to the trenches dismounted).

Instead, cavalry units were either repurposed into supply trains and artillery units or left to watch the border; the latter regiments organized into the short-lived 15th Cavalry Division.

At the same time, the Army went all-in on mechanization and established its first dedicated tank units.

The great cavalry farce of the 1920s-1930s

By the 1920s, the walk away from horses continued, and three regiments of regulars (15th, 16th, and 17th) were disbanded, as the regular cavalry increasingly became motorized (the 1st and 13th U.S. Cavalry were the first to hand in their horses, starting in 1932). In the Philippines, the 26th Cavalry regiment (Philippine Scouts), made up generally of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans, with a few seconded Regular Army officers and NCOs, was established in 1922 using horses and equipment left behind when the segreated 9th Cavalry shipped back home.

The interwar role of horse cavalry was increasingly transferred to the National Guard and Army Reserve.

However, it was a force largely just on paper, allowing much smaller “regiments” than those typically seen in an infantry format to exist (1,090 officers and men vs 3,500 by 1918 TOE, numbers even smaller by later standards).

Florida National Guard summer camp officer with 1902 pattern sword fooling on horseback, Jacksonville, 1930 time frame. 

This saw the creation out of whole cloth of 20 NG horse cav regiments between 1921 and 1927: the 101st and 121st Cavalry Regiments in New York, 102nd Cavalry in New Jersey, the 103rd and 104th Cavalry in Pennsylvania, 105th Cavalry (Wisconsin), 106th Cavalry (Illinois), 107th Cavalry (Ohio), 108th Cavary (Georgia), 109th Cavalry (Tennessee), the 110th Cavalry in Massachusetts, the 112th and 124th Cavalry Regiments in Texas, 113th Cavalry (Iowa), 114th Cavalry (Kansas), 115th Cavalry (Wyoming), 116th Cavalry (Idaho), 117th (Colorado/New Mexico, never fully formed), 122nd (Connecticut and Rhode Island), and 123rd (Kentucky).

In 1927, each cavalry regiment at the time, when fully staffed and ready for service, included four lettered 123-man troops led by captains, organized into two numbered 248-man squadrons led by a major, plus a regimental headquarters, machinegun, medical, and service troops for 39 officers and 710 men including ferriers and veteranirians. Add to this 810 horses, 64 mules, three cars, three 1 1/2 ton trucks, a motorcycle (with side car), 38 assorted wagons, 10 M1917 water cooled MGs, 24 M1918 machine rifles (BARs), 501 M1903 Springfield rifles (with bayonets), 724 M1911 pistols, 16 M1903 medical bolos, and, of course, 425 Patton-style M1913 cavalry sabers.

These optimistically formed four NG Cavalry divisions, the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.

At the division level, there was a 103-man light tank company with 18 M1917 (Renault FT) tanks and 7 truck-pulled 37mm guns as well as an 89-man armored car company with 12 M1/M2 armored Scout cars, and a 520-man battalion of 12 horse-drawn 75mm field guns (in three batteries) and seven AAA MGs. While authorized, few divisions actually had these exotic bits of kit other than the Regular Army’s 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions, which each housed four active Cavalry regiments.

The 3rd Cavalry Division was openly just a “paper” division with its support units in the Reserve and never in its 19-year interwar history drilled as a unit.

`Troop A, 1st Squadron, 108th Cavalry Regiment, Georgia National Guard at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga. in 1930

It should be noted, however, that the TOE for each NG cavalry troop in peacetime would be just 65 officers and men (against the fully-manned wartime authorization of 123) but had only 32 horses, enough for training, yet still requiring a massive influx of trained horse flesh in wartime, followed by a good 6 months to a year of unit training before they could be deployed.

Further, these regiments were slowly reformatted as hybrid horse-mechanized units, with elements of both, with horse (and trooper) numbers dropping while traditional items like the saber were abandoned after 1934.

Wyoming National Guard’s 115th Cavalry Regiment in its final format, circa 1940, with jeeps, motorcycles, and trucks augmenting the regimental band and horse soldiers. 

At the same time, the Army Reserve amazingly had 24 horse cavalry regiments, numbered 301st through 324th, in six divisions (!) numbered the 61st through 66th. With somehow even fewer horses on hand than the NG units, these regiments typically had to borrow NG horses, those from CMMG or ROTC units, or trek to the U.S. 3rd Cavalry’s stables at Fort Myers in the summer to train.

Meanwhile, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment pitched in to train Great Plains Army Reservists at Fort Riley, Kansas. The 14th Cav maintained a Cavalry riding school at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, specifically to train Midwestern Army Reservists, where, in 1936, their 2nd Squadron taught future president Ronald Reagan how to ride horses, by the numbers.

Reagan’s military service began with the U.S. Army Reserve via at-home Army Extension courses in 1935. He was a private in the Iowa-based 322nd Cavalry Regiment before being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Officers Reserve Corps. He was later assigned to the 323rd Cavalry Regiment in California and in 1942 requested a transfer to the USAAF, where he helped produce 400 training films in the 1st Motion Picture Unit.

While it was estimated that the Army would need over 200,000 horses immediately in wartime if all 44 Guard and Reserve horse cav regiments and their 10 divisional organizations were fully-fleshed out, the service typically only procured between 1,500 and 2,500 new horses every year in the 1930s, including use for both active and reserve cavalry and artillery, and at the end of the 1941 fiscal year the remount depots only had 28,000 horses on hand.

By the fall of 1940, with the Guard federalized, of the existing 19 NG cavalry regiments, 7 were reorganized into mechanized regiments, 6 were converted to field artillery, and 4 to coastal artillery.

Only two, the Texas 112th and 124th, were given a reprieve as horse cavalry and would be brigaded together as the 56th Cavalry Brigade, which survived until March 1944 when they put their horses to pasture and became the 56th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized, bound for the CBI theatre.

The regular Army’s 3rd Cavalry Regiment led its horses away in February 1942, and the 1st Cavalry Division was de-horsed by May 1943, followed by the 2d Cavalry Division ten months later.

Likewise, the massive Army Reserve “cavalry” force saw its 24 regiments melt away by 1942 when they were hollowed out by having their assigned personnel called to active duty and reassigned to Regular Army and federalized National Guard units. The empty unit shells were typically reclassified into Signal Aircraft Warning (radar) battalions and Tank Destroyer battalions (notably the 62nd, 63rd, 65th, 66th, 70th, 71st, and 75th), then rebuilt with new personnel.

Most of the “U.S” branded horses were “loaned” to the USCG, who took 3,900 for WWII beach patrol work, while over 7,000 went overseas as military aid to allies.

The Constabulary

While there was a short resurgence of small horse-mounted recon detachments formed in divisions in 1944-45, notably with the 10th Mountain, who experienced possibly the final U.S. Army mounted cavalry charge, the 35,000-strong U.S. Constabulary force in occupied Germany from 1946-52 included much use of horses.

Organized into 10 regiments, the circa 1946 TOE of each allowed for a horse platoon with 30 horses to patrol difficult terrain.

Even afterward, the Army’s Berlin Garrison was authorized 56 horses for the use of the force there as late as 1958.

“One of the famous Constabulary regiment horse patrols”

Short-lived resurgence

The Army’s last dedicated pack horse unit, the 35th QM Pack Co., was deactivated at Fort Carson, Colorado, in the spring of 1957.

Since then, the Army has continued whittling down its horse inventory with a short reprieve post 9/11 such as in the famous use of local ponies by the 5th SFG’s ODA 595 when it operated with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and the fleeting Special Operations Forces Horsemanship Course at Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in California.

Man don’t those white horses glow at night! Green Berets from 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) ride horses to travel through rough terrain during a site reconnaissance training exercise on March 1, 2016 in Nevada. (U.S. Army photo by 3rd SFG (A) Combat Camera)

Plus, there was a steady resurgence post-Vietnam of ceremonial horse detachments on posts with a history going back to the Old West days.

The 11th ACR’s “Black Horse” Detachment at Fort Irwin

About that.

The Army last week announced that it was “streamlining its Military Working Equid program to align more resources with warfighting capability and readiness. MWEs include horses, mules, and donkeys owned by the Department of Defense and housed on Army installations.”

This means that, of its current seven horse detachments– often staffed by volunteers on collateral duty– just two will remain.

Starting in July 2025, the Army will sunset ownership, operation, and materiel support of MWE programs at Fort Irwin, California; Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Fort Riley, Kansas; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; and Fort Hood, Texas.

However, MWE programs will continue with The Old Guard Caisson units at the Military District of Washington and at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.

“This initiative will save the Army $2 million annually and will allow the funds and Soldiers dedicated to MWE programs to be redirected to readiness and warfighting priorities.

An estimated 141 current Army horses will be moved out to new homes.

“Installation commanders will have one year to transfer, facilitate adoption, or donate the MWEs to vetted owners according to federal law. The Army Surgeon General’s MWE Task Force, comprised of equine veterinarian experts, will provide oversight to ensure the MWEs go to appropriate owners.”

Of note, the Caisson Platoon just resumed limited operations at Arlington last month.

 

Warship Wednesday, July 2, 2025: Lost Bird of the Baltic

Posted on by Leave a comment

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says, “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, July 2, 2025: Lost Bird of the Baltic

Image via the Farenthold Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command NH 65783

Above we see the Nautilus-class minenkreuzer SMS Albatross in port, likely in Wilhelmshaven or Kiel, just prior to the Great War. A slight cruiser by any measure, she was perhaps better described as a heavily armed minelayer with a profile approaching that of an elegant turn-of-the-century steam yacht.

Put in an impossible situation some 110 years ago today, she was run aground in neutral waters– and that’s where the story really starts.

The Kaiser’s Mine Cruisers

The Albatross and her half-sister ship Nautilus sprang from the lessons learned during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which saw the aggressive use of mine warfare in fleet operations. The two ships were the size (322 feet oal/2,345 tons displacement on Nautilus, 331 ft./2,500-ton Albatross) and speed (20.8 knots) of light cruisers.

They had two stacks to vent their quartet of marine boilers and a pair of 3-cylinder compound engines. Twin military masts with mounted searchlights could accommodate an auxiliary sail rig if needed, but they don’t seem to have ever carried any canvas. They had a 1:10 length-to-beam ratio and looked fast sitting still.

Nautilus, German cruiser minelayer, photographed by Renard of Kiel while passing under the Levensau Bridge of the Kiel Canal in 1907, soon after entering fleet service on 19 March 1907. Note the rakish clipper bow and bowsprit, which Albatross did not share. While 322 feet oal, the waterline length was just 296 feet at the waterline (316 on Albatross). NH 46829

While largely unarmored, they could duke it out against smaller vessels or serve as commerce raiders due to their all-up main battery of eight 8.8 cm/35 (3.46″) SK L/35 C/01 guns in single low-angle shielded mounts. Nautilus originally carried two guns in casemate and six on upper decks, but all were later consolidated on deck, while Albatross always had hers on deck, arranged two forward, two aft, and four amidships in broadside. Magazines held a total of 2,000 15-pound shells for these guns, which had a range of 9,600 yards.

However, rather than torpedoes and secondary batteries as found on other cruisers, these twins had weight and space to accommodate a serious deck cargo of sea mines on a rail system dropping over the stern, with Nautilus rigged for 391 such “eggs” while Albatross could stow 288. With a shallow draft of just 15 feet for both sisters, they could operate in the littorals of the North, Baltic, and Mediterranean Seas, sowing their enemy seaports and strategic roadsteads shut with their mines. Alternatively, they could drop fields quickly in the path of enemy squadrons during fleet actions, covering retreats, or isolating opponents.

The German Elektrische Minen A (EMA), with a charge of 330 pounds of wet gun cotton, was the standard contact (Hertz horn) mine of the Kaiserliche Marine headed into the Great War.

Besides their dual use as mine layers and scout cruisers, both ships were given reinforced bows for service as light icebreakers or “boom chargers” as needed. The simplification of mission between the efficient mine-laying system and the single battery meant these ships had comparatively small crews of just ten officers and 191 men.

Termed Minendampfschiffe A und B on contract, both ships were built at Aktien-Gesellschaft Weser in Bremen with Nautilus (Baunummer 152) and Albatross (No. 162), sandwiched between the future Jutland veteran Nassau class battleship SMS Westfalen and the elegant NDL Reichspostdampfer liner Lutzow. Both cruisers ran 2,879,000 marks each despite the moderate differences in design. While most naval journals consider these to be one class of ship, Jane’s at the time listed each separately.

Nautilus 1914 Janes

Albatross 1914 Janes, note the different hull form.

Meet Albatross

Ordered under the 1906 program, our subject was laid down in Bremen on 24 May 1907. She was at least the second SMS Albatross in the Kaiserliche Marine, following in the path of a Kaiserliche Werft Danzig-built steam gunboat that entered service in 1871 and roamed the world on a series of exotic cruises until she was decommissioned in 1898.

The first SMS Albatross, a 4-gun steamer with a three-masted barque rig, served as a gunboat and later as a station ship and survey vessel. Disposed of in 1899, she was wrecked in commercial service in 1906.

Our Albatross took to the water on 23 October 1907, began sea trials on 19 May 1908, and was accepted and commissioned shortly after. As such, she entered service just 14 months after Nautilus.

She spent her pre-war period in a sleepy series of fleet maneuvers, mine warfare training (as a Minenschulschiff), and the like, based at Cuxhaven. The most notable incident from this time was a minor collision in 1911 with the 5,448 GRT NDL steamer Wartburg (which was later seized in 1917 and used by the Navy in the Great War as the cargo ship USS Wabash on a series of round trips between the U.S. and Saint-Nazaire).

During her antebellum service, Albatross served as a stopover for bright young officers bound for flag rank. Her first three skippers– Korvettenkapitäns Titus Turk, Karl Wedding, and Wilhelm Adelung– all went on to become admirals.

War!

When the Great War kicked off in 1914, Albatross, accompanied by the light cruiser SMS Stuttgart and half a squadron of destroyers on 25/26 August, laid an offensive barrage of 200 mines in the Tyne Estuary, a 13-mile-long field that gave the British a good bit of heartburn.

The same sortie was accompanied by Nautilus, escorted by SMS Mainz and the other half squadron of destroyers, to lay her field of 200 off the Humber.

On the way back to Germany in the fog, according to Corbett, a total of 16 British fishing craft were deep sixed by the destroyers of the two mine laying groups (six by the Albatross group and 10 by the Nautilus group) after first taking the crews prisoner then landing them in Germany for the duration.

The Tyne field laid by Albatross soon claimed the Danish coaster Skeatti Sogeli and the fishing drifter Barley Rig, the latter with the loss of five of her nine crew. Two of the four Admiralty trawlers– HMT Crathie (No.106) and HMT Thomas W Irvin (No.61)— that went to sweep the mines on 27 August were also lost. Five ratings rode the ersatz minesweepers to the bottom. The remaining Admiralty trawlers under CDR R W Dalgety, RN, managed to gingerly clear the rest of the field.

Further tasked with mine operations in the North Sea and Baltic until they froze in the winter of 1914, Albatross went back to it after the thaw in the spring of 1915.

It was on one such mission under Kommodore Johannes August Karl Franz von Karpf, to sow an offensive minefield off the Russian-occupied Aland Islands between Finland and Sweden, saw Albatross screened by armored cruiser SMS Roon (10200t, 4×8.3″,10×5.9″ guns) along with the light cruisers SMS Augsburg (4800 t, 12x 10.5 cm L45s) and SMS Lubeck (3200t, 10×4.1″) and seven torpedo boats (S 126, S 131, G 135, G 141, S 142, G 147, and S 149) assigned in July 1915.

After laying 180 mines north of Bogskar on 1 July and turning back to Germany, Albatross and her screen on the next morning, at 0615, spied Russian RADM Mikhail Bakhirev’s cruiser squadron comprised of the massive British-built armored cruiser Rurik (15000t, 4×10″, 8×8″, 20×4.7″), the French-built armored cruiser sisters Admiral Makarov and Bayan (each 8400 t and carrying two 8″ and eight 6″) and the German-designed protected cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg (each 6700 t and carrying 12×6″). This put the Germans at just 42 guns, none larger than 8-inch, versus 76 Russian guns of comparable bore or larger.

Unknown to Von Karpf, his wireless communications were intercepted and decoded by the Russian admiralty, who cued Bakhirev, originally on a mission to bombard Memel, to intercept. (The Russians were able to listen in on these communications because they had obtained Signalbuch der Kaiserliche Marine nr 151 after the light cruiser SMS Magdeburg ran aground off Odensholm the previous August.)

The running battle ensued with Von Karpf’s dispersed squadron already split in two, with Roon and Lubeck headed toward Libau, while Augsburg, Albatross, and three torpedo boats were closer to Swedish waters. The Russian cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg caught up to the humble Albatross alone, and, with 24 6-inch guns against eight 88mm pieces, it was one-sided.

SMS Albatross is attacked by Russian cruisers in Swedish waters, 2 July 1915, by Wilhelm Malchin. Der Krieg 1914/19 in Wort und Bild, 39. Heft

Oil painting by J Hägg. “Albatross under fire” Swedish Marinmuseum B1397

In the end, it was only the decision of FKpt Georg West to run Albatross inland to the shallows near the Swedish island of Ostergarnsholm that saved his ship. Remember, Albatross only had a 14-foot draft, whereas the heavily armored Bogatyr and Oleg drew 21. Beached just 500 feet offshore, aflame, and riddled with Russian shrapnel, Albatross was left alone by 0830 as Bogatyr and Oleg withdrew to the east to catch up to Roon and Lubeck, with whom they engaged in an ineffective artillery duel, later joined by Rurik.

When the smoke cleared, with the other cruisers on both sides only suffering negligible damage, it was Albatross that was wrecked.

Not only that, but she was also in Swedish territorial waters.

Internment

Sweden was neutral from 1814 to 2024, but during the Great War was for sure more aligned to the Kaiser’s sphere of influence than that of any other.

A traditional enemy of Tsarist Russia, the Swedish and German general staff had met for several loose planning sessions on how best to fight the Russians before 1914, and, once the “lights went out across Europe” in August, exports to Germany, primarily of much-needed iron ore, jumped almost 800 percent. While thousands of Swedish expatriates wore the uniforms of the Allied armies, thousands more volunteered to serve under German flags, especially when it came to fighting Russia in the hope of liberating neighboring Finland– a land that had been part of Sweden for almost 700 years.

This sets the stage for the reception that the wounded FKpt West and his crew received.

Almost immediately after the Russian cruisers left over the horizon, locals began assisting the Albatross, shuttling wounded to shore.

A field hospital was established in the sugar mill at Romakloster for the 49 wounded German sailors. Soon, a detachment of the Gotland Infantry Regiment (I/27) arrived to stand quiet guard on the beach over a grim collection of 26 men who had been killed. One crew member had fallen overboard during the shelling and could not be found.

Recovered German sailors on the beach at Gotland, covered by the naval ensign of SMS Albatross. Note the blue-uniformed Swedish troops standing guard. The fallen sailors were later interred in a mass grave just east of Östergarn Church.

Two of the crew members who died during transportation to Roma were buried at Bjorke cemetery.

Crew of the German minelayer Albatross. Swedish Marinmuseum D 14988:1

Relieved of their ship, some ~210 assorted German internees from Albatross were left in the sugar mill at Romakloster for a period.

Then, with the mill needed for the upcoming beet harvest, they were shuffled about 20 miles away to the naval shooting range at Blahall on the Tofta coast of the Swedish island of Gotland.

Finally, the internees were moved to a military camp in Skillingaryd on the mainland in the autumn of 1917.

There, they were kept under loose guard but allowed to take local employment and generally enjoyed the rest of their war.

The crew crafted a large, tabletop-sized scale model of their lost cruiser and donated it to their captors.

It later found its way into the Swedish Marinmuseum. MM11315

Grey painted model of the German warship Albatross, mounted on an oak board, and in addition, a glass stand. On the stand, a nickel silver plate engraved: “To my friend Ivar Uggla from his albatross friends Christmas 1918”.

As for Albatross, the ship was righted by the Swedish Navy and towed by the Neptunbolaget salvage company, first to the island of Faro on 23 July, then to Karlskrona. Stockholm rebuffed numerous and regular requests from the Russian government to turn her over as an earned war trophy. The Swedish government just as often cited their note of protest over the fact that the battle was largely conducted in their neutral waters.

Albatross being salvaged with Swedish torpedo boats alongside. This image was made into a popular postcard. Swedish Marinmuseum MM10668

Albatross salvaged and afloat in Gotland. She was escorted in by the Swedish destroyers HSwMS Wale and Magne. Swedish Marinmuseum MM11394

As the war wore on, the relationship between Germany and Sweden became more strained. The country suffered more than 900 civilian mariners killed during the conflict, most at the hands of U-boats and German raiders, who sank at least 132 Swedish-flagged vessels at sea. Further, the Swedish navy had lost men and ships while sweeping German mines (the gunboat Gunhild was lost to a mine in the Skagerrak with a loss of 19 lives) while the Swedish submarine Hvalen was shot up by a German armed trawler who thought she was British, leading to the death of yet another sailor.

Still, the Swedish and German military cooperated in the joint occupation of the Åland Islands off Finland in 1918 (including landing a battalion of the famed Göta Life Guards, I/2, ashore), teaming up to fight the local Reds and disarm miserable Russian garrisons on the archipelago.

Post-war, the disarmed Albatross was sailed to Danzig on her own power, arriving on 31 December 1918, and was returned to German custody. Following the Versailles Treaty and the resulting limitations placed on the then-Weimar Republic’s Reichsmarine, Albatross was deemed surplus and sold for 900,000 marks to a firm in Hamburg to be broken up for scrap in 1921.

While I cannot find out what became of the good FKpt West, the leader of the squadron when she was lost, Johannes von Karpf, went on to fight another day. Commanding the battlecruiser SMS Moltke at Jutland and later the BCs SMS Lutzow and Hindenburg, he ended the Great War as a rear admiral and retired from the Reichsmarine on 5 November 1919. He passed in Hamburg in 1941 after serving on the board of several shipping companies in that port city. The Russian squadron commander, RADM Bachirev, was shot by the Reds in 1920.

Von Karpf, seen left as the last skipper of the Kaiser’s yacht, Hohenzollern.

As for the sister of Albatross, Nautilus continued to see service in the Baltic in the latter part of the war, meeting the Russians on several occasions– including fighting with field guns, mortars, and flamethrowers while supporting German landings in Moon Sound (it pays to be able to float in 15 feet of water!). Still steaming in 1918, she was disarmed and hulked.

Retained for another decade, she was sold to a Danish firm for 180,000 marks and scrapped in 1928.

Epilogue

Albatross forever changed a piece of Sweden’s coast, where July 2 is remembered annually as “Albatrossdagen” or Albatross Day. A small museum was constructed in 1977 near where she grounded, and today it holds more than 700 images, the cruiser’s ensign, two models, uniform items, and numerous relics.

A monument is maintained on the beach near where she grounded back in 1915.

Östergarn cemetery still holds her war dead in a place of honor, complete with a memorial.

It is often visited on Albatrossdagen by the German military attaché from Stockholm. This year, German Defense Attaché Markur Bruggemeier will lay a wreath from Germany at the sailor’s grave.

A detailed 1:100 model crafted by Heinz Zimmermann of Albatross in her wartime livery is in the Marinemuseum in Wilhelmshaven

Modell (von Heinz Zimmermann) im Maßstab 1:100 des Minenkreuzers SMS Albatross im deutschen Marinemuseum in Wilhelmshaven. (Wiki Commons)

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, June 11, 2025: Germans to the front!

Posted on by 2 comments

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says, “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, June 11, 2025: Germans to the front!

Naval History and Heritage Command photograph NH 48215

Above we see S.M. kleiner kreuzer Gefion, part of the German Imperial Navy’s East Asia Squadron in 1899, anchored off Hankou (now Wuhan) after her nearly 600-mile voyage up the Yangtze River to protect the Kaiser’s interests in China– with Willy’s brother aboard.

The unique little cruiser would play a gunboat role in Chinese diplomacy some 125 yeas ago this month before shipping back home for the rest of her career.

Meet Gefion

Our subject was the second warship to carry the name of a Nordic sea goddess (the fourth goddess of Æsir following Frigg, the wife of Odin) to serve in the German Navy. The first was a 48-gun sail frigate (segelfregatte) built for the Royal Danish Navy in 1843 and captured during the war with her southern neighbors in 1849.

The former Danish frigate Gefion under German service. The Germans used the trophy ship as a training ship under her original name until 1880 and then as a coal hulk until 1891. Her bell, figurehead, anchors, and many other relics dot Eckernförde and Kiel.

The second Gefion was originally deemed a Kreuzerkorvette (cruiser corvette) J when designed in the early 1890s, an early attempt by the Kaiserliche Marine to create a cruiser suitable for both reconnaissance and fleet duties, as well as an overseas colonial service ship on independent duty.

Some 362 feet overall with a 43-foot beam, she sported a dagger-like 8.4:1 length-to-beam ratio. Lightly built, she had 0.98 inches of nickel-steel armor over her deck and equivalent armor on her conning tower. A second 0.6-inch steel plate cap was over her engine cylinder heads, backed by 5.9 inches of wood. She had a 4-inch cellulose belt at the waterline.

Steel hulled and using both transverse and longitudinal steel frames, she was sheathed below the water line with wood and copper, held with brass fittings, to help with fouling, especially when in colonial service.

Originally to carry six new 15 cm/35 (5.9″) SK L/35 guns in single mounts, with 810 shells in her magazine, this was later changed to 10 equally new but lighter 10.5 cm/40 (4.1″) SK L/40 mounts with as many as 1,500 shells at the ready. They were arranged two forward, two aft, and eight amidships in broadside, all protected by a thin armored shield. Her secondary battery was a half dozen 5 cm/40 (1.97″) SK L/40 rapid-fire (10 rounds per minute) torpedo boat guns with another 1,500 rounds in the magazine.

She also had a pair of 17-inch above-deck torpedo tubes (down from a planned six). Eight Maxim guns were arranged in her two spotting/fighting tops, they could be dismounted for use ashore. Likewise, almost a third of a 300-man crew could be issued small arms carried aboard and sent ashore. A small 6cm boat gun could back them up.

Gefion, Janes 1914

With six cylindrical two-sided boilers exhausting through a trio of stacks, driving two VTE engines, her plant was good for 9,800 shp. Extensively fitted for electric lights and hoists, she carried three 67-volt, 40-kW dynamos. Designed for 19 knots, on trials she made 20.53 knots at full power on forced draft. Loaded with 900 tons of good coal, she could theoretically steam 6,850nm at 11 knots, or 2,730nm at 18 knots on natural draft, the first German cruiser capable of such a range. This could be extended by rigging a cruising canvas from her two masts and rigging. It turned out that her decks vibrated extensively at full power, she struggled in tough seas, and she had insufficient ventilation below decks.

How she stacked up against contemporary cruisers, from the circa 1900 Professional Notes in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings:

Built for a cost of 5.171 million marks, she was ordered from Ferdinand Schichau’s new Danzig yard, as hull No. 486, and laid down on 28 March 1892. Launched 31 May 1893, she commissioned 27 June 1894.

This made her the forerunner of the 41 later kleiner kreuzers of the Gazelle, Bremen, Konigsberg, Dresden, Kolberg, Magdeburg, Karlsruhe, Graudenz, Pillau, Wiesbaden, Brummer, and Coln classes constructed between 1897 and 1918, all of which carried 4.1 inch guns on similar hulls along with torpedo tubes. The first four classes even carried the same model 4.1-inch SK L/40s as Gefion.

Geifon with her glad rags flying about 1895 IWM (Q 22323)

SMS Gefion was photographed sometime early in her career, between her commissioning date, 27 June 1894, and the receipt of this photo by the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence, 28 June 1895. NH 88636

Her first skipper was Korvettenkapitän Hans Oelrichs, an 1860s veteran of the old Norddeutsche Marine. Gefion’s first assignments were to escort the Royal yacht Hohenzollern to Norway in the autumn of 1894 and attend the inauguration ceremony of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal (Nord-Ostsee-Kanal) the following year when the double locks at Brunsbüttel and Holtenau were opened.

A white-liveried SMS Gefion photographed early in her career, possibly during her 1894-1897 service in home waters. The Levensau Bridge over the Kiel Canal appears in the background; the Canal opened in 1895. NH 88634

Gefion spent the next couple of years as a guardship at Wilhelmshaven while the larger second-class cruiser Kaiserin Augusta did the same at Kiel. During the winter and spring, they served as training grounds for the fleet’s new stokers and artificers. During the summer and fall, they clocked in on fleet maneuvers, performing scouting services for the main battle line, taking breaks to escort Hohenzollern.

In April 1897, Gefion escorted the Swedish passenger ship Rex on the inaugural voyage of the mail steamer line from Sassnitz to Trelleborg. She counted among her wardroom Prince Henry (Heinrich) of Prussia, the Kaiser’s younger brother and a career naval officer, who on at least one occasion hosted Willy and his sons aboard.

Sent abroad

With Gefion’s newness wearing off and new light cruisers joining the German fleet, she was put in overhaul in the summer of 1897, made ready for overseas service, upgrading her smaller generators with a trio of 110-volt, 58-kW sets.

Her new skipper was FKpt Max Heinrich Ludwig Rollmann, a career sailor who joined the German Navy in 1873 as a cadet. A skilled officer and torpedo expert, he was part of the so-called “Torpedobande” (torpedo gang) which influenced Tirpitz and others to warm to the weapons.

Originally to be sent to intervene in the ongoing dispute between Haiti and Germany, Gefion was instead selected to strengthen the Ostasiatischen Kreuzerdivision in the Far East.

Gefion, NH 48216

In December 1897, just ahead of the first winter ice, she left in company with the old 7,000-ton armored cruiser Deutschland and Kaiserin Augusta in a squadron commanded by Prince Henry. When Deutschland broke down in Hong Kong in April 1898 while heading to China, Henry switched his flag to Gefion and proceeded to the German fleet’s Pacific treaty homeport at Tsingtao.

It was with the German East Asian Squadron that Gefion kept tabs on Dewey’s squadron as it smashed the Spanish in Manila later that summer, steamed to Samoa to serve as a station ship in early 1899, and then steam nearly 600 miles up the Yangtze to Hankou (now Wuhan) where she landed 130 armed crew on 28 April to guard the new 103-acre German Concession (Deutsche Konzession) in that river city and escort Prince Henry, then head of the squadron.

Henry was received by the Governor-General of Huguang, Zhang Zhidong, along with the assorted foreign expatriates, and even the British and French Concessions in the city flew the German flag.

Zhang Zhidong entertains Prince Heinrich. The VanDyke-clad FKpt Max Rollman, Gefion’s skipper, is to the far left. After the reception, the Germans toured the local military academy and watched the drills of the Hubei New Army, which included several German officers as instructors, notably Lieutenants Carl Fuchs and Albrecht Welzel, a Sergeant A. Seydel, and a Rittmaster (cavalry master) named Behrensdorf.

Henry laid the cornerstone for the new German bund in Hankou on 30 April, flanked by Gefion’s officers and crew.

War!

After a second tour in Samoa in early 1900, Gefion, now reclassified as a Kreuzer III. Klasse, and the rest of the German Far East Squadron, now under VADM Felix von Bendemann, massed at Tsingtao as trouble rumbled with the anti-Western Boxers in China, who were mounting attacks on churches.

The German force at the time, besides Gefion, included two new 6,700-ton Victoria Louise-class protected cruisers (with 477-member crews), SMS Hansa and SMS Hertha, the Kaiserin Augusta, the light cruisers SMS Irene, Geier, Seeadler, Bussard, and Schwalbe, along with the gunboat Itis.

Die Gartenlaube, by Willy Stower, showing the German cruisers in the Far East, circa 1898. These include Arkona. Prinzeß Wilhelm. Kaiserin Augusta, Kaiser, (Flaggschiff der I. Division) along with. Kormoran, Irene, Gefion, and Deutschland, (Flaggschiff der II. Division)

On 30 May, the Chinese government allowed a force of 400 assorted troops from eight Western nations to land at Tientsin and head to Peking to protect the Legation Quarter there. However, the situation continued to deteriorate as the Boxers cut the rail line between the two cities on 5 June, and a week later, a Japanese diplomat was killed by Chinese regulars.

Cruiser SMS Gefion at Tsingtao, circa 1900

Joining an international task force that included British, Russian, French, and Japanese warships, the combined squadron on 17 June moved to seize the five Chinese forts at Taku (Dagukou) at the mouth of the Hai (Pei-Ho) River, which barred the way to Tientsin (Tianjin), some 40 miles downstream, and Peking (Beijing), 110 miles inland.

The combat was sharp but one-sided, with the forts falling after a six-hour bombardment and short action ashore by naval landing parties.

S.M. Kanonenboot ILTIS im Gefecht mit den Takuforts am 17. Juni 1900 Willy Stöwer, DMM 2000-014-001

Ersturmung von taku by Fritz Neumann, Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection

The Taku forts would remain garrisoned by the Eight Nations through 1902. Looking down the Peiho River toward North Port and Bay, from Northwest Fort, Taku, China. Underwood & Underwood, Publishers, 1901. LC-DIG-stereo-1s48075

The allied fleet also captured the Chinese government’s Dagu shipyard, complete with a gunboat that went to the Japanese and four new German-built Hai Lung class torpedo boats that were split between the British, Russian, French, and Germans.

Chinese Hai-Lung class torpedo boats captured at Taku, June 1900. Some 193 feet oal, these four German-made boats could make 32 knots and carried six Sk 4.7 cm L/35s while two 17-inch torpedo tubes weren’t fitted. Hai-Lung, yard number 608, became the German SMS Taku and was decommissioned after grounding on 30 December 1913. Hai-Ch’ing, yard number 609, became the French Takou and was written off after being grounded on the coast of Vietnam. Hai-Hoa, hull number 610, became the Russian Таку (Taku), and was sunk on 26 July 1904 off Port Arthur by Japanese forces. Hai-Hsi, yard number 611, became HMS Taku and was sold for scrap on 26 October 1916.

A Chinese second-class cruiser (Hai-Chi?) flying an Admiral’s flag was detained outside Taku by Gefion, who was ordered to release the vessel.

This triggered the start of the outright 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking, with some 900 Western troops and civilians, along with 2,800 Chinese Christians, holding out until relieved. The German minister, Baron von Ketteler, was killed by a Manchu officer escorted by Chinese lancers the same day while on his way to negotiate a solution to the incident, which was rapidly spiraling out of control.

A force that had tried to reinforce Peking before the siege was led by British VADM Sir Edward Hobart Seymour, who took the lead and scratched together a column of some 2,127 men drawn from the assorted ships crowding under the Taku forts, with the idea to force the way to Peking via Tientsin. His chief of staff was the young future admiral, Capt. John Jellicoe.

Seymour was able to muster 915 straw-hatted jack-tars and Royal Marines to spearhead the detachment. The Germans chipped in 511. Smaller contingents from allied fleets included 312 Russians, 158 French, 112 Americans, 54 Japanese, 40 Italians, and 25 Austrians.

Seymour Expedition, 1900, USN 901030

As detailed in Die Kaiserliche Marine während der Wirren in China, 1900-1901. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1903. The German force was seriously ad hoc.

The German contingent, which consisted of 22 officers, two surgeons, and 487 enlisted men, was organized into two companies and two large platoons, armed with Gewehr 88 bolt-action rifles, single-action M1879 Reichsrevolvers, and four Maxim machine guns. Commanded overall by Kapitän zur See Guido von Usedom, the skipper of the Hertha, the four ships that coughed up landing forces contributed the following, each in turn led by the respective ship’s executive officer:

  • Hertha: 7 officers, 175 men under KL (CDR) Hecht
  • Hansa: 7 officers, 153 men, under KKpt (LCDR) Paul Schlieser
  • Kaiserin Augusta: 5 officers, 85 men, 1 doctor under KKpt Oltmann Buchholz
  • Gefion: 3 officers, 74 men, 1 doctor under KKpt Otto Weniger

Of course, Seymour thought he was just opposing a rabble of Boxer bandits, not 30,000 Imperial Qing Army regulars (Kansu Braves) who ultimately came out against him. These units consisted of Muslims from the remote Gansu Province, situated between the Qilian Mountains and the Gobi Desert, men renowned for their discipline and loyalty to the empire.

Flying long scarlet and black banners, the Gansu Army wore traditional uniforms but was well-trained and armed with Mauser M.71 repeater rifles and modern breechloading field artillery.

Chinese soldiers in 1899–1901. Left: three infantrymen of the New Imperial Army. Front: drum major of the regular army. Seated on the trunk: field artilleryman. Right: Boxers. Via Leipziger illustrirte Zeitung 1900

With this, the so-called Seymour Expedition was seriously outnumbered and fighting in a foreign land.

They left out for Peking from Tientsin on 10 June– a week before the Taku forts were seized– via five commandeered trains and by 14 June had suffered their first losses, among the Italian contingent. By the 18th, a pitched battle was fought against a key Western position, held by men largely drawn from Gefion.

As detailed in “The Boxer Rebellion: Bluejackets and Marines in China, 1900–1901” by Emily Abdow (NHHC, 2023):

A German garrison was at a coal depot near Langfang, christened “Fort Gefion” for their ship. Chinese Colonel Yao Wang [of Gen. Dong Fuxiang’s Gansu Army] and Boxer leader Ni Zanqing determined Fort Gefion was the weak point and amassed about 3,000 Qing soldiers and 2,000 Boxers for an attack. On 18 June, Boxers charged at Fort Gefion, teenagers and old men alike barreling into heavy allied fire in never-ending waves. When the Boxers fell, Colonel Yao’s soldiers attacked. Armed with modern weapons, they nearly forced the Germans’ right flank to retreat. British and French sailors reinforced the Germans, driving back the Chinese forces. At the end of the battle, the allied casualties were 10 dead and 50 wounded. The Chinese death toll was 400, over half of the casualties Qing soldiers.

With no hope of reaching Peking, Seymour’s force burned their trains and fought a slow, foot-borne retreat back to Tientsin for the next four days.

Coming upon the Chinese government’s Fort Xigu, the Great Hsi-Ku Arsenal (also seen in Western sources as Fort Hsiku/Osiku), eight miles northwest of Tientsin in the pre-dawn of 22 June, it made sense to occupy the works and wait for relief from the sea.

The problem was that the local Chinese garrison approached 1,500 troops, and the fort, with 16-foot-high mud walls protected by Krupp field guns, was a tough nut to crack.

With the Royal Marines tasked with an attempt to take the complex from the rear, Seymour passed the order, “Germans to the front.”

Leading the German column into the attack was KKpt Oltmann Buchholz, XO of the Kaiserin Augusta, with the men from the Hansa, Hertha, and Gefion behind him. The assault was quick and sharp, with the Germans battering down the front doors, then sweeping through and clearing the complex, turning the good Krupp guns around on their former owners. Inside were found, besides munitions, enough rations and supplies to revitalize the force along with a well-stocked medical clinic.

Buchholz was killed in the effort.

German artist Carl Röchling celebrated the event with his painting “Die Deutschen an der Front” (“The Germans to the front”).

The attack occurred at 0222. Roechling takes a bit of liberty with the amount of sunlight.

Seymour Expedition, 1900, likely at the Great Hsi-Ku Arsenal. USN 901028

A relief column of 2,000 fresh Western troops under Capt. (later RADM of Battle of Coronel fame) Christopher Cradock, RN, and Major (later MG) Littleton Tazewell “Tony” Waller, USMC, relieved Seymour near Fort Hsiku on 25 June, allowing his column to fully withdraw back to Tientsin. Seymour’s international column suffered at least 62 dead and 232 wounded, a casualty rate of about 1:6, during its fortnight in the Chinese countryside.

The German sailors and marines on the Seymour expedition ashore in June 1900 lost 16 killed and 60 wounded, including two young officers from Gefion (LT z. S. Hane v. Krohn from Wilhelmähoven and Frang Bustig from Hanover, both on 22 June in the assault on Fort Hsiku). The bombardment of the Taku forts on 17 June cost the Germans seven killed and 11 wounded, all on the gunboat SMS Itis (including her skipper, who caught 25 shrapnel wounds yet remained on the bridge, earning the Blue Max). Subsequent fighting in and around Tientsin cost the German force another 12 dead and 41 wounded, including three sailors from Gefion’s naval infantry (Wilhelm Wachsmund from Goblenz, on 27 June, along with Heinrich Hamm from Grünendeich and Emil Bonk from Raschang on 13 July). Of note, Hansa’s company suffered the greatest casualties of the German naval contingents during the Boxer rebellion (13 dead and 24 wounded).

Besieged Peking would ultimately be relieved in mid-August by the 20,000-strong force under British Maj. Gen. Alfred Gaselee (although fully half of the force were Japanese troops under Lt. Gen. Yamaguchi Motomi, a general senior in both grade and experience to Gaselee).

The 51 German marines (the fourth largest contingent in the Quarter) of III. Seebataillon under Oberleutnant Graf von Soden, holding out at Peking in the Legation, suffered 12 killed and 14 wounded during the siege, holding their line along the Quarter’s old Tartar Wall shoulder-to-shoulder with the 53 U.S. Marines and bluejackets landed from the USS Oregon and Newark.

German marines Peking 1900, AWM A05904

Peace

Following the arrival of more ships and troops rushed to China from Germany, Gefion was recalled home in September 1901.

Arriving back in German waters in time for Christmas, she was placed in ordinary and sent to Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven for a drawn-out three-year overhaul. This saw her armament retained but relocated for both stability and protection purposes.

Emerging from overhaul in 1905, she was placed in reserve, the German fleet having much better cruisers to choose from at that point.

It was from these mothballs that she was recalled in 1914, but, with no crews available to man her, she was moved to Danzig for use as a barracks ship, her usable equipment and weapons cannibalized for other uses.

At the end of the war, the victorious allies elected not to claim the hulked Gefion as a war trophy, and she was stricken from the German naval list on 5 November 1919.

Ex-Gefion was purchased by the salvage concern of Norddeutsche Tiefbaugesellschaft along with her old Far East buddy Kaiserin Augusta, the cruiser Victoria Louise, several incomplete submarines, and the obsolete (circa 1890) battlewagon Brandenburg. While most of the company’s new assets were soon scrapped in Danzig, Gefion and Victoria Louise were sold to the shipping firm of Danziger Hoch- und Tiefbau GmbH (Behnke & Sieg), along with the four still-crated 1,200 hp MAN four-stroke diesel engines for the unfinished SM U-115 and U-116.

Most of the superstructure and the machinery from Gefion and Victoria Louise were removed, and two cranes and their associated stowage space were installed. Their old coal-fired boilers and VTE engines removed, each picked up a pair of former U-boat diesels. They entered service with DHT in 1920 as the cargo vessels (frachtdampfer) SS Adolf Sommerfeld and Flora Sommerfeld, respectively.

Seen in the 1922 Lloyds Steamers list as SS Adolf Summerfeld (sic). The ex-SMS Victoria Louise is listed in the same volume correctly as Flora Sommerfeld.

However, the Baltic timber route they served had shallow draft harbors, and the thin-waisted former cruisers drew too much water to make the venture successful. By 1923, both were scrapped in Danzig, and their still-young diesels were sold to an electric company.

Epilogue

The German Navy never used the name Gefion again, however, her bell has been spotted a few times since WWII and may be in circulation in private collections.

Several pieces of period maritime art, primarily German postcards, endure.

1902 lithograph of Gefion by Hugo Graf

An exquisite 1:100 scale model of the cruiser in her white overseas livery is on display under glass at the Internationales Maritimes Museum in Hamburg.

Speaking of models, Combrig has a 1:700 scale kit available. 

As for Gefion’s China-era (1898-1901) skipper, FKpt Max Rollmann returned to Germany, became the captain of the battleship SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, and commanded the 1st Squadron of the High Seas Fleet as a commodore, then the III Squadron as a vice admiral in 1910. Retiring in 1913 after 40 years with the colors, he was made a full admiral on the retired list, decorated with both the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle and the Order of the Crown. Eschewing his pension and returning to work in the admiralty as a civilian during the Great War, he passed in 1942 in Berlin, aged 85. His son, KKpt Max Rollmann, had passed the previous year while serving as the duty officer (Rollenoffizier) aboard the Bismarck.

Charakterisierter Admiral Max Rollmann. As part of his service in China, he carried top-level decorations and honors, including the Russian Order of Saint Stanislaus, the Grand Officer’s Cross of the Order of the Crown of Thailand, and the Commander’s Cross of the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure.

Kapitan zur See Guido von Usedom, the skipper of the cruiser Hertha that led the overall German naval infantry battalion under Seymour, was given a Blue Max and made an ADC to the Kaiser following the campaign. Quick with exotic anecdotes from the Orient to entertain Willy’s guests, he was given command of the imperial yacht Hohenzollern for a couple of years, followed by comfortable desk jobs until he retired in 1910 as a vice admiral after 39 years in the service, promoted to full Admiral on the retirement rolls.

Like Rollman, Von Usedom volunteered his services to the Kaiser once again in 1914 and soon found himself wearing a fez as an admiral in the Ottoman Navy in command of Sonderkommando Türkei. He strengthened the Dardanelles Straits until they became virtually impregnable from the sea in 1915, forcing the disastrous land Gallipoli campaign and earning a set of oak leaves for his 1900 Blue Max. He remained in Turkish service until 1918, when he retired a second time on the outbreak of peace.

Charakterisierter Admiral Guido von Usedom passed in 1925, aged 70. And yes, the center image is him showing a Mameluke-carrying Willy around the Dardanelles in 1915.

Albert Wilhelm Heinrich, Prinz von Preußen, was very much seen as the “Sailor Prince” of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Entering the German Navy at the age of 16 in 1878, he was a professional officer and earned his Großadmiral shoulder boards for sure, having spent decades on sea-going duty. During the Great War, he ably commanded the Imperial German Baltic Sea Fleet (Oberbefehlshaber der Ostseestreitkräfte) in operations against the Russians. He passed in 1929, aged 66.

The German treaty port at Tsingtao fell to an Anglo-Japanese force in 1914, and the Hankou Concession was retrograded by the Chinese in 1917, with the remaining German merchants closing up shop altogether in 1945. The old baroque German consulate in the Hankou Bund, where Prince Henry laid the cornerstone after a trip on Gefion in 1899, survives today on Yanjing Avenue as a Wuhan municipal office building, a red banner flying from its mast.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

***

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

The Tsar’s Finest

Posted on by Leave a comment

It happened 110 years ago today.

Here we see the submarine Bars (Snow Leopard), the first of a class of 24 planned boats for the Imperial Russian Navy, after being launched on 2 June 1915 at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd).

Note her Romanov eagle bow crest and four port topside “drop collar” torpedo launcher positions. Designed by a Polish-Russian submarine engineer, Prof. Stefan Karlovich Dzhevetskiy, the launchers were a cost-effective and easy way of carrying torpedoes and were used by both the French and Tsarist navies. However, the design proved an issue in winter months, especially in ice, and greatly shortened the lifespan of the weapons carried. 

On 25 July 1915, the boat, under the command of LT V. F. Dudkin, entered service and became part of the 1st Division of the Baltic Sea Submarine Force, and would be operational for the next 22 months.

Russia. Baltic. Submarine Bars 1915-1917. Note: torpedoes carried in the Dzhevetsky drop collars

Designed by Maj. Gen. (Russian admiralty officers in non-line billets were listed as colonels and generals, not admirals) Ivan Grigorievich Bubnov, the head of the GUK (Main Directorate of Shipbuilding), the Bars class was probably the most advanced and effective Russian submarines until the late mid-1930s when the Malyutka (type M) class boats began entering service.

Russian submarines Volk and Bars (center), iced in over a Baltic Winter. 1915-1917.

At 223-feet oal, they had a displacement of 650 tons (780 submerged) and could operate down to 300 feet. This made them almost ideal for the Baltic. Keep in mind that today’s Sweden’s Blekinge (A26)-class SSKs under construction right now run just 216 feet overall.

Bars class submarine, via Spassky

Diesel electric (with German Krupp or Russian Ludwig Nobel Kolomna plant diesels, later augmented by some American-made engines sent from New London) powering twin screws, they could make 9 knots submerged (13 on the surface) and carried enough fuel and food for 14 days of operations.

Heavily armed, they had eight 18-inch torpedos carried on the deck in Dzhevetsky drop collar trapeeze systems, and another eight fish in fore and aft torpedo rooms with two tubes in each. A small deck gun or two and a light machine gun were added. Mines could also be carried.

The Russians were able to complete 20 Bars-type boats, of which four were lost during the Great War (including Bars) while three others sank in peacetime operations. Four, as well as two of the unfinished hulls, were captured by the Germans in 1917-18. Post-war, the Soviets kept a dozen of the class in operation into the 1930s, with at least two surviving until the 1950s in use as training ships and battery charging barges.

The Soviets considered them the first “modern” submarines in Russian service.

Evolution of Soviet subs from 1914-1955 with Bars-class at top

In 1993, in the Baltic Sea, in the area of ​​Gotska Sandön Island, the Swedish minesweeper Landsort discovered a Bars-type submarine (most likely Bars herself, which went missing in May 1917) at a depth of 127 meters.

Cap ribbon and model of the Russian submarine Bars at Vladivostok

As for her father, designer Bubnov died of typhus during the Russian Civil War in 1919, aged just 47.

MG Bubnov, in front of the building Tsarist submarine Akula, in happier days

« Older Entries Recent Entries »