Thiaria: Other People's ships

Hello again!

Continuing Germany in the Thiarian Universe:

4. Kolberg and Augsburg as minelayers
Of the eight small cruisers retained by Germany, six were progressively scrapped during the 1920s and early 1930s as six replacements of the Emden-, K- and Leipzig-classes were commissioned (these are the same as in reality here). In 1935, only the two newest largest ones - Augsburg and Kolberg - remained. They had been refurbished for further service between 1924 and 1927 by replacing the coal-burning boilers with oil-burners, removing the forefunnel, installing a new flared bow for better seakeeping, installing twin torpedo tube sets instead of the singles, removing the underwater tubes and fitting a new bridge with a tube mast and new fire-control equipment. With these alterations, their hulls had become badly overweight, and the poop was cut down to save weight. For better weight distribution and added firepower, the forward pair of beam-mounted 150mm guns were removed and installed fore and aft, superfiring the guns already there and increasing the broadside from four to five guns. In 1926, Kolberg looked like this:

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By the time all six newer light cruisers were available, Hitler was already in power, and the Kolbergs, which were to be decommissioned according to the treaty of Versailles, remained in service. In 1934, they received eight 20mm and four 37mm flaks and replaced 500mm torpedo tubes with 533mm ones. Their turbines, which could not produce more than 22 knots at that time, were replaced with new engines of 30.000hp. The proposed installation of a catapult for a single airplane was never implemented due to topweight issues. To combat their tendency to roll, they received bilge keels. By the end of this modernization, Augsburg looked like this:

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Due to their slow speed - even with totally refurbished turbines, they were only good for 26 knots - they were not suitable for service with the fleet; they were rated as poor sea boats, and their accomodations were considered positively apalling. As early as December 1939, their conversion to cruiser minelayers was approved. They lost both torpedo twins and all 150mm singles; the 88mm singles were replaced by 88/76 twins and mounted where the aft beam guns used to be. Two 150mm L/48 twin mounts of the destroyer type were installed as new main armament; several of these had become free when the decision was made in 1940 to fit all further 1936A destroyers after Z32 with six 128mm (rather than five 150mm) LA guns to cut topweight and improve seakeeping. The mine rails aft were lengthened all the way to the forefunnel, tripling mine capacity. In this guise, the Kolbergs were still overweight, but as they were not supposed to operate in the open ocean, this was deemed acceptable. The refit took till late 1940; when it was complete, Kolberg looked like this:

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Both sprang into action when the attack on the Soviet Union commenced, paying frequent nightly visits to soviet held Baltic ports. As the Soviets had been busy laying defensive minefields as well, this duty was very hazardous, and Augsburg had her bow forward of turret A blown off by a Soviet mine on September 7th, 1941. As soon as the Baltic coast was secured all the way to Tallinn, Kolberg went to the North Sea and made some nightly sorties towards the channel to lay offensive minefields. These were however cancelled in March 1942 as too dangerous when she had come under attack by British MTBs and was hit by a 457mm torpedo, which however did little damage. Kolberg sank one MTB with 37mm fire and ran over another one on that mission; these would remain her only direct kills. For the remainder of 1942, Kolberg received repairs; she was rejoined by Augsburg in September, after the latter had been repaired, receiving radar and two 20mm quads. Her new bow was more flared and had a more pronounced clipper shape than previously, significantly increasing her seakeeping, and she was considered fit to deploy to northern Norway. Kolberg was taken in hand for a similar conversion in November 1942; while she was docked for repairs in Kiel in January 1943, she was hit by three bombs during a heavy British air raid and burned mostly out. She was declared a constructive total loss in February 1943 and broken up. Augsburg had meanwhile performed three mining missions beyond the North Cape; in February 1943 she was assigned to the main surface fleet and teamed up with the slow battleship Claus von Beveren (ex Dutch Willem de Zwijger), which was mostly used to cover German surface battlegroups on the return leg if they were pursued by (usually superior) British forces. Due to the presence of U-Boats and land-based air, the British never pressed the pursuit so far that the German backup forces had to engage; they were however repeatedly under attack by British and Russian submarines. In August 1943, Claus vön Beveren, the heavy cruiser Blücher and the Augsburg embarked on Operation Sizilien and destroyed an allied base on Spitzbergen. The next sortie was Operation Wunderland II in late September 1943, in another attempt to sink some large Soviet icebreakers without whom no Soviet convoys along the Siberian northern coast would be possible. This attack ended quite disastrously. The German squadron split up to search for the Soviets, and Augsburg succeded, facing an escort group of three Soviet destroyers and engaging them, while the Beveren - incredibly placed to the south of Augsburg despite the ice situation - was sixty miles away. The Soviets started to turn the convoy and the invaluable icebreakers around, while Augsburg proceeded to sink the Soviet destroyer Razumniy, whose return fire was ineffectual due to the lack of modern fire control and whose torpedoes malfunctioned due to the cold. Augsburg's skipper informed Admiral Kummetz of his contact, and he ordered Augsburg to pursue despite the fact that the convoy was so slow that the Beveren, which was an icebreaker of sorts, could have easily intercepted it at no risk to herself. The inevitable happened, and Augsburg got stuck in the ice and damaged her hull. Kummetz, who could have engaged the convoy from where he was at long range and saved Augsburg later, decided to tow Augsburg clear first, while the Russians screamed for help on radio. The salvage ate up six vital hours, and by the time it was done, the Russians were far out of range and covered by night. Kummetz then called off the operation and headed back for Norway. On the return leg, the Soviet submarine K21 fired six torpedoes at the Germans and hit each of them once. Augsburg, which already had 500 tons of water in her hull, foundered after a few minutes and went down practically with all hands. At the time of her loss, she looked like this:

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Greetings
GD

Fantastic drawings as usual

Great drawings GD.

I do like the chase of the Soviet Icebreakers as what you say about no convoys to Archangel especially and Murmansk would have made life very difficult for the Allies.

Awesome work on the camo!

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

This last set of drawings is awesome as is the norm on this thread
Well done GD

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Thank you Kim for the crest

"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

Excellent work and its nice to see this thread coming along with more interesting designs.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

Hello again!

Continuing Germany in the Thiarian Universe:

5. A tradition of cheating: The Predator-class torpedo boats
Germany's first postwar building project were six small destroyers of the Type 23 / Raubvogel (Bird of Prey) class, based upon a slight downscale of the wartime H145 design to meet the 800ts size limit of the treaty of Versailles. As they carried the same armament as the H145s, they were overweight, and most performance data was unsatisfactory; they were no matches for the British V/W-class. Absurdly, Germany's naval construction department proposed to remedy their weakness by upgunning them from 105mm to 128mm guns without increasing their size, thus seriously endangering seaworthiness. In the end, the Germans decided to cheat, starting a long tradition that was to be followed ever more boldly right to the start of the second world war. The follow-on class Type 24 was designed to a displacement of 1.100 tons, enabling them to mount the proposed three 128mm guns plus an 88mm AA gun and eliminate most of their predecessor's weaknesses in terms of seakeeping, accomodation and range. Officially, their displacement was stated as 800 tons, and a ridiculously low draught was claimed (length and width, both visibly larger than their predecessors, were obvious to every observer, but draught was not). They were named for predatory land animals, thus they were called the Raubtier (Predator) class. Six units were constructed between 1925 and 1928, and they were rated as very satisfactory, being much more reliable and also more seaworthy than the first large Type 34 destroyers which supplanted them. A second batch of six boats was ordered in 1928, and they were completed till 1931. All received 37mm twins instead of single 88mm guns, the second batch upon completion, the first batch via retrofit between 1933 and 1934. Their names were Wolf, Iltis, Luchs, Tiger, Jaguar, Leopard, Löwe, Puma, Marder, Gepard, Panther and Hyäne. At the time of completion, they looked like this, painted in an experimental dark green livery which was however discarded again in 1932:

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As the treaty of Versailles allowed only for 16 destroyers, the first two Raubvogel-class vessels Möwe and Greif were sold off to Iran in 1933. The four remaining units and the twelve Raubtier-class ships formed the backbone of Germany's destroyer fleet throughout the Thirties, together with 13 old 1911 type torpedo boats and three even older 1906 type units. They swapped their 500mm triple torpedo tubes with 533mm ones in 1933 through 1935 and received two 20mm guns each between 1935 and 1937. When the war started, the class looked like this:

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All were active during the attack on Poland, where Tiger was lost in a collision with Z3. They then deployed to the west and took part in the invasion of Denmark and Norway, where the next loss occurred, again by collision with a friendly ship: Leopard broke in half after being rammed by an auxiliary minelayer. Luchs finally was torpedoed by HM Submarine Swordfish in July 1940. Successes were nil. Of the other nine, five managed to cross the English Channel in 1940 and deploy to Brest, together with the three surviving Raubvogel-class ships. From there, they frequently harassed British shipping, and after Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had reached Brest, they were the primary means of escort for the battleships. Puma and Panther each managed to sink a British submarine while escorting Gneisenau in the latter half of 1940. Panther and Jaguar sunk a British sloop and three smaller escorts in a pitched battle in the western Channel entrance in April 1941. At that time, they had received passive radar sets, looking like this:

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Early in 1942, four units accompanied Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen halfway through the channel before returning to Brest. Of the other three, Wolf was mined off Dunkerque in January 1941; Gepard and Hyäne were part of the Baltic fleet during the attack on the Soviet Union and later joined the training flotilla in the Baltic. Iltis and Marder were lost in a night action with British MTBs in May 1942. The four Brest-based units had their greatest success in August 1943 when they raided a British coastal convoy. Puma and Jaguar sank the accompanying destroyers HMS Buxton and HMS Wells (Town class), and the German force of eight destroyers managed to sink five merchants. At that time, they had already active radar sets and replaced their aft rangefinder with an additional 20mm gun; they looked like this:

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Löwe was lost in December 1943 in combat against British cruisers and destroyers; the claim went to HMS Loyal. Puma was sunk by British airplanes in Brest harbour in May 1944, and Jaguar and Panther went down during the heavy skirmishes that accompanied the allied invasion in Normandy in October. Jaguar lashed out for a last time and sunk the Norwegian destroyer Svenner before succumbing to gunfire from HNoMS Stord and three British destroyers. With two destroyers, a sloop, a corvette and two transports to her credit, Jaguar was not only the most successful boat of her class, but also the most successful German torpedo craft of them all. After the annihilation of the German forces at Brest, only Gepard and Hyäne were left, who remained in the Baltic and frequently escorted the old battleship Nassau on bombardment missions in 1945; they also aided in the evacuation of civilians from the Baltic and East Prussia. Despite repeated Soviet air, submarine and MTB attacks, both survived the war and were ceded to the Soviet Union in 1946; at the time the war ended, they had replaced their semi-automatic 37mm guns with fully automatic ones, and their 20mm singles with twin mounts. They also had their active radar augmented and their passive radar upgraded. They looked like this:

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After a short service period under the new names Izkuzniy and Izpolitel'niy, they were scrapped in the early 1950s.

Greetings
GD

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