I just received an excellent Osprey publication that is newly out. It covers German Raiders of WW2 in an excellent format and has many pics and plates. It really covers the topic concisely and well. For those of you not familar with these vessels I urge you to give them a look…there are a lot of cool stories aplenty dealing w/ them…one even sank an Australian Crusier in battle!!! The most successful took 32 ships in a cruise of over 500 days!!! I was surprised to read that most carried seaplanes and torpedo boats in their holds and some even had torpedo launcher mounted on them…
It has also started an interest in possibly modeling one of these vessels…has there ever been a model kit of one of these types, such as the famous “Komet” or “Penguin”? If not, are there suitable merchants that could be converted???
HEY MANSTEIN ! Now you are on a subject I can definitely relate to . The old AURORA company had at one time the ATLANTIS . They also had a 1/350 GEARING class destroyer but I never caught up with either kit in over forty years . The hobby shops I had to deal with on naval bases couldnt get them ,or , my ship left before they got more . I had for years an old GERMAN press picture of the ATLANTIS type ship . I don,t know if it was her or not . TANKERBUILDER
…tempted to order but they don’t even have pics of the box-art on that site…
If you actually weigh the damage these vessels did to Allied merchants vs their costs, they blow the German pocket battleships, battleships and cruisers outta the water…!!!
The Australian cruiser you are referring to is HMAS Sydney. She was sunk off our Western Coast on November 19 1941. Her protagonist was the Kormoran commanded by Theodore detmers. Both Ships were lost in the engagement. You can buy Resin Kits of both vessels. I am pretty sure The company that put out both kits is NNT. Ironically, the wrecks of both vessels were discovered last year in March. The person who found them was David Mearns. He was the same person that discovered the Wreck of HMS Hood.
Yeah, I read about that in the news and saw some of the pics…much of what happened has remained a mystery, as ALL of those on the cruiser perished and info from the Germans was scant, especially since they didn’t actually see the cruiser go down (night fell as the two ships drifted apart)…I believe it was the only instance in the 20th century that an Allied warship was sunk by an armed merchant…Another raider encountered three heavily armed merchants in one patrol and put them all down…I’ll tell you what, the stories of these vessels in incredible…I am now on Amazon trying to find more about these under-rated ships…
If you can find it, there is a book out called " HMAS Sydney Fact Fantasy or Fraud". The Authors name is Barbara Winter I think. It is a great read as it gives a view of shipboard life on The Kormoran. It also explains the battle from the german survivors point of view. The Kormoran was the most secretive of the German raiders as the Allies did not much about her. The Official German designation was Schiff 41. Most of what we know about her I think came out after the war. A little sidelight: When the german POW Sailors were released from captivity, they sailed out of Australia from Melbourne, The ship berthed ahead of theirs on departure was the Straat Malakka. This was the vessel The Kormoran was disguised as when the Sydney found and tried to intercept her. The rest, they say, is history.
The German merchant raider you are talking about was ‘Kormoran,’ that was sunk along with the Australian cruiser it was fighting (HMAS Sydney). I don’t think there has been a model of this ship larger than 1/1200, but there WAS a model of the most famous merchant raider of them all, the WW1 SMS Seeadler! By Revell, I believe… And if you think the Kormoran and others are of interest, you REALLY should read the memoirs of Count Von Luckner, the commander of SMS Seeadler!
There were a LOT of interesting things that happened in WW1 that are not generally known about, like the light cruiser SMS Koenigsburg, which ended up blockaded in a river in Africa, and the guns were taken off to form the artillery of the German East African Army, which fought very succesfully right up to the end of the war. Even MORE interesting, is that a resupply effort for this army was attempted, which involved flying a zeppelin all the way from Germany to East Africa! The zeppelin mission actually did fly, and made it as far as Southern Egypt before it turned back…!
That was done by an Aussie modeller by the name Michael Griggs. You can buy resin and photoetch kits of the kormoran and HMAS Sydney. They are produced by the German Firm NNK Models. They are pretty expensive but are generally accurate.
A great read. The revell kit, which is not only OOP but totally unobtainable, was in fact a rebox of an older ship, and later was the Eagle etc. as Tilley can explain. Bogus mostly except that they’re all steel hulled ships of German provenance.
Alarmed by the success of the German U-boat campaign during World War I, the British Royal Navy decided to fight back by arming Q-ships. These were vessels such as freighters, coasters, fishing trawlers, schooners,and colliers that were armed but resembled innocent carriers. The larger Q-ships often carried deck guns under fake deck cargo, depth charges in concealed racks under the stern or fitted with torpedo tubes. Hinged doors on the side of the ship could fall open to reveal 12 pound guns. Under collapsible deck houses, a 4-inch gun would be mounted. Often false funnels, moveable ventilators, booms, rigging and fast paint jobs would morf the Q-ship into a different national idenity, of say, a Norwegian tramp steamer one moment, to a Dutch freighter the next day. Costume changes and stage props were essential for a successful decoy to battle the U-boat menace.
One of the oddest encounters of the decoy Q-ships was the three masted schooner “Prize” under the command Lieutenant W. E. Saunders, and the U-93 under the command of Baron Spiegel von und zu Peckelsheim off the Southwest coast of Ireland, on April 30, 1917. The U-93 was returning home after bagging 11 allied freighters, when it was decided to rub off an easy schooner target. When the U-93 was within deck gun range, the “Prize” dropped her disguse and blasted the submarine with shellfire. When the smoke cleared, the Baron and another crewman were treading water where the sub had been. Fished from the sea, both were taken as prisoners of war to England. The U-93 had gone under to wash her captain and a crewman off the vessel, but was not sunk. The "Prize’s gunfire had shot eight holes into the sub’s conning tower, killing two crewmen, but the sub managed to escape into the gathering darkness for a perilous surface run back to her home base to be repaired for further duty.
Source information: Time-Life Books, The U-Boats
Montani semper liberi ! Happy modeling to all and every one of you.
…tell me about it…last night I came across an armed trawler and dove to periscope depth, as I thought she was a destroyer in the distance…I fired two stern torps at her at 1,200 and 650 yards—she evaded both…After I saw that she was a trawler I surfaced and put her down with 11 rounds from the deck gun…she failed to inflict any major damage…then a Vosper patrol craft arrived on the scene and was destroyed with 4 well-aimed shots from the 88…bagged 10 Merchants on that patrol, two of which were C-3 cargo ships and one T-3 tanker…
Two torpedoes and 11 rounds from the deck gun probably cost more than that trawler was worth. No wonder they lost the war.
Actually in my early career I worked with quite a few merchant sailors who had been torpedoed. More than one commented that the torpedo which sank them was probably worth more than the rust bucket in ballast that was sunk.
Believe me, I cursed (like a sailor) when I saw that it was a trawler…and, no, had I known at the time I wouldn’t have expended any fish for her, but at the time she was closing as a destroyer or DE would and i didn’t want to take any chances with my crew…we were actually operating in the channel…
The only way she evaded my fish was her tight turning ability; and she had a very small profile…But at 65 tons, I’d say the 88mm ammo was worth it however…
