Flottenbegeleiter

The Flottenbegeleiter were German the Fleet Escorts used by the Kriegsmarine between 1935 and 1939 during World War II. Ten of these escort vessels were built, named F1-F10.

History

This class of ship was designed to be small, fast, and multifunctional. Duties of these fast fleet escort or convoy escorts were to include minesweeping minesweeping, submarine hunting, and testing new high pressure steam engines. These smaller multipurpose vessels were generally weighted down enough to keep them from being very fast. The ships had narrow beams (overall width), sharp bows (front), and untested engines that proved an inefficient combination, making them unreliable. Engine problems often needed repairs, so they were mostly nonoperational, especially during the final years of WW2.[1] Only one of the these ships, F9, was sunk by two torpedoes fired from British submarine HMS Ursula, Dec. 14, 1939. The rest were all scrapped between 1945-1958.[2]

Specifications

Crew: 117

Dimensions

Weight: 700-1,000 tons
Length: 75.94 meters / 249.15 feet
Beam: 8.8 meters / 28.87 feet
Draft: 3.24 meters / 10.69 feet (from water line to bottom of hull )

Performance

Surface Speed: 28 knots (32 mph)
Range: 1,965 sq. miles at 13 knots

Armaments

2 x 105mm Cannons
4 x 37mm Anti-Aircraft guns (semi-automatic)
2 x 20mm Anti-Aircraft Flak guns (fully-automatic)
2 x Depth Charge launchers

Engine

2 x Steam Geared Turbines
2 x Propellers/Shafts
16,993 Shaft horsepower (power delivered to propeller shaft)

References

All or a portion of this article consists of text from Wikipedia, and is therefore Creative Commons Licensed under GFDL.
The original article can be found at Flottenbegeleiter and the edit history here.