General von Steuben

1945

Baltic, Marinesko again, four thousand lost Location: Baltic Sea, off Stolpmünde · Coordinates: 55.07°N 16.30°E · Casualties: ~4,200 · Survivors: ~300 · Depth: 70 m · Cause: submarine torpedo — Torpedoed by Soviet submarine S-13 (Alexander Marinesko, commanding) off Stolpmünde in the Baltic at 00:55 on 10 February 1945, eleven days after Marinesko had sunk the Wilhelm Gustloff. Two torpedoes struck her starboard side. She sank bow-first in twenty minutes in freezing water. · Fate: protected war grave · Type: refugee transport · ex-liner · Tonnage: 14,660 tons · Crew: 160 · Flag: Nazi Germany · Launched: 1923 Former North German Lloyd liner, by 1945 a refugee transport in Operation Hannibal. Torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S-13 (Alexander Marinesko, commanding) off Stolpmünde in the Baltic at 00:55 on 10 February 1945, eleven days after Marinesko had sunk the Wilhelm Gustloff. Approximately 4,200 dead of ~4,500 aboard. Along with Goya and Wilhelm Gustloff, she is one of the three German refugee ships Marinesko's boats destroyed in a single winter. The Vessel The General von Steuben was a German passenger liner of the Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd) Line, originally built as the München at the Vulcan shipyard at Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) between 1922 and 1923 and commissioned on 14 June 1923. She was 168 metres long, 14,690 gross tons, and powered by quadruple-expansion steam engines producing approximately 17,500 horsepower. Her original peacetime accommodation was approximately 177 first-class, 288 second-class, and 284 third-class passengers, plus a crew of 330. She was renamed General von Steuben in 1930 after Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the German military officer who had assisted the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Her principal peacetime service was the Hamburg to New York transatlantic route, carrying predominantly German emigrants to America and American tourists to Germany. Through the late 1930s she had been reconfigured as a more up-market ship with reduced emigrant accommodation and increased first-class capacity. From 1940 she was requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine for wartime service. Her principal wartime role from 1940-1944 was as a hospital ship (Lazarettschiff) serving the German Baltic fleet's medical evacuation requirements. From late 1944 onwards, her role was expanded to include the evacuation of German military personnel and civilian refugees from the eastern Baltic before the advancing Soviet forces. By February 1945, the German military situation in the easter The Disaster At approximately 00:30 on 10 February 1945, the Soviet submarine S-13 detected General von Steuben at approximately 4,500 metres range in the central Baltic at approximately 55 degrees north, 15 degrees east, approximately 25 kilometres north of the German island of Stolpmünde. Marinesko's tactical assessment was that General von Steuben was a high-value military target. The ship's silhouette in the winter night was substantially visible; her size suggested that she was a major military transport (which was correct); the specific Red Cross markings that General von Steuben was supposed to be carrying were not visible in the darkness. The specific determination of whether Marinesko knew that the ship was a hospital ship remains historically disputed. Marinesko's attack was conducted from approximately 2,200 metres range using S-13's bow torpedo tubes. Two torpedoes were launched at approximately 00:52; both torpedoes struck General von Steuben on the starboard side amidships at approximately 00:55 on 10 February 1945. The torpedo damage was catastrophic. The two torpedoes opened a combined breach of approximately 15 metres along General von Steuben's starboard hull below the waterline. The ship began to settle immediately; her engines stopped within minutes; her wireless equipment was damaged; her watertight bulkheads failed progressively as the flooding spread through adjacent compartments. The specific tragedy of the sinking was the extreme vulnerability of the wounded milit