Mr Wheatcroft paid just £1 for the Schnellboot-130 but will now spend around £3 million restoring it
Posted on 12/31/2008 5:16:57 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Schnellboot-130, once the fastest vessel in the world, helped attack an Allied convoy off Slapton Sands, in Devon, in a battle in which nearly 1,000 Allied soldiers were killed.
On the night of April 27, 1944, the boat was one of nine German vessels patrolling the English Channel when they stumbled upon Operation Tiger, which was the rehearsal for the D-Day landings.
Mr Wheatcroft paid just £1 for the Schnellboot-130 but will now spend around £3 million restoring it
The convoy launched a raid and killed 946 Allied soldiers. Allied chiefs initially covered up the loss, keen to avoid the enemy becoming aware of what it had achieved or getting wind of any planned invasion of Europe.
After the war the Schnellboot was seized by the British and used to land spies behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War but was then left in a dockyard and eventually began to disintegrate.
Enthusiast Kevin Wheatcroft has now come to the rescue of the vessel.
Mr Wheatcroft, whose family owns the Donington Grand Prix museum, in Leicestershire, paid just £1 for the hulk but will now spend around £3 million restoring it.
He recently acquired the salvage rights on three sunken Schnellboots off the Danish coast and plans to bring up original parts to help the restoration.
The project will take up to five years after which it is hoped the vessel will become a floating museum and visitor attraction.
Mr Wheatcroft said: "I've always been fascinated with Schnellboots and she is one of the most famous.
"The intention is to return her to her original state and into a moving museum."
He added: "Over the years I have collected a lot of parts including engines, gun platforms, a complete radio and bridge equipment.
"I have
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Has the boat renounced Nazism?
I think this is a great idea, especially the fact that this is a private undertaking. E-boats were not to be sniffed at.
Can anyone clarify this? It says that 946 allied soldiers were killed, but from the attack of these 9 boats? Or from a combination of Nazi land forces, planes and the boats?
In late July and early August 1945, future president John F. Kennedy visited defeated Germany with US Navy Secretary James Forrestal. As a former PT boat captain, he was naturally interested in the German counterpart so he made a point of carefully inspecting an intact "E-Boat" at Bremen. Kennedy's diary records his conclusion: the Schnellboot was "far superior to our PT boat."
History ping
John123—some additonal info below. The German boats sank LSTs at 2 am—a lot of equipment laden soldiers drowned.
Related resources:
Oral History: Recollections by LT Eugence E. Eckstam, MC, USNR (Ret.), medical officer on USS LST 507
MacDonald, Charles B. “Slapton Sands: The ‘Cover Up’ That Never Was,” Army 38, no. 6 (Jun. 1988): 64-67.
“U.S. Toll in France is 70,009; 116,148 Total Allied Casualties.” Stars and Stripes [European edition] 4, no. 237 (7 Aug. 1944): 1-2. (Includes a brief description of incident at Slapton Sands). [Original newspaper in collection of Stars and Stripes held by the Textual Reference Branch, National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740.]
In preparing for the Normandy Invasion, the United States Army conducted various training exercises at Slapton Sands in Start Bay and in the nearby Tor Bay, beginning on December 15, 1943. Slapton was an unspoiled beach of coarse gravel, fronting a shallow lagoon that was backed by bluffs that resembled Omaha Beach. After the people in the nearby village were evacuated, it was an almost perfect place to simulate the Normandy landings. The training was long and thorough. The culmination of the joint training program was a pair of full scale rehearsals in late April and early May.
TIGER was the code name of the training exercise for the Utah Beach assault forces under Admiral Don P. Moon. It was held from April 22-30, 1944. The troops and equipment embarked on the same ships and for the most part from the same ports from which they would later leave for France. Six of the days in the exercise were taken up by the marshaling of the troops and the embarkation of the landing craft. During the night of April 26-27, 1944, the main force proceeded through Lyme Bay with mine craft sweeping ahead of them as if crossing the channel. Since German E-boats, which were high-speed torpedo boats capable of operating at speeds of 34-36 knots, sometimes patrolled the channel at night, the British Commander in Chief, Plymouth, who was responsible for protecting the rehearsal, threw patrols across the mouth of Lyme Bay. These patrols consisted of two destroyers, three motor torpedo boats and two motor gunboats. Another motor torpedo patrol was sent to watch Cherbourg, the main ports where the German E-boats were based. Following the “bombardment” on Slapton Sands, the exercise “landings” were begun during the morning of April 27, and the unloading continued during the day and the next when a follow up convoy was expected.
This Convoy T-4 consisted of two sections from two different ports. The Plymouth section, LST Group 32, was composed of USS LST-515, USS LST-496, USS LST-511, USS LST-531, and USS LST-58, which was towing two pontoon causeways. The Brixham section consisted of USS LST-499, USS LST-289, and USS LST-507. The convoy joined with HMS Azalea as escort and proceeded at six knots in one column with the LSTs in the same order as listed above. When the convoy was maneuvering in Lyme Bay in the early hours of April 28, they were attacked by nine German E-boats out of Cherbourg that had evaded the Allied patrols. No warning of the presence of enemy boats had been received until LST-507 was torpedoed at 0204. The ship burst into flames, and survivors abandoned ship. Several minutes later LST-531 was torpedoed and sank in six minutes. LST-289, which opened fire at E-boats, was also torpedoed but was able to reach port. The other LSTs plus two British destroyers fired at the E-boats, which used smoke and high speed to escape. This brief action resulted in 198 Navy dead and missing and 441 Army dead and missing according to the naval action reports. Later Army reports gave 551 as the total number of dead and missing soldiers. The final training exercise FABIUS took place between May 3-8, without any enemy attacks.
To keep the Germans from possibly learning about the impending Normandy Invasion, casualty information on Exercise TIGER was not released until after the invasion. On August 5, 1944, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force released statistics on the casualties associated with the Normandy Invasion, which included information about the German E-Boat attack on April 28. This information was also published in the August 7 issue of The Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper of the U. S. Armed Forces in the European Theater. The Textual Reference Branch, National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001, holds the originals of both these sources. Over the years, details on the training exercises and the resulting losses have appeared in such published sources as Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Invasion of France and Germany, 1944-1945 (1957), volume XI of his 15-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, and Roland Rupenthal’s Logistical Support of the Armies (1953) and Gordon Harrison’s Cross-Channel Attack, which are both part of the multi-volume series United States Army in World War
Thus, since August 1944, information about the training exercise also commonly called Operation TIGER has been available to the public. The naval records relating to Operation TIGER, which are declassified, were transferred to the Modern Military Records Branch, Naitonal Archives and Records Admiistration, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001. Before transfer, the Operational Archives Branch had placed all the naval action reports from this exercise on microfilm reel, NRS-601. To order a duplicate film for the cost indicated on the fee schedule, please complete the duplication order form and send it with a check or money order made payable to the Department of the Navy, to the Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, 805 Kidder Breese SE, Washington Navy Yard, DC 20374-5060.
The Exercise Tiger Association, National Commemorative Foundation, a non-profit organization recognized by the Department of Defense and Congress, promotes education on the events of Exercise Tiger, and holds annual ceremonies honoring the participants in Exercise Tiger. The address of the Exercise Tiger Association is P.O. Box 1050 Beach Haven, NJ 08008.
I thought the torpedo tubes and gun mounts etc made it pretty much an open water gofast of the day. Thanks for the info !
Happy New Year !
*** Kennedy’s diary records his conclusion: the Schnellboot was “far superior to our PT boat.” ***
Probably because the Germans used the best designers while the US used the lowest bidders.
Way cool. Thank goodness for rich people who can keep history alive like this. The idiot liberals think only the government is capable of doing anything. If taxes were low, we would have a lot more private citizens doing a lot of what government now does, and doing it better.
More power to him. I would love to stand on the deck of this boat some day. I’d pay to take a tour of it.
http://www.pt-boat.com/sboot/sboot.html
That is a link to the website of an Australian fellow by the name of John Drain, where he is in the process of building a model Schnellboot from scratch. He’s taking the original builder’s plans, converting them to digital files and then uses a laser cutter to make all of the parts.
If you look at the rest of his website, you’ll find his extensive modeling efforts on a 1/4 Scale PT Boat. He’s even making his own electric torpedoes that actually launch off of his scale roll-off racks. He has a couple of small videos of one of his PT Boats screaming across a lake...he has three electric motors and a bunch of batteries in it and it all but flies!
Amazing stuff!
Just the boats.
German: Schnellboot
English: Swift Boat
Just sayin’...
THe Gerans used steel - PT boats were plywood - aadn when you are deep in the PTO, much easier to repair with ‘local mateirals” trees.
Each represents what the Nation’s NAvy wanted.
PT boats were no slouch in the go fast department and with a shallow draft could ‘hide’ almost anywhere.
Yeah, and the lowest bidders won the war.
Not just "sort of". Different tradeoffs from our PT boats, but the same basic mission/role. Those doors on each side off the bow were for the torpedoes.
I learned something last summer about PT boats that I did not know before, and I grew up watching "PT-109", "They Were Expendable" and "McHale's Navy". Most US PT's did not use the steam launch system typically shown in the movies. They just rolled them off the side. I learned this at the Admiral Nimitz Museum of the Pacific War in Fredricksberg Texas. They have one there, although it served in the Med, not the Pacific (it was in the process of being transferred to the Pacific when the war ended. Since it was in or near the US at the time, it survived the wholesale scrapping that got many of the others. But I noticed right off that their were no lauchners for the torpedoes. Thinking they might have been removed and what I was seeing was a musuem lashup, I asked the tour guide about it. He said no, this is the way most of the later versions were produced and used.
This is supposed to be the only restored PT that actually saw combat in WW-II. PT-309 is credited with sinking five enemy ships, firing over 100 torpedoes.
This shot is gives a better look at how the torpedoes were mounted.
Compare to this one with the tubes
Of course only thru history read and visits to such archives it is always neat to see what individual crews did with regards to the boats guns. Numbers, positioning etc ....Thanks for the pictures.
Re: Torpedo gear. You’re talking about what they called a “poor boy” mount. It carried Mk 13 aerial torpedos rather than the Mk 14 Submarine Torpedo that required being shot out of a tube launcher.
That left room for bombardment rockets, more guns and such other goodies as could be crammed on the boat.
The gun on the tripod in the color shot is a Browning M3 aircraft cannon and was a 37mm weapon.
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