SMS Wolf (auxiliary cruiser)

SMS "Wolf" (formerly the Hansa freighter "Wachtfels" of 5809 GRT) was an armed merchant raider or auxiliary cruiser of the German Imperial Navy in World War I. She was the fourth ship of the Imperial Navy bearing this name (and is therefore often referred to in Germany as "Wolf IV"), following two gunboats and another auxiliary cruiser that was decommissioned before seeing action.

As a commerce raider, the "Wolf" was equipped with six 15-cm guns, one 10.5 cm gun and several smaller caliber weapons as well as four torpedo tubes. She also carried about 400 mines to be dropped outside enemy ports. Her commander was Fregattenkapitän (Commander) Karl August Nerger who was in charge until her return to Germany in February 1918.

The "Wolf" had not been designed for speed and her top speed was a mere 11 knots, but with a bunker capacity of 8000 tons of coal she had a cruising range of 32,000 miles at a speed of 8 knots (burning 35 tons daily).

On 30 November 1916 the "Wolf" left her home port of Kiel with a crew of 348 men. Escorted by the submarine U-66 from Skagerrak to the North Atlantic, she passed north of Scotland and turned south going around the Cape of Good Hope, where she laid some of her mines, into the Indian Ocean. She dropped mines at the harbors of Colombo and Bombay, then entered the waters of South Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

With the help of the "Wölfchen" ("Little Wolf"), a small two-seater seaplane, she located and seized enemy vessels and cargo ships. After transferring their crews and any valuable supplies (notably coal, but also essential metals of which the German war effort had much need) to the "Wolf", she then sank the vessels. The "Wolf" destroyed 35 trading vessels and 2 war ships, altogether approximately 110,000 tons.

After 451 days she returned to her home port of Kiel on 24 February 1918 with 467 prisoners of war aboard. In addition she carried substantial quantities of rubber, copper, zinc, brass, silk, copra, cocoa, and other essential materials taken from her prizes. The "Wolf", without support of any kind, had made the longest voyage of a warship during World War I. Captain Nerger was awarded the highest German decoration, the Pour le Mérite.

For the remainder of the war, the "Wolf" was employed in the Baltic Sea. After the war she was ceded to France and sold to Cie. Messageries Maritimes of Paris, refitted and renamed "Antinous". She was scrapped in 1931 in Italy.

External links

* [http://ahoy.tk-jk.net/MaraudersWW1/Wolf.html Report on the voyage of the "Wolf"]
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16690/16690-h/16690-h.htm Five Months on A German Raider]

Literature

* Edwin P. Hoyt, "Raider Wolf, The Voyage of Captain Nerger," 1916-1918, New York, 1974, ISBN 978-0-8397-7067-1
* Karl August Nerger, "S.M.S. Wolf", Scherl Verlag Berlin, 1918
* Fritz Witschetzky "Das schwarze Schiff", Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart/Berlin/Leipzig, 1920
* Roy Alexander, The Cruise of the Raider Wolf, Yale University Press, 1939.
*Schmalenbach, Paul "German raiders: A history of auxiliary cruisers of the German Navy, 1895-1945" (Naval Institute Press 1979) ISBN 0870218247.