German auxiliary cruiser Orion

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Orion
Image:Orion auxiliary cruiser.jpg
Career
Ordered:	???
Laid down:	1930 by Blohm + Voss, Hamburg
Launched:	1930 as Kurmark
Commissioned:	9 December 1939 as Auxiliary Cruiser Orion
Fate:	Sunk on 4 May 1945 after hit by several bombs on her way to Copenhagen
General Characteristics
Displacement:	7,021 tons full load
Length:	148 m
Beam:	18.6 m
Draught:	8.2 m
Propulsion:	Steam turbines (Blohm + Voss) (engines earlier used on liner New York), one shaft, 4 boilers, 6,200 shp (4.557 MW)
Speed:	14.8 knots
Range:	18,000 nmi at 10 knots
Complement:	356 (varying)
Armament (1939):	6 × 15cm L/45 C13 (taken from battleship Schleswig-Holstein), 1 x 7,5 cm L/33 Schneider/Creuznot, 2 x 3.7 cm, 4 x 2 cm, 6 x 53.3 cm torpedo tubes, 228 EMC mines
Aircraft:	1 Arado Ar 196 A-1

Orion (HSK-1) was an auxiliary cruiser of the German navy which operated as a merchant raider during World War II. Built by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg in 1930/31 as the freighter Kurmark, she was requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine at the outbreak of World War II and converted into the auxiliary cruiser Orion, commissioned on 9 December 1939. Her Royal Navy designation was "Raider A".

1 Construction and conversion
2 Raider voyage
3 Later use in the Baltic Sea
4 Reference
5 External links

[edit] Construction and conversion

The Orion was built in 1930 by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg as a freighter for the Hamburg-America Line. To save money, the engines of the liner New York where reused. That proved a poor decision, since the Orion was plagued for her entire life by engine problems.

After the war broke out the German Seekriegsleitung (Supreme Naval Command) was ill prepared for raider warfare. The operations of the German auxiliary cruisers of World War I were evaluated and considered a great success, having disrupted British merchant shipping around the world. However, the overall effect in the actual war was evaluated as having been rather minor, and so only a small program of converting merchant vessels into auxiliary cruisers was initiated on 5 September 1939.

The first two ships being rrequisitioned were the Kurmark and the Neumark, and conversion started immediately.

[edit] Raider voyage

One of the first auxiliary cruisers operated by Germany in WWII, Orion left Germany on 6 April 1940, passed south through the Atlantic disguised as a neutral vessel, rounded Cape Horn and entered the Pacific. Orion entered New Zealand waters in June 1940 and laid mines off Auckland during the night of 13/14 June 1940, one of which sank the liner RMS Niagara five days later. Occasionally collaborating with the auxiliary cruiser Komet, Orion raided Allied shipping in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, returning to Bordeaux in occupied France on 23 August 1941 after 510 days and 127.337 nautical miles at sea. She had sunk 10 ships with a combined tonnage of 62,915 t, plus two more (totalling 21,125 t) in cooperation with Komet.

[edit] Later use in the Baltic Sea

The ship was renamed Hektor in 1944 and used as artillery training ship. In January 1945 it was again renamed Orion and used to transport refugees from Germany's eastern provinces across the Baltic Sea to ports in northern Germany and occupied Denmark. On her way to Copenhagen on 4 May 1945, the ship was hit by bombs off Swinemünde and sank. Of the more than 4,000 people on board, only 150 survived. The hulk was scrapped in 1952.