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History
Germany
Name	Kurmark
Namesake	Kurmark
Owner	HAPAG
Operator	HAPAG
Laid down	1930 by Blohm & Voss, Hamburg
Launched	1930
Commissioned	1930
Fate	Requisitioned by Kriegsmarine, 1939
Nazi Germany
Name	Orion
Namesake	Orion
Operator	Kriegsmarine
Yard number	1
Acquired	Requisitioned 1939
Commissioned	9 December 1939
Renamed	Orion (1939); Hektor (1944); Orion (1945);
Reclassified	Auxiliary cruiser Orion, 9 December 1939
Nickname(s)	HSK-1; Schiff-36; Raider A;
Fate	Sunk by air raid, 4 May 1945
General characteristics
Tonnage	7,021 GRT, 3,540 NRT
Displacement	15,700 tons
Length	148 m (486 ft)
Beam	18.6 m (61 ft)
Draught	8.2 m (27 ft)
Propulsion	4 × steam turbines, 1 × shaft, 4 × boilers, 6,200 shp (4.6 MW)
Speed	14.8 knots (27.4 km/h)
Range	18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km)
Complement	356 (varying)
Armament	6 × 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 (taken from battleship Schleswig-Holstein; 1 × 7.5 cm (3.0 in) gun; 2 × 3.7 cm (1.5 in) SK C/30; 4 × 2 cm (0.79 in) FlaK 30; 6 × 53.3 cm torpedo tubes; 228 x EMC mines;
Aircraft carried	1 x Arado Ar 196 A-1 1 x Nakajima E8N

Orion (HSK-1) was an auxiliary cruiser of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine which operated as a merchant raider in World War II.^[1] Blohm & Voss built her in Hamburg in 1930–31 as the cargo ship Kurmark. The navy requisitioned her at the start of World War II, had her converted into the auxiliary cruiser Orion, and commissioned her on 9 December 1939. Known to the Kriegsmarine as Schiff 36, her Royal Navy designation was Raider A. She was named after the constellation Orion.

Construction and conversion

Blohm & Voss in Hamburg built the ship as a freighter for the Hamburg America Line (HAPAG). To save money, steam turbines from the liner New York were re-used. That proved a poor decision, since the Orion was plagued for her entire life by engine problems.

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

The first two ships being requisitioned were the Kurmark (Orion) and the Neumark (German auxiliary cruiser Widder), and conversion started immediately.

Raider voyage

One of Germany's first auxiliary cruisers in World War II, Orion left Germany on 6 April 1940, under the command of Korvettenkapitän (later Fregattenkapitän) Kurt Weyher. Disguised as a neutral ship she passed south through the Atlantic Ocean, where she attacked and sank Haxby, a 5,207 GRT freighter.

In May 1940 Orion rounded Cape Horn and entered the Pacific Ocean. She 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 ocean liner RMS Niagara five days later. Two other ships struck mines from Orion, as did two trawlers and an auxiliary minesweeper.

Orion then raided across the Indian and Pacific Oceans attacking four more ships. One ship, the Norwegian freighter Tropic Sea, was captured without a fight and sent to occupied France as a prize, though she was scuttled in the Bay of Biscay after encountering HMS Truant. The other ships encountered by Orion were sunk.

On 20 October 1940 she rendezvoused with the German auxiliary cruiser Komet and supply ship Kulmerland. Operating together, they sank another seven ships, including the liner Rangitane^[2] and five ships off Nauru, before going their separate ways in the new year.

The German naval attaché to Japan, Vice-Admiral Paul Wenneker, bought a Nakajima E8N float plane early in 1941. It was dispatched on board the supply ship Münsterland to rendezvous with Orion at the Maug Islands in the Northern Marianas. They met on 1 February 1941, and Orion thus became the only German naval ship of World War II to use a Japanese float plane.

Another six months cruising in the Indian Ocean yielded nothing, though she did encounter and capture her final victim, Chaucer, in July 1941, in the South Atlantic when Orion was on her way home.

Orion returned to Bordeaux in occupied France on 23 August 1941. After 510 days and 127,337 nautical miles (235,828 km) at sea she had sunk ten ships with a combined tonnage of 62,915 gross register tons (GRT), plus two more (totalling 21,125 GRT) in cooperation with Komet.

The German freighter Anneliese Essberger, disguised as the Norwegian freighter Herstein, was meant to meet the Orion on 30 Aug. 1941. The planned rendezvous was Point Corona at 28 degrees N, 43 degrees W. But the freighter failed to see the Orion, and continued north.^[3]

Later history

De-commissioned as a commerce raider, the ship was renamed Hektor in 1944 and was used as artillery training ship. In January 1945 she was again renamed Orion and was used to take 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, after she had picked up the crew of the old battleship Schlesien, Orion was hit by two bombs dropped by aircraft of the Soviet 51st Mine-Torpedo Aviation Regiment off Swinemünde. The crew managed to beach the fiercely burning ship on a sandbank, but more than 150 passengers and crew were killed.^[1] The hulk was scrapped in 1952.^[4]

Raiding history

Sunk by Orion

1940-04-24 Haxby 5,207 GRT
1940-06-19 Tropic Sea 8,750 GRT
1940-08-16 Notou 2,489 GRT
1940-08-20 Turakina 9,691 GRT
1940-10-14 Ringwood 7,203 GRT
1941-07-29 Chaucer 5,792 GRT

Sunk by mines laid by Orion

1940-06-19 RMS Niagara 13,415 GRT
1941-05-14 HMNZS Puriri 927 GRT

(The claims by several sources that the freighters Port Bowen and Baltannic were also victims of the Orion's mines, seem, on examination of the records now available, to be unsubstantiated)

In concert with Komet

1940-11-25 Holmwood 546 GRT
1940-11-27 Rangitane^[5] 16,712 GRT
1940-12-06 Triona 4,413 GRT
1940-12-08 Triadic^[6] 6,378 GRT
1940-12-08 Triaster^[7]6,032 GRT

Notes

^ ^a ^b "Hilfskreuzer (Auxiliary Cruiser) Orion". Archived from the original on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 5 December 2013.
^ "Holmwood and Rangitane Sunk NZETC". nzetc.victoria.ac.nz. Retrieved 2023-11-13.
^ Giese, O (1994). Shooting the War. Annapolis: United States Naval Institute. pp. 89–99. ISBN 1557503079.
^ "Orion (HSK-1) (+1945)". Wrecksite. Retrieved 5 December 2013.
^ "MV Rangitane (+1940)". Wrecksite. Retrieved 5 December 2013.
^ "MV Triadic (+1940)". Wrecksite. Retrieved 5 December 2013.
^ "MV Triaster (+1940)". Wrecksite. Retrieved 5 December 2013.

References

August K Muggenthaler (1981). Das waren die deutschen Hilfskreuzer 1939–1945. Bewaffnete Handelsschiffe im Einsatz (in German). Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag. ISBN 3-87943-261-9.
August Karl Muggenthaler (1977). German Raiders of World War II. Prentice: Englewood Cliffs. ISBN 978-0709166832.
Paul Schmalenbach (1979). German Raiders: The Story of the German Navy's Auxiliary Cruisers, 1895–1945. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-0850593518.
Stephen Roskill (1954). The War at Sea 1939–1945. Vol. I. London: HMSO.
"Orion (ship)". New Zealand Official War History. Victoria University of Wellington.