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ORPOrzeł was anOrzeł class submarine of the Polish Navy that served duringWorld War II.
 ORPOrzeł arrives in the port ofGdynia | |
| History | |
|---|---|
 Poland | |
| Name | ORPOrzeł |
| Namesake | Eagle |
| Builder | De Schelde, Netherlands |
| Laid down | 14 August 1936 |
| Launched | 15 January 1938 |
| Commissioned | 2 February 1939 |
| Decommissioned | 11 June 1940 |
| Fate | Missing, presumed sunk |
| General characteristics | |
| Class & type | Orzeł-classsubmarine |
| Displacement |
|
| Length | 84.00 m (275 ft 7 in) |
| Beam | 6.7 m (22 ft 0 in) |
| Draught | 4.17 m (13 ft 8 in) |
| Speed |
|
| Complement | 60 |
| Armament |
|
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Orzeł was laid down 14 August 1936 at theDutchshipyardDe Schelde, as Job No. 205; launched on 15 January 1938,[1] and commissioned on 2 February 1939. She was a modern design (designed by the joint venture of Polish and Dutch engineers), albeit quite large for the shallow waters of theBaltic Sea.[citation needed]
At the beginning of theinvasion of PolandOrzeł was docked inOksywie. As per theWorek Plan, the submarine was deployed on patrol in a designated strategic zone of the Baltic Sea. The crew received orders to attack thepre-dreadnoughtSchleswig-Holstein, should it leaveDanzig. With the situation rapidly deteriorating,Orzel abandoned its sector on 4 September and began to withdraw into theBaltic Sea. The submarine was attacked by the German minesweepersM3 andM4 and was damaged but evaded destruction that evening.
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Orzel's crew decided to head toTallinn,Estonia as a result of the damage.Orzeł reached Tallinn on 14 September 1939. On 15 September the captain,Lieutenant-CommanderHenryk Kloczkowski [pl], was forced to leave the submarine to undergo hospital treatment for an unknown illness he had been suffering from since 8 September. Under theHague Convention of 1907, section XIII, Article 12,[2] "belligerent ships" could enter a neutral port but were forbidden from remaining there for "more than twenty-four hours." At the insistence of Germany, the Estonian military authorities boarded the ship, interned the crew, confiscated all the navigation aids and maps, and commenced removing all her armaments. However, only fifteen of her twenty torpedoes were removed before the hoist cable parted; this was because it had been secretly sabotaged by her new commander, formerchief officer,LieutenantJan Grudzinski.
The crew ofOrzeł conspired to carry out a daring escape. Around midnight on 18 September,[1] the submarine's Estonian guards were overpowered, the mooring lines were cut, andOrzeł got under way. The alarm was raised, and her conning tower was peppered by machine-gun fire. Running half-submerged,Orzeł ran aground on a bar at the harbour mouth, where artillery fire damaged her wireless equipment. Grudzinski managed to get the boat off the bar by blowing her tanks, and she proceeded out of the Gulf of Finland, intending to sail for a British port, the crew having heard a radio report that the Polish submarineWilk had been welcomed in Britain.
Orzel escaped from Tallinn with two Estonian guards on board as hostages. The Estonian and German press covering theOrzeł incident declared the two captured guards missing at sea. Grudzinski set them ashore inSweden, providing them with clothing, money, and food for their safe return to homeland. The Polish crew believed that "those returning from the underworld deserve to travel first class only". The escape of the submarineOrzeł was used by theSoviet Union andGermany to challenge Estonian neutrality.
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SinceOrzeł's navigational charts had all been removed by the Estonian authorities, Captain Grudzinski resolved to stop a German ship and take her charts. However, the only German vessels encountered were warships rather than merchantmen. The submarine's sole remaining navigational aid was a list of lighthouses, and using these as a reference,Orzeł followed a course along the Baltic coast, around Denmark, and out into the North Sea, where she came under attack by British as well as German forces, since without her wireless equipment she had no means of identifying herself.
Forty days after she had originally sailed from Gdynia,Orzeł made landfall, off the east coast of Scotland. She lay on the bottom until emergency repairs were made to the radio, then surfaced to transmit a message in English. ARoyal Navy destroyer then came out and escorted her into port, to the surprise of the British who had thought her sunk already weeks earlier.
Orzeł sank no enemy vessels during her journey from Estonia to Britain, but Soviet authorities blamed her for sinking the Soviet tankerMetallist inNarva Bay on 26 September, and used the incident as a pretext for the Soviet invasion of Estonia.[3]
After a refit,Orzeł was assigned to the Royal Navy's 2nd Submarine Flotilla and was assigned to patrol missions. Shortly after noon on 8 April 1940 she sank the 5,261 GRT clandestine GermantroopshipRio de Janeiro off the small harbour village ofLillesand in southern Norway,[4] killing hundreds of German troops intended for theinvasion of Norway.,[1][5]Rio de Janeiro was heading toBergen in order to take part in the initial landings ofOperation Weserübung – the invasion ofNorway and opening move of theNorwegian Campaign. News that several hundred German soldiers were rescued by the Norwegian Navy and some had admitted their intention tooccupy Norway reached the Norwegian parliament that evening, but the news was dismissed and no steps were taken to alert their Navy or Coast Guard of the impending invasion.[6] Two days laterOrzeł fired a torpedo at a German minesweeper V 705; however, she was forced to dive before the sinking of the German ship could be confirmed. The ship was not damaged by the torpedoes.
On 23 May 1940,Orzeł departed on its seventh patrol in the central North Sea. On 1 and 2 June, radio messages were transmitted from theRosyth Naval base ordering the boat to alter its patrol area and proceed to theSkagerrak (thestrait separatingNorway andSweden from theDanishJutland peninsula). No radio signals had been received from her since she had sailed, and on 5 JuneOrzeł was ordered to return to base. No reception was acknowledged. On 8 June 1940 the submarine was officially declared lost. The true cause is unknown, although it is commonly believedOrzeł most likely struck a British or Germansea mine in or near the Skagerrak. Another theory suggests the boat may have been sunk mistakenly by a British aircraft.[7]
Between 2008 and 2017 a number of Polish expeditions, both private and public-funded, searched the region of North Sea where she went missing with the hope of finding her final resting place. Wrecks of various other ships have been located, butOrzeł has not been among them, and the fate of the ship remains unknown.
In June 2013 the Polish Navy, following reports of a wreck of an unknown large submarine found in the North Sea, conducted one more expedition to check whether the ship could beOrzeł. The wreck was surveyed and identified asHMS J6.[8] In 2017 another private expedition found a previously unknown wreck which they identified to be most likelyHMS Narwhal based on sonar data.[7]
On May 23, 2020, 80 years afterOrzeł left on its final patrol, the Shipwreck Expeditions Association announced a partnership to search for the wreck in conjunction with theMaritime University of Szczecin with the assistance from the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland and the Ministry of Maritime Economy and Inland Navigation.[9] The search is currently entering the logistics and preparations phase for the first expedition.[10]
Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in September 1939 | |
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| Shipwrecks |
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