World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseMerchant ship Togo was launched by the shipbuilder Bremer Vulkan in Vegesack, Bremen, Germany in Aug 1938. For the next year, she transported goods between Germany and eastern Africa for Hamburg-Bremen-Afrika Linie AG (operated by Woermann-Linie AG). Days prior to the German attack on Poland, she was in port at Douala, French Cameroon. She received an advanced warning, and thus was able to sail out of the French port before the outbreak of war to avoid being captured. Togo would safely arrive in the neutral port of Boma, Belgian Congo as hostilities broke out. She returned to her home port of Hamburg, Germany in Nov 1939 after successfully evading Allied patrols in the Atlantic. At Hamburg, she was requisitioned by the German Navy. Under the command of Ernst-Ludwig Thienemann starting in Mar 1940, she participated in the invasion of Norway as a minesweeper. In Aug 1940, she was converted to a minelayer, and in that role, under the command of Rudolf Betzendahl, she served out of Cherbourg, France starting in Nov 1940. In Jun 1941, she began a conversion at Wilton-Fijenoord shipyards in Rotterdam, Netherlands and the Stettiner Oderwerke yard at Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland) that would ultimately lead to her being recommissioned, in Dec 1942, as the armed auxiliary cruiser Coronel with designation Schiff 14. In Jan 1943, she departed Kiel, Germany in an attempt to break out into the Atlantic Ocean to serve as a commerce raider; though she was able to get past the coastal guns at Dover, England, United Kingdom, she was ultimately so damaged by sereral air attacks that she was forced to turn around, arriving at Kiel in Mar 1943. Coronel served as a minesweeper for a brief time before being converted into a nightfighter direction vessel, recommissioned under the name of Togo once again. Under the command of Rudolf Lück, she operated in conjunction with the German Air Force, Luftwaffe, operating in the Baltic Sea. In the final year of the war, she assisted in the evacuation of German troops and civilians from Latvia, eastern Germany, and Danzig. At the war's end, Togo was at Kiel.

ww2dbaseAfter the war, Togo was transferred to the United States as reparations, and she was used to transport liberated Polish prisoners of war home. In Mar 1946, she was transferred to the Norwegian Navy, and in Dec 1946 she would be recommissioned as HNoMS Svalbard. Between Dec 1947 and Dec 1949, she was chartered by the International Refugee Organisation to transport displaced persons from Europe to North America and Australia. She was later sold to various civilian firms in Norway, West Germany, and Panama. As the merchant ship Topeka for the Panamanian company Caribbean Real Estate SA, she was wrecked after running aground in the Gulf of Mexico off Coatzacoalcos, Mexico in Nov 1984.

Togo / Coronel Interactive Map

Photographs

Togo / Coronel Operational Timeline