ORP Wilk
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 ORP Wilk, left, with sister ships Ryś and Zbik, together with the Polish destroyers Burza and Wicher in 1934 in Copenhagen. |
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| Career (Poland) |  |
|---|---|
| Name: | ORP Wilk |
| Namesake: | wolf (in Polish) |
| Builder: | Chantiers Augustine Normand Le Havre, France |
| Laid down: | 1927 |
| Launched: | April 12, 1929 |
| Decommissioned: | April 2, 1942 to reserve submarine |
| Decommissioned: | 1951 |
| Fate: | Scrapped |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Wilk-class submarine |
| Displacement: | 980 tons (surfaced) 1,250 tons (submerged) |
| Length: | 78.5 m (257 ft 7 in) |
| Beam: | 5.9 m (19 ft 4 in) |
| Draught: | 4.2 m (13 ft 9 in) |
| Propulsion: | Diesel-Vickers diesel: 1,800 hp (1,300 kW) electric engines: 1,200 hp (890 kW) |
| Speed: | 14.5 knots (26.9 km/h/16.7 mph) surface 9.5 knots (17.6 km/h/10.9 mph) submerged |
| Range: | 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km/4,000 mi) @ 10 knots (19 km/h/12 mph) 100 nautical miles (190 km/120 mi) @ 5 knots (9.3 km/h/5.8 mph) submerged |
| Complement: | 46–54 |
| Armament: | 1 × 100 mm (3.9 in) deck gun 2 × 13.2 mm (0.52 in) deck anti-aircraft heavy machine guns (mounted in place of 40 mm gun from 1935 onwards) 4 × 550 mm (22 in) torpedo tubes, bow 2 × 550 mm (22 in) (twin) rotating torpedo tubes, midship 16 × 550 mm (22 in) torpedoes (6 in tubes and 10 reloads) 40 × mines |
ORP Wilk was the lead boat of her class of mine-laying submarines of the Polish Navy. The ship saw service in the Polish Navy from 1931 to 1951. Her name meant "Wolf" in Polish.
[edit] History
Wilk was laid down in 1927 at Chantiers Augustine Normand shipyard at Le Havre in France. Launched on April 12, 1929, she was commissioned into the Polish Navy in 1931.
When World War II began on September 1, 1939, Wilk, commanded by Captain Boguslaw Krawczyk, took part in the Worek Plan for the defense of the Polish coast. On September 3 she deployed her mines as planned. After suffering battle damage, she left the Polish coast on September 10, successfully escaping from the Baltic Sea and arriving in Great Britain on September 20. Only ORP Orzeł managed to accomplish the same feat later; the other three Polish submarines were interned in neutral Sweden.
On December 7, 1939 one of the mines laid by the submarine in September sunk a German fishing vessel MFK Pil 55 at position .
On June 20, 1940, the ORP Wilk rammed an unidentified vessel. The boat may have been U-22, which may have sunk as the result of the collision. This has not been proven and the vessel the Wilk collided with is still a mystery.
Due to her poor mechanical shape, ORP Wilk was decommissioned as a reserve submarine on April 2, 1942.
In 1951, ORP Wilk was decommissioned from the Polish Navy, then towed to Poland and scrapped.
A second ORP Wilk, a Foxtrot class submarine, served in the Polish Navy from 1987 to 2003.
[edit] External links
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