German WW2 steamer Königsberg (a.k.a. "Śruba")

Until October 2024 this was an unidentified wreck, officially registered as "Unidentified Wooden". In the diving community it is known as "Śruba" (Propeller), due to the huge propeller sitting on the deck in the rear part of the wreck. Thanks to my model we've managed to identify it as a German steam icebreaker "Königsberg", built in 1885  and sank on 20.04.1945 by soviet planes on its way to Pillau during Operation Hannibal. Eight people lost their lives, three were rescued. Below you will find the whole story of identification and a gallery.

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Making a model of this wreck was a bit of a coincidence. The plan was to scan a U-boot near Hel, but the visibility was very, very poor. After a quick resurface, Kamil - owner of the Dive Land dive center in Hel, told me that there is an unidentified wooden wreck nearby, that is open to divers but no one really dives on it. The decision was quick - let's give it a try, since we are here anyway.

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After descending to the the bottom, I immediately knew that this is not a small, wooden wreck. A quick round-trip, and I was able to tell, that it's an old steamer - a tall bow, wide wooden deck, round stern. Even though the visibility was almost as poor as on the U-boot (maximum 2-3 meters), I decided that I must try to make a model of this wreck. It took me almost 70 minutes on the bottom (over 3 hours total dive time) to scan all the details. A thing that I could not understand was why is the wreck broken and destroyed around the midship section.

 

After a few dozen hours, when the first version of model was finally ready, it became clear that there must have been some kind of explosion that led to existence of the huge hole. Now, with the model in front of me, I could easily see that there is a steam engine and steam boilers protruding from the hole. This immediately rang a bell in my head - not so long ago, Łukasz Orlicki - a historian from "Odkywca" magazine - told me, that while working on identification of a different steamer near Hel he found information about a 19th century German steamer icebreaker "Königsberg" that participated in Hannibal Operation during WW2, and sank near Hel on 20.04.1945 after being hit by a soviet bomb in the engine compartment. I immediately called Łukasz, asking him for any details of the ship, and teling him that we've probably had the "Königsberg" right under our noses.

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Łukasz sent me a photo of the ship while it was stil afloat from "Rettungsaktion Ostsee 1944/1945" book by Martin Schmidtke (see gallery below). Shape of the bow and stern, existence of a small crane on the bow - it all said that this must be "Königsberg". But to be 110% sure, we needed to compare the dimensions of the ship with dimensons of the wreck. This proved to be the most difficult part. There was no information to be found at all about the technical details. After many hours of research, the power of the Internet showed its best - on some kind of modeler's discussion forum I found a post mentioning "a great book describing technical details of 19th century German icebreakers, among others the <<Königsberg>>". The book's title was "Das Eisbrechwesen im Deutschen Reich" and it was issued in 1900... Pretty old book to find in 2024...

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Luckily, the power of the Internet showed up again, and I was able to find the whole book's scan on "Książnica Pomorska" web page. You can find the book under this link:
https://zbc.ksiaznica.szczecin.pl/dlibra/publication/2427/edition/1934/content

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​The book dedicates a few pages to the history of "Königsberg", and provides a table with all the technical details we could hope for - length, breadth, type of steam engine, count of cylinders (two, as on the wreck), and many, many more. After comparing the dimensions from the book with the scaled model, it turned out that the dimensions match almost to the meter - a definitive confirmation that we've identified the "Königsberg"!

The ship was built in 1885 in F. Schichau shipyard in Elbing (Elbląg) as a steam icebreaker for the city of Königsberg. It measured 33.5 x 7.0 meters. On 20.04.1945, while on its way to Pillau as a part of Operation Hannibal, it was spotted by soviet planes. One of the bombs hit the midship, exactly where the steam engine was. The ship sank, taking 8 people to the bottom. There were only 3 survivors. Nowadays, it's pretty well preserved, with superstructure, crane, remains of the steering wheel with column, wooden deck, and amazingly, the steam engine and boilers still in place and easily accessible.