Qualla: German Auxiliary Cruiser Komet

German Auxiliary Cruiser Komet: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two torpedoes at five hundred yards, in the dark, fired by the most junior commanding officer in the flotilla, ended a voyage of 516 days and 100,000 nautical miles. Sub-Lieutenant Robert Drayson had been left behind when his boat's previous captain went sick, and his MTB had been separated from the rest as they crossed the Channel. He approached the action alone from the shoreward side and caught the German raider Komet illuminated by a British star shell, running fifteen knots toward Cap de la Hague. He fired, turned, crash-started his engines, and ran. Both torpedoes struck. A huge secondary explosion lifted the stern of his boat out of the water. Komet sank with no survivors. There were no survivors at all.

German Auxiliary Cruiser Komet: Schiff 45

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

She was launched on 16 January 1937 as the merchant ship Ems at the Deschimag A.G. Weser yard in Bremen, built for Norddeutscher Lloyd. The Kriegsmarine requisitioned her at the outbreak of war in 1939, took her to Howaldtswerke in Hamburg, and rebuilt her as a commerce raider. T...

German Auxiliary Cruiser Komet: Through the Arctic with Soviet Help

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Komet's route to her hunting grounds passed through politics as much as ice. Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and a separate commercial agreement, and the Soviets agreed to provide Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route across t...

German Auxiliary Cruiser Komet: The Phosphate Coast

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The three ships agreed to work the New Zealand to Panama trade route together, taking on each other's disguises as Mayebashi Maru, Tokio Maru, and Manyo Maru in turn. They sank the coaster Holmwood on 25 November 1940. Eyssen wrote in his war diary that he had been at sea for 140...

German Auxiliary Cruiser Komet: Three Hundred Days at Sea

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After Nauru, Komet ran south. She crossed the Indian Ocean looking for Allied whalers, found none, touched the Antarctic ice on 16 February 1941, then visited the French Kerguelen Islands in March, where she met the auxiliary cruiser Pinguin for a brief conference. Months of hunt...

German Auxiliary Cruiser Komet: Cap de la Hague

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The second raiding voyage never reached open water. Komet sailed from Vlissingen on 7 October 1942 disguised as a minesweeper, slipped through Dunkirk to Le Havre, and tried to break out into the Atlantic by hugging the French coast. British intelligence picked her up at every st...