German S-Boats

By Steve Wiper

A treasury of useful facts, plans, and photos for modelers.
 
The ShipCraft series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeler through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring color profiles and highly detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modeling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references—books, monographs, large-scale plans, and relevant websites.
 
The subject of this volume is the Second World War German Navy's motor torpedo boats called Schnellboote, known to the Allies as E-Boats. One of the most effective coastal attack craft of the time, the type was built in large numbers and constantly improved as the war progressed, giving many variants to interest modelers. With its unparalleled level of visual information—paint schemes, models, line drawings and photographs—it is simply the best reference for any model maker setting out to build one of these famous boats.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781848322905

Book preview

Design

FOLLOWING THE CONCLUSION of the Great War and the Treaty of Versailles, the German Navy, known then as the Reichsmarine, began a clandestine research and development program to develop an all-weather motor torpedo boat (MTB). Much effort was given to this project due to the fact that the Treaty of Versailles made no provision against Germany developing this type of warship. For this they went to the German firm of Lürssen, a yacht building firm near Bremen, Germany. Lürssen had a round bottomed, all weather motor yacht that he was marketing to wealthy Americans in the mid 1920s that had the characteristics that the Reichsmarine was asking for. The construction of Lürssen’s largest yacht consisted of aluminum frames, covered with mahogany planking, enabling the boat to withstand sea states far rougher than any other nations’ MTBs. This vessel was 74ft long and could also reach a top speed of 34kts, making it the fastest motor boat of this size in the world. The Reichsmarine awarded Lürssen the contract for one boat of a slightly larger design. This would be the first true MTB for the new German Navy, and the design genesis for all future S-Boats through the Second World War.

S-1, the prototype S-Boat, in her early days. (All illustrations by courtesy of the author)

TYPE S-1

S-1 was commissioned into the Reichsmarine in August 1930 as an experimental craft called a Schnellboot. The torpedo tubes were made removable to hide them from Allied intelligence. In 1932, this vessel was officially named S-1, but the term Schnellboot would become the designation for this type of warship. Upon completion, the S-1 was the largest MTB of its time. There were a lot of trials and experiments performed with this craft, as well as refits and modifications to it as the new German Navy (Kriegsmarine in 1935) grew and developed new technologies. In 1938 Germany sold the S-1 to Spain.

TYPE S-2, S-6 AND S-7

The Type S-2 boats were hull numbers S-2 through S-5, four in all. These boats were built at the Lürssen Boatworks and delivered to the Reichsmarine in 1932. They were very similar to the S-1, but had front doors hinged onto the torpedo tubes, supercharged motors and two special rudders added. These rudders, when both turned out to 30°, caused the boat to plane, reducing the stern wake and increased the top speed. This became known as the ‘Lürssen Effekt’, for which the S-Boat became famous.

These four boats, and S-1 trained a new core of German sailors for MTB duty throughout the early to mid late 1930s. As with S-1, all four Type S-2 were later sold to Spain as new Schnellboote became available.

The S-6, again built at Lürssen in 1933, was a larger design