but her captain decided to abandon her at 11.20 and she finally foundered at 12.00, about two miles south of the lighthouse at Cape Dukato. She took with her forty-four of her crew.
More pickings were on their way. A small but important convoy consisting of two large German transports, the Kybfels of 7764 tons and the Marburg of 7564 tons. They were carrying elements of the Wehrmacht’s 2nd Panzer Division, which had taken part in the invasion of Greece and was on its way from Patras in Greece to Taranto in Italy en route to Germany.31 On board the Marburg there was a young Panzergrenadier named Zaloudek, who wrote an account of the day’s events in his diary.32
The Marburg and Kybfels had left Patras at 09.00 the morning of the 21st. The ships were escorted by two Italian aircraft, which seemed a bit weak to some of the men aboard, but they trusted in their commanders’ judgement. It was a sunny day and soldiers were allowed to sunbathe up on deck as long as they had their life jackets with them. Only a few soldiers were below deck. On the horizon, ships could be seen, with smoke rising from one of them. One of those ships, the Brindisi, sighted the Marburg and Kybfels and made ready to send a signal, ‘You’re heading into danger’.
It was too late. At 14.15 observers in the Marburg saw a huge fountain of water rising next to the Kybfels. She and the Marburg veered to port. An alarm was sounded in Marburg and then there was another explosion. All men were ordered up on deck and told to don their life jackets. In total, there were four explosions. From the Marburg, the Kybfels could be seen slowly disappearing, with men jumping from her deck. The captain of the Marburg soon ordered all men aboard her to jump into the water. Zaloudek jumped and was pleasantly surprised to find the water was warmer than he thought it would be. While she still could, the Marburg lowered at least one boat. As its occupants rowed away, they could see the Marburg down by the bow, with smoke streaming from her fires. Both ships went down, with a total of 121 men.33 Most who survived the sinkings came ashore on the island of Cephalonia and those who had drowned were buried in Argustoli.
The steamer Marburg sinking after hitting an Abdiel mine. (Franz Steinzer, Die 2. Panzer-Division 1935-1945 [Friedburg: Podzun Pallas Verlag, 1977])
The authors of the German Naval War Diary was not pleased that the ships had not been warned about the mines and described the sinkings as a particularly severe blow. The ships went down with all the 2nd Panzer’s cargo, including sixty-six artillery pieces, ninety-three artillery tractors, fifteen armoured cars and 136 motor vehicles.34 The Wehrmacht high command was at first informed that 122 tanks had been lost in the ships, but soon learned that they had already been transported to Taranto in an earlier convoy.35 The Germans at first believed a British submarine was responsible for the sinking of their ships,36 but they soon realised that mines were the cause.
Much of the lost materiel was not easy to replace, particularly the artillery and their prime movers.37 Perhaps as a result of that, the 2nd Panzer Division missed the opening of Operation ‘Barbarossa’, the invasion of the Soviet Union, on 22 June 1941. Instead, in July the division was sent from Germany to Galicia in Poland and then in August to France. It did not reach the Eastern Front until October of that year, when it joined Army Group Centre. Arriving in time for the onset of the Russian winter, the division participated in the Wehrmacht’s final drive on Moscow. On 5 December, it was stopped just 25 kilometres from Moscow’s defensive perimeter, almost within sight of the Kremlin, and was forced to retreat for the first time in the war.38 The 2nd Panzer Division’s losses to the Abdiel’s mines probably delayed its arrival on the Eastern Front and that delay may have made a difference in the outcome of the offensive against Moscow, if not the war on the Eastern Front. The Royal Navy had not only designed a ship capable of such an operation, but had boldly ordered and executed the operation and was amply awarded for it.
Not many ships can take credit for ‘sinking’ a Panzer Division or rather much of it, but the men of the Abdiel could have if they had known the extent of her success. Lieutenant Austen never learned of the Abdiel’s success, but Lieutenant-Commander Chavasse later heard from the Director of Naval Intelligence that the minefield ‘had been most successful. A German coastal convoy had gone into it and been decimated’.39 It was not a bad payoff for the ship’s first minelay in the Mediterranean.
By the time the Abdiel returned to Alexandria, the battle for Crete had begun and her latent talents would soon become useful. The Germans had launched an airborne invasion of the island on 20 May and the fighting was fierce. At first, Crete’s defenders inflicted severe casualties on the Germans paratroopers and their Ju 52 transport planes took heavy losses. Then the surviving paratroopers captured the vital Maleme airfield and the Germans began to bring in reinforcements by air.
While the fighting took place ashore, the Mediterranean Fleet turned back efforts to bring in reinforcements by sea and escorted reinforcement to the island. Almost completely unprotected by the RAF, the Royal Navy had to operate in waters close to Luftwaffe bases. As its ships endured long hours of bombing attacks, they often ran low on anti-aircraft ammunition and losses mounted. On 22 May the battleship Warspite was badly damaged by a bomb and the light cruisers Gloucester and Fiji were sunk. On 23 May bombers sank the Kelly and Kashmir from Lord Mountbatten’s 5th Destroyer Flotilla. The Mediterranean Fleet was in the fight of its life.
On the evening of 23 May, the Abdiel sailed from Alexandria for Suda Bay in Crete with 50 tons of ammunition and stores and 195 men from ‘A’ Battalion of ‘Layforce’, which consisted of two battalions of ‘Special Service’ or commando troops commanded by Colonel Robert Laycock.40 The next day, she passed through the Kaso Strait in the evening in a thick fog, during which the ship was sighted by one enemy aircraft, which immediately made off on being fired at. A BBC report that ‘massive reinforcements were on their way to Crete’ caused some amusement on the Abdiel.41
No further incident occurred until arrival at Suda Bay at 23.30 on the 24th. The bay contained many beached and burning wrecks and there was also quite a lot of bombing and gunfire in the surrounding district. Troops and stores were disembarked alongside the small pier and a number of evacuees embarked, including four Greek cabinet ministers, sixty walking wounded and several POWs, including a young Luftwaffe pilot.
At 02.00 on the 25th the Abdiel sailed from Suda Bay at 34 knots to rendezvous with a cruiser squadron to the west of Crete. After sailing, a signal was received informing her that the cruisers would not be there and that the ship would have to make her way home by herself. The POWs were aboard were very nervous, knowing that the ship would be passing very close to German bomber bases, and were convinced the ship would be sunk.
The Abdiel experienced heavy weather passing through the Kithera Channel and speed had to be reduced to a mere 28 knots. As a result, the ship was far from being out of sight of land by dawn. A reconnaissance plane sighted her, leading the Captain to expect a heavy air attack. Instead, she was only attacked by four aircraft, which went after her one after the other. The POWs could have relaxed, as the ship was not hit, but she was near-missed, such that the men in the Transmitting Station below decks could hear bomb splinters striking the hull. The Abdiel safely reached Alexandria that same evening.
There would be no rest for the weary. Orders were immediately received to take on another load for Suda Bay, in this case troops and stores that destroyers had been unable to land in Crete because of bad weather. The Abdiel sailed from Alexandria at 06.00 on the 26th in company with the destroyers Hero and Nizam, with the remaining 750 men of Layforce,42 including Colonel Laycock, his intelligence officer and famous novelist Captain Evelyn Waugh,43 and about 50 tons of stores. The ships were
