Post Description

voor de liefhebbers van modelbouw en submarines :)

Maly Modelarz Orzel I Nautilus model card

ORP Orzel was the lead ship of her class of submarines serving in the Polish Navy during World War II. Her name means Eagle in Polish. The boat is best known for the Orzel incident, her escape from internment in neutral Estonia during the early stages of the Second World War.

The Orzel was in the Baltic Sea when Nazi Germany attacked Poland, setting off World War II. Unable to reach a Polish naval base and with the captain, Lieutenant-Commander Henryk Kloczkowski, seriously ill, the decision was made to head for Tallinn, which was reached on 14 September 1939. Kloczkowski was taken to a hospital the next day for treatment of the unidentified illness from which he had been suffering since 8 September.

Section XIII, Article 8 of the Hague Convention of 1907 required that a neutral government had a duty "to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise, or engage in hostile operations"[2] against another government with which the neutral was at peace. At the insistence of the Germans, the Estonian military authorities boarded the ship, interned the crew, confiscated all the navigation aids and maps, and commenced dismantling all the armaments.

The crew of ORP Orzel conspired to escape under the new command of its chief officer, Lt.Cdr. Jan Grudzinski VM VM DSO. On 18 September, the partially submerged Orzel slipped out of the harbor under the cover of a foggy night, with the two on-board Estonian guards taken hostage. The Estonian and German press covering the incident declared the two captured guards missing at sea. However, they were deposited on the Swedish coast and provided with clothing, money and food for their safe return home. The Polish crew believed that those returning from the underworld "deserve to travel first class only". Orzel headed to the Royal Navy base at Rosyth in Scotland.

Thanks to Silent Steel :)