The German torpedo boat T2 was one of a dozen Type 35 torpedo boats built for the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) during the late 1930s. Completed in 1939, she was not combat ready until mid-1940, when she spent several months escorting minelayers as they laid minefields. The boat returned to Germany after being damaged and supported operations in the Baltic Sea after the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. T2 returned to France at the end of the year, escorting a commerce raider through the English Channel. She then escorted a pair of battleships and a heavy cruiser through the Channel back to Germany in early 1942 in the Channel Dash. The boat was placed in reserve upon her return and was transferred back to France in 1943, where she helped to escort blockade runners through the Bay of Biscay. In mid-1943, she returned to the Baltic and briefly served as flagship of a submarine flotilla before being assigned to the Torpedo School. T2 was sunk in an air raid in July 1944, but was refloated several months later. She was never repaired and eventually scrapped in 1946.
Design and description
The Type 35 was an unsuccessful attempt by the Kriegsmarine to design a fast, ocean-going torpedo boat that did not exceed the displacement limit of the London Naval Treaty for ships that counted against the national tonnage limit. The boats had an overall length of and were long at the waterline. After the bow was rebuilt in 1941 to improve seaworthiness, the overall length increased to . The ships had a beam of and a mean draft of at deep load. They displaced at standard load and at deep load, exceeding the planned limit. Their crew numbered 119 officers and sailors. Their pair of geared steam turbine sets, each driving one propeller, were designed to produce , using steam from four high-pressure water-tube boilers which would propel the boats at . They carried enough fuel oil to give them a range of at .
As built, the Type 35 class mounted a single SK C/32 gun on the stern. Anti-aircraft defense was provided by a single SK C/30 anti-aircraft gun superfiring over the 10.5 cm gun and a pair of C/30 guns on the bridge wings. They carried six above-water torpedo tubes in two triple mounts and could also carry 30 mines (or 60 if the weather was good). Many boats exchanged the 3.7 cm gun for another 2 cm gun, depth charges and minesweeping paravanes before completion. While the full extent of any modifications to T2 are unknown, photographic evidence shows the ship was fitted with a quadruple mount for 2 cm guns in lieu of the single 3.7 cm gun and an additional 2 cm weapon positioned on the bow before her loss in mid-1944. She is not known have been fitted with radar.
Construction and career
T2 was ordered on 16 November 1935 from Schichau, laid down at their Elbing, East Prussia, shipyard on 14 November 1936 as yard number 1381, launched on 7 April 1938, and commissioned on 2 December 1939. The boat was working up until June 1940, when she began convoy escort duties in German waters. Now assigned to the 5th Torpedo Boat Flotilla, T2, her sister ships and , and the torpedo boats , , and escorted minelayers as they laid a minefield in the southwestern North Sea on 7–8 August and again on 14–15 August. Newly assigned to the 1st Torpedo Boat Flotilla with Kondor and her sisters and , T2 escorted a minelaying mission in the English Channel on 6–7 September. Five days later, T2, the torpedo boat , T1, and T3 were ordered to proceed to France. They were attacked enroute by a Bristol Blenheim light bomber that dropped a bomb to one side of T2. Splinters from the bomb badly damaged the torpedo boat and wounded six men. She stopped in Vlissingen, Netherlands, for emergency repairs and then sailed to Wilhelmshaven, where she arrived on 25 September.