Next Wednesday, the minesweeper “Grömitz” will leave its home port of Kiel for the Aegean.
For the next six months, the minehunter, which is part of the 3rd Minehunting Squadron, will be the lead platform and the German contribution to NATO’s Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 and the NATO Aegean Support Mission. [ds_preview]
From mid-January, the unit will be led by German Captain Felix Hornung (53). The task of the “Grömitz” is to act as a command platform with all partners and relevant agencies to ensure professional, mission- and situation-appropriate cooperation in a region that is important in terms of foreign and military policy, according to the Navy. To this end, the German crew will be accompanied by a Turkish and a Greek liaison officer.
Not an everyday assignment for “Grömitz”
According to the navy, after an exhausting year of training and preparation for deployment in 2023, the crew is delighted to finally get underway, even if the task for a minehunter is special and not an everyday occurrence. “Providing the ‘flagship’ for the coming months is an unusual task for us, but one that the crew of the ‘Grömitz’ identifies with and that we want to master successfully,” says the commander.
The boat and crew are expected back in Kiel in mid-June, just in time for Kieler Woche.
