the liner and five ships off Nauru, before going their separate ways in the new year. The German naval attaché to Japan, Vice-Admiral Paul Wenneker, bought a Nakajima E8N float plane early in 1941. It was dispatched on board the supply ship Münsterland to rendezvous with Orion at the Maug Islands in the Northern Marianas. They met on 1 February 1941, and Orion thus became the only German naval ship of World War II to use a Japanese float plane. Another six months cruising in the Indian Ocean yielded nothing, though she did encounter and capture her final victim, , in July 1941, in the South Atlantic when Orion was on her way home. Orion returned to Bordeaux in occupied France on 23 August 1941. After 510 days and at sea she had sunk ten ships with a combined tonnage of , plus two more (totalling ) in cooperation with Komet. The German freighter Anneliese Essberger, disguised as the Norwegian freighter Herstein, was meant to meet the Orion on 30 Aug. 1941. The planned rendezvous was Point Corona at 28 degrees N, 43 degrees W. But the freighter failed to see the Orion, and continued north. Later history De-commissioned as a commerce raider, the ship was renamed Hektor in 1944 and was used as artillery training ship. In January 1945 she was again renamed Orion and was used to take refugees from Germany's eastern provinces across the Baltic Sea to ports in northern Germany and occupied Denmark. On her way to Copenhagen on 4 May 1945, after she had picked up the crew of the old battleship , Orion was hit by two bombs dropped by aircraft of the Soviet 51st Mine-Torpedo Aviation Regiment off Swinemünde. The crew managed to beach the fiercely burning ship on a sandbank, but more than 150 passengers and crew were killed. The hulk was scrapped in 1952. Raiding history Sunk by Orion 1940-04-24 Haxby 1940-06-19 Tropic Sea 1940-08-16 Notou 1940-08-20 Turakina 1940-10-14 Ringwood 1941-07-29 Chaucer Sunk by mines laid by Orion 1940-06-19 1941-05-14 (The claims by several sources that the freighters Port Bowen and Baltannic were also victims of the Orion's mines, seem, on examination of the records now available, to be unsubstantiated) In concert with Komet 1940-11-25 Holmwood 1940-11-27 1940-12-06 Triona 1940-12-08 Triadic 1940-12-08 Triaster Notes References External links 1930 ships Auxiliary cruisers of the Kriegsmarine Cruisers sunk by aircraft Maritime incidents in