Vasilefs Georgios (1941): Shipwreck Map, Location & Facts

Name	Vasilefs Georgios	Wikidata label
Year lost	1941	Wikidata P793 significant event, point-in-time qualifier
Era	Second World War	derived from year
Ship type	destroyer	Wikidata P31 instance of
Cause of loss	Scuttled	Wikidata P793 significant event: scuttling
Nationality / flag	Nazi Germany	Wikidata P8047 country of registry
Operator	Kriegsmarine, Hellenic Navy	Wikidata P137 operator
Conflict	World War II	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	Mediterranean Sea	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coast	Tunisia	Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 5 km from land
Position	36.7667, 10.3500	Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0)

About the wreck

Vasilefs Georgios (Greek: ΒΠ Βασιλεύς Γεώργιος) (King George) was the lead ship of her class of two destroyers built for the Royal Hellenic Navy before the Second World War. Flagship of the navy's Destroyer Flotilla, she participated in the Greco-Italian War in 1940–1941, escorting convoys and unsuccessfully attacking Italian shipping in the Adriatic Sea. While under repair during the Axis invasion of Greece in 1941, Vasilefs Georgios sank when the floating drydock that she was in was either scuttled or sunk by German aircraft.

The ship was later salvaged and repaired by the Germans who commissioned her into the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) in 1942 as ZG3, later renaming her as Hermes. They generally used the ship to escort convoys to and from North Africa and islands in the Aegean Sea. In addition, the Germans occasionally used the ship to lay mines and to ferry troops and supplies. After Hermes was transferred to the Central Mediterranean, she sank a British submarine about a week before she was crippled by Allied aircraft in late April 1943. The ship was towed to Tunisia and was scuttled as a blockship shortly before the Allies occupied Tunisia in early May.

Location

Recorded position: 36.7667, 10.3500 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: Mediterranean Sea
Nearest coast: Tunisia

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Greek destroyer Vasilefs Georgios (revision 1380115911), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.