Description

The Yugoslav minelayer Zmaj was built in Weimar Germany for the Royal Yugoslav Navy in the late 1920s. She was built as a seaplane tender, but does not appear to have been much used in that role and was converted to a minelayer in 1937. Shortly before the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 during the Second World War, she laid minefields along the Dalmatian coast, perhaps inadvertently leading to the sinking of two Yugoslav passenger ships. Slightly damaged by Italian dive bombers and then captured by the Italians during the invasion, she was soon handed over to the Germans. While in their service the ship was renamed Drache, had her anti-aircraft (AA) armament improved, and was used as a seaplane tender and later as a troop transport. In the latter role she participated in over a dozen convoys between the Greek port of Piraeus and the Greek island of Crete between December 1941 and March 1942.