21st July 1937
Krafft Simmross

Tablada Air Base, Sevilla

link to Spanish Civil War directory

At the beginning of the Civil War, during the morning of 18th July 1936, the Tablada air base was the only military installation in Seville in which there was war activity. During the night several bombers from Madrid had landed to load bombs and then attack the Moroccan rebels. Throughout the morning there were several acts of sabotage by military supporters of the uprising, so that only one plane took off and bombed Tetouan.

After the coup occurred in the center of Seville, Captain Carrillo, one of the main conspirators, went to the base with orders to depose Commander Rafael Martínez Esteve and put his subordinate, Commander Azaola, in his place. Esteve refused and, with the help of one of his officers, arrested the two coup plotters. He then sent separate detachments to block the bridges of San Juan de Aznalfarache and Hierro.

The latter was raised to prevent the rebels from crossing to the shore of Tablada.

At the beginning of the coup attack on the civil government, Governor Varela asked Martínez Esteve by telephone to bomb the rebels in Plaza Nueva and the Division headquarters in Gavidia. Esteve refused, but agreed to send about 100 men to defend the civil government. However, later bad news from the city center dissuaded him from sending this troop.

Throughout the afternoon, several planes took off to carry out missions over Morocco. Around midnight, with the civil government and the Assault Guard barracks surrendered, Martínez Esteve became demoralised and also decided to surrender, so he handed over command to Azaola. Esteve was sentenced to death on 20th September 1936, but his sentence was later commuted.

Between the afternoon of the 19th and the morning of the 20th, a complete company of the Legion landed in Tablada, under the command of Commander Antonio Castejón Espinosa. A tabor and a company of Regulars also arrived by land. After the coup d'état and until the end of October 1936, the base was the destination of the air bridge that linked North Africa with the peninsula. Fokker F.VII aircraft, Junkers Ju 52 and a DC-2 transported more than 13,000  legionnaires and regulars of the Army of Africa. During the war, it was also the place where Italian aircraft were received and repaired.

In the midst of the Spanish Civil War, Albacete was the base of the International Brigades , the foreign forces that fought to defend the Second Republic against the rebel side, located in an important communications hub. The German Condor Legion of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, which was fighting with the rebel side, carried out an air attack against the city on the night of 19th February 1937, which lasted for six and a half hours of bombing, between 8.30pm in the afternoon and 1.20am the next morning.

The Condor Legion aircraft made more than 20 passes at intervals of 10 to 20 minutes. The majority of aircraft used were Junkers 52 from the Tablada air base (Seville). The bombs especially affected areas such as Feria, Tinte, Altozano and Diputación, as well as the streets Ancha, Paseo de la Libertad, Félix Arias, Hurtado Matamoros, Marzo and Sol, among others, as well as the Los Llanos airfield, killing some 150 people.

Source: Wikipedia

Notes on Krafft Simmross

Krafft Friedrich Wilhelm Simmross, member of Abw I M, KO Spain

Source: www.archives.gov

SIMMROSS, alias LAGARTO alias GITANO (same alias as SCHULTZE’s).

Agent I-M, KO Spanien, Cadiz (named in STUBBS and BUGGE’s report on I-M Spain).

Source: gatopardoblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/20/s-the-factual-list-of-nazis-protected-by-spain/

Wilhem Simmross, interrogated by the Allies in 1946, expanded on this information about the importance of the delegations of the Northern Inspectorate. The Inspector Fähnrich Ohlenroth worked mainly from Bilbao and was responsible for Vigo, La Coruña, Gijón, Santander, Bilbao and San Sebastián, a city to which he paid special attention due to its proximity to the border and its connection with France. Simmross provides interesting data on the importance that the German secret service attached to these cities.

Of Gijón, Simmross says that it was a port where British ships loaded timber and ore; and that there were large liners in the port of the Musel. Of Santander

the data is limited to stating that there was a fishing fleet and merchandise traffic.

Simmross states that the Bilbao and San Sebastián delegations worked closely together. For naval matters (Ab-I-Marine), Bilbao and Vigo were the most important, and San Sebastián was the most important for border traffic. In fact, the German secret services consider Bilbao to be the most important espionage centre in northern Spain, the second being Vigo.

Map 1 [Not shown here]. The Abwehr in Spain. Reproduction extracted from the interrogation of the Allies with SIMMROSS. Krafft Friedrich Wilhelm SIMMROSS was interrogated between 25th January and 16th April 1946. The National Archives (Kew, London), KV 3.

Structure of the Kriegsorganisationen. Figure 1 [Not shown here]. Structure of the Kriegsorganisationen (KO) Spanien. Reproduction from the Allied interrogation of the German spy SIMMROSS. Krafft Friedrich Wilhelm SIMMROSS was stationed in Cadiz and Seville during World War II. He was interrogated between 25th January and 16th April 1946. The National Archives (Kew, London), KV 3-272.

Source: The secret services in northern Spain during World War II: the German Abwehr and the English SOE. Javier Rodríguez González Universidad de León

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