Admiral Hipper class
The Admiral Hipper
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The Admiral Hipper class was a class of five heavy cruisers of the German Navy , only three of which were completed. The fourth ship, named Seydlitz, was to be converted into an aircraft carrier, but was not completed. The fifth and last ship Lützow was sold half-finished to the Soviet Union in 1940 , but not finished there, but used as a residential hulk until it was demolished in 1960 .
The class was named after the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper , which was actually the second ship in the class. After delays with the first ship, the Blücher , the Admiral Hipper was completed earlier and named after the class according to old naval tradition.
history
The German-British fleet agreement granted Germany a total of five heavy cruisers . Germany planned three of these ships ( Blücher , Admiral Hipper , Prinz Eugen ) if no special circumstances would necessitate the construction of two more cruisers.
On June 8, 1936, the Commander in Chief of the Navy, Erich Raeder, decided to have two more 10,000-ton cruisers built; the cruisers K and L, the later Seydlitz and the Lützow . The main armament was 15 cm guns in four triple turrets, which made the ships light cruisers . The same turrets were planned as on the cruisers of the Koenigsberg and Leipzig class. Otherwise, all requirements were similar to the previous Admiral Hipper class.
A few weeks later, Adolf Hitler ordered the new cruisers to be designed as heavy cruisers. The barbed diameter of the gun turrets had no significant difference, and the weight was also comparable. Since the design was already based strongly on the Prinz Eugen , the Seydlitz was laid on December 29, 1936 and the Lützow in February 1937 as the fourth and fifth unit of the Admiral Hipper class.
technology
Armament
The main armament consisted of eight 20.3 cm SK C / 34 guns in four twin towers Drh.LC/34 . As heavy flak, the ships carried twelve 10.5 cm SK L / 65 C / 33 guns in three-axis stabilized double mounts of the type C / 31. The light flak comprised twelve 3.7 cm guns in double mounts, also stabilized on three axes, as well as eight 2 cm guns in hand-directed single mounts. Furthermore, twelve torpedo tubes were installed in four sets of triple, ten more torpedoes were kept in reserve. There were corresponding flight facilities for three on-board aircraft, i.e. catapults, crane systems and an aircraft hangar (with Blücher and Admiral Hipper for one aircraft, otherwise for two aircraft) - one aircraft was generally permanently on standby on the catapult.
drive
The cruisers had different propulsion systems - although they generally had one system in common, consisting of three individual high-pressure turbines, albeit from different manufacturers. The boiler system, on the other hand, was very different: the first three ships had twelve high-pressure superheated steam boilers of the Wagner or La-Mont type, while in the last two ships only nine double-ended boilers of the Wagner type with reduced steam pressure were installed.
The machinery of the Admiral Hipper class had - contrary to the theoretical assumption in the design - very high fuel consumption and the ships thus had a smaller radius of action than planned. A range of 7,900 nm was calculated in advance at a cruising speed of 19 kn - in fact, at this speed level, the type ship only reached 4,430 nm. In general, malfunctions in the sensitive boilers and the confinement of the engine rooms often made the crew very difficult in the event of an accident. The ability to accommodate the two side shaft turbines in a common space was also a constructive weakness. At the Admiral Hipper , for example, a major fire in the turbine room caused two thirds of the machine's power to fail.
Ships of the class
Admiral Hipper
- Shipyard: Blohm & Voss , Hamburg
- Keel laid: July 6, 1935
- Launched: February 6, 1937
- Commissioning: April 29, 1939
- Missions: Operation Weser Exercise , Operation Juno , patrols in the Atlantic, mine operation in the Barents Sea , Operation Rainbow , evacuation of the Eastern Front
- Achievements: HMS Glowworm , HMS Achates , minesweeper HMS Bramble , submarine hunter HMS Juniper and seven merchant ships sunk, HMS Berwick and two merchant ships damaged, one merchant ship as a prize .
- Fate: Blown up on May 3, 1945 in the dock of Deutsche Werke Kiel . The wreck was later broken off in the Heikendorfer Bay.
Blucher
- Shipyard: Deutsche Werke Kiel (DWK)
- Keel laying: August 15, 1935
- Launched: June 8, 1937
- Commissioning: September 20, 1939
- Operations: Company Weser Exercise
- Successes: none
- Fate: Sunk by torpedo and artillery hits in the Oslofjord in front of the Oscarsborg fortress on April 9, 1940 .
Prinz Eugen
- Shipyard: F. Krupp Germaniawerft , Kiel
- Keel laying: April 23, 1936
- Launched: August 22, 1938
- Commissioning: August 1, 1940
- Missions: Accompaniment of the battleship Bismarck at Operation Rhine Exercise , Operation Cerberus , evacuation of the Eastern Front
- Achievements: Hit on HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales .
- Fate: The Prinz Eugen was handed over to the Allies on May 7, 1945 and renamed the USS Prinz Eugen (IX-300). After being used in the nuclear bomb tests of Operation Crossroads in Bikini Atoll , the ship was towed to Kwajalein Atoll in August 1946 , where it capsized on December 22, 1946. The wreck lies in shallow water about 250 meters from the beach at position 8 ° 45 '9.9 " N , 167 ° 40' 59.2" O .
Seydlitz
- Shipyard: AG "Weser" ( Deschimag ), Bremen
- Keel laid: December 29, 1936
- Launched: January 19, 1939
- Commissioning: never
- Missions: none, since 1942 conversion to aircraft carrier
- Successes: none
- Fate: in January 1943 the renovation was canceled and the unfinished ship was sunk in Königsberg on April 10, 1945 .
Lützow
- Shipyard: AG "Weser" ( Deschimag ), Bremen
- Keel laid: February 8, 1937
- Launched: July 1st, 1939
- Commissioning: never
- Stakes: none
- Successes: none
- Fate: The ship was not completed and sold to the Soviet Union in May 1940, renamed Petropavlovsk , later Tallinn and scrapped in 1960.
References
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Erich Gröner : The ships of the German Navy and Air Force 1939–45 and their whereabouts. Munich 1976, ISBN 3-469-00297-5 .
- ^ A b c Siegfrid Breyer: The heavy cruisers of the Seydlitz class. Marine Arsenal, Volume 22.
- ↑ Abbreviation for: Rotary hood mount construction (year) 1934.
- ↑ Ingo Bauernfeind: Radioactive for all eternity - The fate of the Prinz Eugen . ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2011, ISBN 978-3-8132-0928-0 , p. 93 .