Admiral Hipper
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The Admiral Hipper was a heavy cruiser and the lead ship of the Admiral Hipper class of the German Navy during World War II .
The cruiser was ordered as cruiser H and was the second ship in its class. Since there were delays in construction on the actual type ship Blücher , the Admiral Hipper was launched as the first ship of its class.
The ship was named after Franz von Hipper , commander of the reconnaissance forces (BdA) in the Battle of the Skagerrak and later commander in chief of the deep sea fleet of the Imperial Navy in the First World War .
history
Start of the Second World War
The Admiral Hipper was with the outbreak of war nor for testing in the Baltic Sea . From November 6, 1939 to January 12, 1940, Blohm & Voss in Hamburg carried out a number of modifications. The ship received, among other things, the sloping Atlantic stem and a chimney cap. In February 1940, the Admiral Hipper undertook a brief advance into the northern North Sea (" Enterprise Nordmark ") with the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau .
Weser exercise company
The " operation weserübung " the cruiser lead ship of Group 2 was the Mountaineer in Trondheim should land. With the destroyers Paul Jacobi , Theodor Riedel , Bruno Heinemann and Friedrich Eckoldt , the Admiral Hipper took 1,200 men from the 138 Mountain Infantry Regiment on board in Cuxhaven on April 6, 1940 .
On the march to the north, the cruiser encountered the British destroyer Glowworm on the morning of April 8 . The Glowworm took up the unequal fight, put a smoke screen and was hit several times badly by the superior artillery of the Admiral Hipper . She managed to shoot three torpedoes on the Admiral Hipper , but they did not hit. A last attempt was to the Admiral Hipper to ram, the Admiral Hipper was damaged at the bow. The Glowworm got under the bow of the Admiral Hipper , and the foredeck of the destroyer was separated up to the bridge construction. The burning glowworm drifted next to the Admiral Hipper for a few minutes and then capsized. The destroyer's boiler exploded. Only 40 men could be saved by the Admiral Hipper , some of them with severe poisoning from leaked heating oil. Two survivors died on board the cruiser. The commander of the Glowworm, Lieutenant Commander Gerard Roope, who also tried to board the Admiral Hipper , fell back into the water exhausted. He was posthumously the first British soldier in World War II to receive the Victoria Cross , the highest British honor for bravery, which was only awarded 24 times in the Royal Navy from 1939 to 1945 . This happened, among other things, on the basis of a report that Captain Hellmuth Heye , the commander of the Admiral Hipper , sent to the British Admiralty via the Red Cross .
At dawn the next day, Group 2 landed its troops in Trondheim. On April 10, the cruiser returned to Wilhelmshaven to have the damaged bow repaired in the shipyard.
Company Juno
On June 4, 1940, the Admiral Hipper ran together with the two battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as well as accompanied by the destroyers Hans Lody , Hermann Schoemann , Erich Steinbrinck and Karl Galster from Kiel to " Operation Juno ". The unit, commanded by the fleet chief Admiral Wilhelm Marschall , was supposed to relieve the German troops in Narvik . On June 8th the ships were at Harstad . There they met the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Norway. The Admiral Hipper was able to sink the U-fighter Juniper , the large tanker Oil Pioneer and the troop transporter Orama with her destroyers . After that, the German association separated. The Admiral Hipper ran with the destroyers to Trondheim. The Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau stayed in said sea area, where they were finally able to locate and sink the aircraft carrier Glorious and its destroyer companions Acasta and Ardent .
Already on June 20, the Admiral Hipper with the Gneisenau was supposed to leave again in order to disrupt the British withdrawal movements. This time Vice Admiral Günther Lütjens led the association. This mission ended at the fjord exit from Trondheim, where the Gneisenau was torpedoed by the British submarine Clyde . Both ships then returned to Trondheim.
On July 25, the Admiral Hipper left for a trade war in the North Sea, while the Gneisenau returned to Germany. A Finnish freighter was raised as a prize on August 1st . Over the next few days, the cruiser operated unsuccessfully in the Barents Sea . Finally the Admiral Hipper was ordered back home. After taking over fuel from the tanker Dithmarschen , it went back to Wilhelmshaven, where the ship went to the shipyard on August 10th.
Trade war in the Atlantic
In September 1940, the Admiral Hipper and the company North Sea Tour for the trade war in the North Atlantic should expire. Because of a major fire in the engine room, the ship had to turn around off southern Norway. It could run out again on November 30th. The Denmark Strait was passed unmolested and the Atlantic was reached. After two fuel takeovers from the tanker Friedrich Brehme , the Admiral Hipper encountered convoy WS-5A on the morning of December 25, north of the Azores . Contrary to expectations, the convoy was strongly secured by an aircraft carrier , a heavy cruiser and two light cruisers . There was a brief skirmish with the heavy cruiser Berwick , which received three hits. After technical malfunctions occurred and when the British escort wanted to grapple with the Admiral Hipper , she ran off quickly. On the way to the French base in Brest , the British steamer Jumna , a lone ship, was sunk.
On February 1, 1941, the Admiral Hipper ran from Brest to the second Atlantic company. On February 11th, she sank the British freighter Iceland (1236 GRT ) from convoy HG 53. It had previously lost eight cargo ships to submarines and aircraft of Kampfgeschwader 40 . The next day she met on the unsecured convoy SLS 64, which consisted of 19 ships. From this she was able to sink seven cargo ships with over 32,000 GRT. On February 14th, the Admiral Hipper was back in Brest. British air strikes increased. The Admiral Hipper had been spared from hits with a lot of luck. Therefore, the naval war command decided to bring the ship back home. The cruiser left Brest on March 15th. After a fuel replenishment in the North Atlantic, he passed the Denmark Strait unscathed and reached Kiel on March 28th . The ship spent the next few months in the shipyard.
Operations in the Arctic Ocean in 1942
In March 1942 the Admiral Hipper went to Norway. After some time in the Lofjord , a foothill of the Trondheimfjord , she ran out on July 2 with the battleship Tirpitz and some destroyers (Combat Group 1 under Admiral Otto Schniewind ) for "Operation Rösselsprung" . It was an attack on the Northern Sea Convoy PQ-17 . In Altafjord the battle group met two ( Vice Admiral Oskar Kummetz ) to do so. It consisted of the heavy cruisers Lützow and Admiral Scheer . On July 5, both groups set course for the convoy. The operation was canceled that same evening. Submarines and planes had already attacked the PQ-17 so violently that the ships had dispersed. One day later, the Admiral Hipper anchored in the arched bay near Narvik and then moved to the Lofjord until September 10th. On September 13th the cruiser anchored again in the Altafjord.
From September 24th to 28th, 1942, a mining operation took place in the Barents Sea (" Enterprise Zarin "). 96 mines were laid off the island of Novaya Zemlya . In November, the “ Operation Hope ” was followed by an unsuccessful advance against Soviet shipping in the Arctic Ocean .
Company rainbow
On December 30, 1942, the Admiral Hipper ran out together with the Lützow and eight destroyers to form "Operation Rainbow" . The combat group commanded by Vice Admiral Oskar Kummetz was to attack the convoy JW-51 B near Bear Island . On the morning of the next day, the Admiral Hipper with the four destroyers assigned to her was supposed to pull the British convoy security from the north. At the same time, the Lützow and her destroyers were supposed to attack the freighters from the south. The pincer attack failed because of poor visibility. Unexpectedly, the Admiral Hipper was shot at from the north by an unknown remote security guard. She received three hits from 6-inch shells from the light cruiser Sheffield . As a result, boiler room 3 failed. A short time later, the destroyer Friedrich Eckholdt was sunk by the Sheffield , which had been mistaken for the Admiral Hipper . Admiral Kummetz canceled the operation and led his ships back into the Altafjord. The Admiral Hipper was able to sink the destroyer Achates and the minesweeper Bramble in the battle .
The period 1943–1945
On February 7, 1943, the ship returned to Kiel. On February 28, it was decommissioned in Wilhelmshaven . Because of the increasing intensity of Allied air strikes, the Admiral Hipper was towed to Pillau in April . In March 1944 the ship was put back into service in Gotenhafen for the training of new recruits. Long stays in the shipyard and test drives followed. On January 30, 1945, the Admiral Hipper took about 1,500 refugees on board and brought them to Kiel . At the German works , boiler room 3 should finally be repaired. The ship passed the Wilhelm Gustloff a few minutes after she had been hit by three Soviet torpedoes. Everything on board had been prepared for the reception of castaways, but due to an in-depth submarine warning, the Admiral Hipper had to leave the site of the accident immediately after things had not been accomplished. In April the ship received bomb hits in two air raids on Kiel and was no longer operational. On May 3, 1945, the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper was blown up in the dock.
The ship was later sealed off by the British, then towed into the Heikendorfer Bay and there grounded opposite the light cruiser Emden . The dismantling took place in 1946. The ship's bell is in the Naval Memorial in Laboe .
Known crew members
- Hellmuth Heye (1895–1970), was from 1961 to 1964 the second defense commissioner of the German Bundestag
- Karl H. Peter (1918–2003), was from 1973 to 1977 as Rear Admiral Head of Personnel at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
literature
- Jochen Brennecke: Arctic Ocean-Atlantic-Baltic Sea. The heavy missions of the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Herford 1980.
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: The heavy cruisers of the Admiral Hipper class. Bernard & Graefe, 1998, ISBN 3-7637-5896-8 .
- Uwe Greve: Heavy cruiser "Admiral Hipper". SMS - Ships, People, Fates, Issue No. 80.
- Karl Peter : Heavy cruiser "Admiral Hipper". In: Walter Günther (Ed.): Community Crew 44: "That was how it was back then ..." Reports from the experiences of crewmates 1944–45. Self-published by Walter Günther, Bonn undated, pp. 45–54.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ War Diary Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper - NARA-Rolle T1022_4269, PG-48092
- ↑ F. Brustat-Naval: Ali Cremer: U333. Ullstein 1982, ISBN 3-548-25657-0 , p. 47.
- ↑ Niklas Zetterling, Michael Tamelander: Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany's Greatest Battleship, limited preview in the Google book search
- ↑ Hermann Teske: Die Wehrmacht Im Kampf , limited preview in the Google book search
- ↑ a b Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Maritime War 1939–1945, February 1941. Retrieved on November 17, 2012.
- ↑ Heinz Schön : Ostsee '45. People, ships, fates. P. 206 ff.