Admiral Scheer
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The armored ship Admiral Scheer was the second ship of the Germany- class of the Kriegsmarine .
The Admiral Scheer was the sister ship of the armored ships Deutschland and Admiral Graf Spee . The ship was named after Admiral Reinhard Scheer , commander of the German deep sea fleet in the Battle of the Skagerrak .
This ship (like the Germany ) was reclassified as a heavy cruiser in the winter of 1939/40 . At the same time, an extensive renovation was carried out. The forecastle was lengthened and got a bigger frame failure . In addition, the large battle tower above the bridge was expanded and replaced by a slim tubular mast, thus matching that of the Lützow (the previous ironclad Germany ).
history
On June 29, 1936, Admiral Scheer took part in the Kiel Week . In 1936/37 she was used a total of seven times during the Spanish Civil War to exercise international maritime control in these waters. After Republican aircraft attacked Germany , which was lying off Ibiza on May 29, 1937 and caused considerable personnel losses and damage through bombs (23 died, eight later succumbed to their wounds), the Admiral Scheer received the order to use the port of Almería - the republican berth Fleet - to be taken under fire. The artillery use should be against the lying there Dreadnought -Schlachtschiff Jaime I. judge. On the morning of May 31, 1937, the early morning fog was so thick that the ships lying in the harbor could not or hardly be made out. In addition, the Jaime I. had left the day before. Since many grenades missed their targets and hit the city, the operation was not very successful. 21 residents died in the bombardment and another 55 were injured.
At the beginning of the war, the Admiral Scheer was only operational to a limited extent due to difficulties with the propulsion system. On September 4, 1939, she was on Schillig - Reede attacked by British bombers. The British scored three hits, all of which were duds . The ship's anti-aircraft defense was able to shoot down a Bristol Blenheim . The ship spent the winter of 1939/40 in the Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven, mainly to be converted into a heavy cruiser for 6.4 million marks; Tests in the Baltic Sea followed from July to September 1940. On October 23, 1940, she left Gotenhafen and went to Brunsbüttel , which was chosen as the starting point for the upcoming long-distance operation. When she left there on October 27th, after a short stay in Stavanger , she managed to pass the Denmark Strait unnoticed and to reach the North Atlantic on November 1st . Five days later she came across the convoy HX 84 going from Halifax to England and sank the Trewellard (16 dead), the Fresno City (1 dead), the Kenbane Head (23 dead), the Beaverford (77 dead) and from it the Maiden (91 dead) with a total of 33,628 GRT. The San Demetrio and the Andalusian were damaged. It came to a battle with the auxiliary cruiser Jervis Bay , whose resistance enabled the majority of the convoy to escape, while he himself was defeated and perished in this unequal battle. In mid-December, the Admiral Scheer operated in the South Atlantic, where she was refueled in the last week of December by the tanker Storstad , which was hijacked by the auxiliary cruiser Penguin , and in February 1941 she advanced into the Indian Ocean as far as the Seychelles . Then she started the march back and entered Kiel on April 1, 1941 . On this mission, she covered around 46,000 nautical miles in 155 days . 17 ships with over 113,000 GRT were sunk. The supply ship Nordmark (ex Westerwald ), which was at sea for 212 days, covered 33,664 nautical miles and carried out 41 supplies, provided essential support for the mission . In addition to the Admiral Scheer and eight submarines , the Nordmark also supplied the auxiliary cruisers Thor , Kormoran and Pinguin as well as ten auxiliary ships, prizes and blockade breakers .
During the German occupation of Norway , the Admiral Scheer was stationed there in 1942. During this time she participated in the Wunderland company off the Russian north coast. In 1943 she was used as a training ship and deployed in the Baltic Sea . On July 17, 1944, she was subordinated to the 2nd combat group under Admiral Thiele with Prinz Eugen , destroyers and torpedo boats . In November she intervened in the retreat fighting of the German Army Group North in Estonia , where she provided artillery support and covered the evacuation of the last 4,491 defenders from the Sworbe peninsula .
In February 1945 it provided artillery support to various German bridgeheads near Frauenburg and on Samland , west of Königsberg . In March she transported refugees and wounded to Swinoujscie and shot at Soviet troops near Kolberg and Wollin . Further refugees were transported to Kiel; there the cruiser came to the shipyard to exchange its gun barrels.
On April 9, 1945, the Admiral Scheer capsized after being hit by bombs in the outer construction port of Deutsche Werke Kiel (DWK). The ship turned over starboard as it capsized ; at around 125 ° the superstructures reached the bottom of the 10 meter deep harbor basin. The wreck remained fixed in this position. From July 1946, the wreck was cannibalized by Kiel companies, but according to consistent reports only up to the waterline. This concerned the port side of the hull, the corresponding half of the ship's bottom with the screws and the ship's rooms and fixtures enclosed by these parts. The starboard side hull, half of the ship's bottom and the majority of the surface ship (superstructures, artillery) including the enclosed spaces remained on site and were filled with rubble along with the entire port basin. In this way, 60% of the ship's mass has been preserved. The place has never been built over. According to the referenced Allied aerial photo, the stern is at 3575708/6021888, the bow at 3575822/6021766; today's surface is around 3 m above sea level. NN . (Location: 54 ° 19 ′ 15.3 ″ N , 10 ° 9 ′ 48.2 ″ E, ). The ship's bell is located in the German Naval Museum in Wilhelmshaven .
Commanders
| November 12, 1934 to September 21, 1936 | Sea captain Wilhelm Marschall |
| September 22, 1936 to October 30, 1938 | Sea captain Otto Ciliax |
| October 31, 1938 to October 24, 1939 | Sea captain Hans-Heinrich Wurmbach |
| October 31, 1939 to February 4, 1940 | Sea captain Theodor Krancke |
| June 17, 1940 to June 3, 1941 | Sea captain Theodor Krancke |
| June 12, 1941 to November 28, 1942 | Sea captain Wilhelm Meendsen-Bohlken |
| November 29, 1942 to January 31, 1943 | Frigate Captain Ernst Gruber (deputy) |
| February 1, 1943 to April 4, 1944 | Sea captain Richard Rothe-Roth |
| April 5, 1944 to April 9, 1945 | Sea captain Ernst-Ludwig Thienemann |
Known crew members
- Eberhard Ahrens (1892–1945), ship's doctor
- Carl-Heinz Birnbacher (1910–1991) was Deputy Commander of the Fleet from 1968 to 1970 as Rear Admiral of the German Navy
- Robert Gysae (1911–1989), was from 1967 to 1970 as Flotilla Admiral in command of the North Sea Marine Division
- Günter Kuhnke (1912–1990) was Head of the Naval Office from 1966 to 1972 as Rear Admiral
- Siegfried Lenz (1926–2014), writer
- Fritz Markwardt (1924–2011), German physician and pharmacologist
- Alfred Schumann (1902–1985), was in 1963 as Flotilla Admiral Deputy Inspector of the Navy and Chief of Staff Fü M
literature
- Jochen Brennecke , Theodor Krancke : Heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer. Köhlers, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7822-0831-5 .
Movie
The battle between the Admiral Scheer and the auxiliary cruiser HMS Jervis Bay was re-enacted in the British feature film San Demetrio in 1943 .
Web links
- The history of Admiral Scheer up to 1939 in pictures ( Memento from June 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- Admiral Scheer's photo gallery
- Technical details of the Admiral Scheer and her sister ships
- Loss list: Heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer
Footnotes
- ↑ Joe J. Heydecker, Johannes Leeb: The Nuremberg Trial ( online )
- ^ Henrik Eberle , Matthias Uhl : Das Buch Hitler. Bastei Lübbe. 4th edition, 2007, ISBN 978-3-404-64219-9 . P. 65.
- ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Die Jäger 1939–1942 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-12345-X , p. 256
- ↑ wlb-stuttgart.de: Sea War 1944 November
- ↑ Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . Volume 6, Herford o. JS 76
- ↑ wlb-stuttgart.de: Sea War 1945 January
- ↑ wlb-stuttgart.de: Sea War 1945 March
- ↑ Willi Kramer: Wreck of the heavy cruiser "Admiral Scheer" (1933-1945). War grave . In: Archäologische Landesaufnahme Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel (-Ellerbek) No. 5, FM 2010/678 .
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Germany (from 1939 Lützow ) | Admiral Scheer | Admiral Graf Spee