Mine cruiser
Mine cruisers are variants of the small cruisers , later the light cruisers . They were intended for offensive use with the fleet and were supposed to lay sea mines on enemy shipping lines and to protect their own fleet . The artillery armament was used for self-protection and was reduced in favor of a high mine capacity (several hundred sea mines). In total, only a few mine cruisers were built. Converted cruisers were mostly used for this.
Mine cruiser concepts from different states
German Empire
The first mine cruisers of the Imperial Navy were only weakly armed with artillery for self-protection, so that they were not actually part of the cruisers.
Only the following Brummer class met the criteria of a cruiser in this respect.
Great Britain
Even before the First World War, the Royal Navy converted old cruisers with low combat value into miners. A series of six rapid mine-layers was built for the Royal Navy from 1938 .
France
Japan
In Japan , outdated armored cruisers were converted to mine cruisers before the Second World War and were built in the 1930s to replace these two newbuildings.
Sweden
Smaller navies often had multi-purpose ships that also performed the tasks of a mine cruiser.
- Clas Fleming
- Gotland ( seaplane mother ship and mine cruiser)
Russia / Soviet Union
- Rossiya
- Amur class : Amur (1898) + Yenisei (1898)
- Amur class : Amur (1907) + Yenisei (1906)
- Gromoboi
- Marti
Other fleets use deep-sea mine layers for these tasks .