SMS Hamburg
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The SMS Hamburg was a small cruiser of the Imperial Navy .
Pre-war period
The cruiser was built from 1902 at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin . It was launched on July 25, 1903 and was commissioned for the Imperial Navy on March 8, 1904 as the first cruiser of the Bremen class , which is why the class is sometimes referred to as the Hamburg class. In June 1904, the Hamburg was the escort of the imperial yacht Hohenzollern on their voyage to the north. During the autumn maneuvers in the same year, she replaced the small cruiser Niobe in the association of reconnaissance ships . In 1905 the Hamburg was again the escort ship of the Hohenzollern . Afterwards, several comparison trips with the Lübeck , the first turbine cruiser of the Imperial Navy, were carried out.
In February 1908, Hamburg undertook an Atlantic voyage with the Association of Reconnaissance Ships. In May, during the imperial visit to Venice and on the island of Corfu , she was again the escort ship of the imperial yacht Hohenzollern . The following year she made the same trips. When unrest broke out in Anatolia , the Hamburg sailed from Corfu to the Turkish coast on April 21, 1909. There she dropped a landing corps. On May 28, 1909, the Hamburg returned to Kiel. Normal fleet service followed until the ship was decommissioned on September 15, 1909 and transferred to the fleet reserve.
On July 2, 1912, the Hamburg was put back into service and from August 6, 1912 was assigned to the submarine flotilla as a guide ship. On July 1, 1914, a second submarine flotilla was set up, and the Hamburg became the lead ship of the first flotilla, which was based on Heligoland .
First World War
At the beginning of the First World War , Hamburg joined the deep sea fleet and took part in several forays into the North Sea as part of the IV reconnaissance group. There were occasional combat contacts (e.g. with the British destroyer Lynx ). On May 21, 1915, Hamburg rammed the torpedo boat S 21 on the Weser and cut it in two.
In 1916 the IV Reconnaissance Group made forays into the Skagerrak . During the march back from the Battle of the Skagerrak on the night of May 31 to June 1, 1916, there was a skirmish with British destroyers. The Hamburg received two hits and had 14 dead and 25 wounded. The ship was not ready for action again until July 26, 1916.
In 1917, because of her inadequate suitability for the front , the Hamburg became the accommodation ship of the leader of the submarines in Wilhelmshaven. After the end of the war, the outdated ship did not have to be delivered. It was decommissioned in 1919.
Imperial Navy
On September 7, 1920, the small cruiser was put back into service by the Reichsmarine . He became the flagship of the commander of the North Sea security. In July 1921, the ship accompanied a mine clearing association to the northern Arctic Ocean in order to clear mines that the auxiliary cruiser Meteor had laid in the First World War in accordance with the requirements of the victorious powers . From October 15, 1923 to April 1, 1925, the Hamburg was the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces. Then she was placed under the Navy's Education Inspectorate as a school cruiser. On October 23, 1923, the cruiser entered the port of Hamburg accompanied by two torpedo boats in order to secure the port facilities during the KPD uprising in Hamburg .
On February 14, 1926, the Hamburg set out on a trip around the world. This led to the West Indies , Central America, through the Panama Canal to the west coast of North America, on to Hawaii , Japan , to the Philippines , to Indonesia and finally through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean back home. On March 20, 1927, the Hamburg returned to Wilhelmshaven. There the ship was finally decommissioned on June 30, 1927. She remained in the reserve and was removed from the list of warships on February 24, 1931. From 1936 she served the Navy as a barge in Kiel. The ship sank in the port of Hamburg in a bombing raid in 1944. It was lifted again in 1949 and finally broken up in 1956.
Known crew members
- Max-Eckart Wolff (1902–1988), was from 1957 to 1963 as a flotilla admiral in command of the fleet base
literature
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: Small cruisers 1903-1918, Bremen to Cologne class , volume 12 ship classes and ship types of the German navy . Bernard & Graefe Verlag Munich, 2004, ISBN 3-7637-6252-3 .
- Hans-Georg von Friedeburg : 32,000 nautical miles on blue water. Experiences on the world tour of the cruiser "Hamburg" 1926/1927 . Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden in Westphalia, no year around 1928
Web links
- https://kleinerkreuzerhamburg.wordpress.com/ - Private blog with a historical travel report and pictures
- Cruiser Hamburg in the Hamburg uprising, according to bundesarchiv.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm II. And Sweden-Norway 1888-1905, p. 424 in the Google book search