SMS Nuremberg (1906)
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
SMS Nürnberg was a Königsberg- class small cruiser ofthe Imperial Navy .
The uneven placement of the three funnels was characteristic of the last three ships in this class. The aft chimney was further away from the middle one than the front one, which earned it the joking name of "detached chimney".
commitment
The Nürnberg was first put into service on April 10, 1908 under frigate captain Georg Schur in order to carry out her tests. Schur had previously led the testing of the Stettin, which was equipped with a turbine drive, from October 29, 1907 to January 19, 1908, and then from February 1 to April 9, 1908, that of Stuttgart . He had thus commanded and accepted all three small cruisers with the detached chimneys as first in command.
On July 11, 1908, the Nürnberg was taken out of service for 20 months. The cause was the chronic shortage of personnel in the Imperial Navy, which often did not allow all modern units to be in service or long-term deployments abroad. The sister ship Stuttgart was also out of service for ten months after testing.
Foreign assignment
On February 1, 1910, the Nürnberg was then put back into service for use abroad. It was supposed to replace the six years older small cruiser Arcona in the East Asian Cruiser Squadron . On February 14th she started to leave Wilhelmshaven . At the beginning of March, she met Arcona , who was already on her way home, in Port Said and exchanged parts of the crew. On April 5, it reached the station area with Singapore . She ran on to the base of the squadron in Tsingtau . The squadron's first big trip from June 20th was accompanying the squadron's flagship Scharnhorst via Saipan , the Truk Atoll and Ponape to Samoa , where from July 19th they met with the stationary Cormorant and Condor and the Emden, who was newly assigned to the squadron expected, which had marched across South America and the Pacific and arrived on July 22nd after a long-range test. The flagship then ran with the two small cruisers to Friedrich-Wilhelm-Hafen , where the survey ship Planet was moored with a machine failure. The Nuremberg first transported a police force to Hatzfeldhafen , where natives had murdered several workers. The planet then provided them with support and dragged them through the Sunda Strait to Singapore from September 9 to 24 for repairs.
The cruiser squadron also included the small cruiser Leipzig and from 1911 the sister ship of the flagship, the large cruiser Gneisenau . In addition there were four gunboats of the Iltis class , three river gunboats and the two torpedo boats Taku and S 90 .
At their next use the handle Nuremberg , together with the Emden and the Cormoran the uprising of Sokehs on the island of Pohnpei early 1911. From autumn 1911 she was tied to the Chinese coast by the Chinese revolution and made another trip on the Yangtze to Hankau in May and June with the squadron chief on board . At the end of 1912 she was completely overhauled at the Tsingtau shipyard .
On October 16, 1913, the Nürnberg started a trip to the west coast of Mexico in Yokohama to protect German, Austrian and Swiss citizens and to safeguard German interests during the unrest in Mexico. On November 8th, she called La Paz, the first Mexican port, and then continued to Mazatlán , which became her main port of call . She worked on protective tasks with the English sloops Algerine and Shearwater , American ships such as the armored cruisers Pittsburgh , California , Maryland and the cruisers New Orleans , Albany and Raleigh and, from December 25, also the Japanese armored cruiser Izumo .
From April 20, the crisis intensified into a conflict between the Mexicans and the Americans, and Nuremberg , closely coordinated with the Japanese armored cruiser, took over the protection of all neutral foreigners. At the end of May 1914 she ran via Acapulco , Salina Cruz to Panama City to carry out a partial change of crew and to take over supplies from home that had arrived in Colón shortly before the completion of the Panama Canal and had been transported to Panama by rail. On July 7th, she met Leipzig in Mazatlan , who took over her duties. In order to carry out repairs, the Nürnberg went to the dock in San Francisco from July 14th to 18th , and then went from there via Honolulu to Apia , where she was to meet the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau . The worsening of the situation in Europe led to the order to Nuremberg to go directly to East Asia. But it didn't come to that either. It met the two large cruisers on their return march on August 6, 1914 near Ponape.
The march of the cruiser squadron
Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War , the great cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had started an inspection trip to the German colonies in the Pacific, to German New Guinea and German Samoa . In Ponape they learned of the mobilization . Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee gathered his squadron on August 11 at the island of Pagan ( Mariana Islands ). After a commanders' meeting, the further route led the German ships via the Marshall Islands , Samoa , Tahiti and Easter Island to the Chilean coast. The Nürnberg was detached from August 22nd to September 8th, initially to get mail on its way in Honolulu and to gain news, later again to destroy the cable from Canada to Australia at Fanning Island . While the two large cruisers attacked Papeete , the Nürnberg continued with the train across the Pacific.
On the Chilean coast, the German squadron met the British cruiser squadron of Vice Admiral Christopher Cradock on November 1, 1914 . In the course of the naval battle at Coronel , the Nürnberg , which was initially not involved in the battle because it ran behind the squadron, was able to sink the already badly damaged old armored cruiser Monmouth at around 9 p.m.
On November 3rd and 4th, the Nürnberg supplemented coal and provisions in Valparaíso together with the great cruisers. Then the German ships took over coal and supplies from German merchant ships in the open roadstead of Mas a Fuera . The Leipzig and Dresden also called Valparaíso to refute rumors of their sinking. It was not until November 15 that the squadron set course for Cape Horn with the supply ships Amasis , Baden and Santa Isabel . It got into very bad weather and anchored again from November 21 to 26 in St. Quentin Bay on the Golfo di Penas , which was a prepared supply point. Here Seydlitz joined the squadron as the third supplier, which had already left Valparaíso on October 20th with 4,150 tons of coal, drinking water, provisions and other supplies and had been here for almost a month. She had already emptied the Kosmos steamer Ramses, which was destined for the Dresden with 2,000 tons of coal and material, and released it again. The Kosmos steamers Memphis and Luxor arrived just in time with a further 6,000 tons of coal. Both were emptied and discharged with the Amasis , which was also emptied .
After passing Cape Horn there was a further delay because the squadron anchored again off Picton Island from December 2nd to 6th, especially to give Dresden the opportunity to take over more coal, so that all ships had supplies that would reach the level of the Río de la Plata . At the same time the British Bark Drummuir had been brought up with 3000 tons of coal, which was sunk after taking over its cargo. Here the squadron chief decided in a final commanders' meeting to attack the Falkland Islands .
Sinking
,_2._Phase.png)
In the early morning of December 8, 1914, Vice Admiral Graf Spee wanted to attack the British base at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. He wanted to destroy the coal depot and the radio station there and take the British governor prisoner. The Nürnberg and the Gneisenau ran ahead for reconnaissance. When heavy British units were sighted in port, both ships returned to the squadron. Graf Spee tried to escape to the east with maximum speed. But the opposing association of Admiral Frederik Doveton Sturdee , which had only arrived the day before , took up the pursuit. It consisted of the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible , the armored cruisers Cornwall , Kent and Carnarvon and the light cruisers Glasgow and Bristol . At noon the British had caught up with the Germans. At 1:20 p.m., Graf Spee signaled his small cruisers to turn south. He himself turned the two big cruisers towards the enemy. The Nürnberg tried to escape to the southeast, but was pursued by the Kent , a sister ship of the Monmouth , which was sunk at Coronel , and around 6.30 p.m. at 53 ° 28 ′ 30 ″ S , 55 ° 4 ′ 0 ″ W, sunk. Only seven crew members survived, 327 went down with the ship. The Kleine Kreuzer Dresden was the only German warship to escape destruction during the naval battle and was only sunk by its own crew on March 14, 1915, after being attacked by the British in neutral Chilean waters.
.jpg)
Commanders
| April 10 to July 11, 1908 | Frigate Captain Georg Schur |
| February 1, 1910 to November 1911 | Corvette / frigate captain Carl Tägert |
| November 1911 to December 19, 1913 | Frigate captain / sea captain Hermann Mörsberger |
| December 20, 1913 to December 8, 1914 | Frigate captain / sea captain Karl von Schönberg |
literature
- Geoffrey Bennett: The sea battles of Coronel and Falkland and the sinking of the German cruiser squadron under Admiral Graf Spee , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-453-01141-4 .
- Erich Gröner / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats. (The German warships 1815-1945, vol. 1), Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 .
- Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: Ship biographies from Lützow to Prussia. (The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present, vol. 6), Mundus Verlag, Ratingen o. J.
- Gerhard Koop / Klaus-Peter Schmolke: Small cruisers 1903–1918 (Bremen to Cöln class). (Ship classes and ship types of the German Navy, Vol. 12), Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-7637-6252-3 .
- Hans Pochhammer: Graf Spee's last trip - memories of the cruiser squadron. Publishing house of the daily Rundschau, Berlin 1918.
- Gerhard Wiechmann (ed.): From foreign service in Mexico to the sea battle of Coronel. Captain Karl von Schönberg. Travel diary 1913–1914. Dr. Winkler Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89911-036-6 .
Web links
- Gallery of the German Federal Archives on the sea battle at Coronel
- Exhibition at the Google Cultural Institute on the sea battle at Coronel
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the literature, the Königsberg is sometimes viewed as a single ship, while the three other ships are referred to as belonging to the Nuremberg class. Both Gröner and Koop, however, count the ships to the Königsberg class.
- ^ Report on the union of the cruiser Nuremberg with the cruiser squadron (August 6, 1914) in the Federal Archives, accessed on August 12, 2016 ( Memento from March 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Karl von Schönberg's report on the sinking of the British armored cruiser Monmouth (November 1, 1914) in the Federal Archives, accessed on August 12, 2016. ( Memento from March 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Directory of the crew members rescued after the sinking of the cruiser Nürnberg in the Federal Archives, accessed on August 12, 2016. ( Memento from March 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive )