SMS Scharnhorst
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SMS Scharnhorst was a large cruiser ( armored cruiser ) of the German Imperial Navy and type ship of the Scharnhorst class named after it. From April 29, 1909 until her sinking on December 8, 1914, she was the flagship of the German cruiser squadron in East Asia. The name was given after the Prussian general Gerhard von Scharnhorst . The wreck of the Scharnhorst was discovered in 2019by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trustabout 98 nautical miles southeast of Stanley at a depth of 1610 meters.
technology
Conversions and identification features
The cruiser has been slightly rebuilt twice. First of all, the crane bridges were removed in 1912 and the spotlights there were moved to new platforms behind the bridge and in the masts, which were also modified. One headlight each came into the fore-top and one on the fore-mars ceiling and two came diagonally offset onto the great-mars ceiling .
Before the operation overseas, the foremast was changed again; u. a. He received a striking and visible even at long range Flecker Stand (lookout). The Scharnhorst could only be distinguished from the almost identical sister ship Gneisenau by the arrangement of the steam pipes on the chimneys. The Gneisenau had a steam pipe to port at the front of the second chimney, which protruded over the chimney grille, while on the Scharnhorst all steam pipes ended below the upper edge of the chimney. Although the boat cranes (otherwise identical to the previous Roon class ) were later lashed astern on the Scharnhorst and forward on the Gneisenau , this was not a sure distinguishing feature as it was not originally used. It was only during the war that the two ships were easier to distinguish because the Gneisenau received the first conversion like the Scharnhorst , but not the second conversion, so that the spot in the foremast marked the Scharnhorst .
history
The Scharnhorst was the second ship of a new class of large cruisers in 1905 at the shipyard Blohm & Voss in Hamburg set to Kiel . It was launched on March 22, 1906 and commissioned on October 24, 1907. On May 1, 1908, replacing the Yorck , she began her service as the flagship of the Commander of the Reconnaissance Forces (BdA) of the deep sea fleet . She held this position until March 11, 1909. She was then sent to Tsingtau , capital of the East Asian German lease area Kiautschou .
Foreign assignment
She left Kiel on April 1, 1909 with Rear Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl on board . On April 29, she met in Colombo with the Bismarck together, their role as flagship of the German East Asia Squadron , she took over. On March 14, 1911, the sister ship Gneisenau arrived in Tsingtau. Until the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, the Scharnhorst cruised in Chinese and Japanese waters and made several trips to the South Seas .
When the war started, the ship with the East Asia Squadron was in Ponape . First the island of Pagan was approached on the then German Mariana Islands (part of German New Guinea), where the small cruisers Nuremberg and Emden joined the squadron. On August 14, 1914, the ships left the island again. The Emden was released into the Indian Ocean to wage cruiser war there independently . The squadron then crossed the Pacific at slow speed . Various coal takeovers followed near the Marshall Islands and off German Samoa . On September 22nd, the French gunboat Zélée was sunk in the roadstead of Papeete ( Tahiti ) . On October 12th, the squadron went to Easter Island to coal again. Here the small cruisers Dresden and Leipzig joined them.
Skirmish at Coronel
Off the Chilean coast, Graf Spee and his squadron met a combat group of the British Royal Navy under Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock on November 1, 1914 . The sea battle broke out at Coronel. Graf Spee delayed accepting the battle until his ships, lit by the evening sun, blurred into the gray of the Chilean coastal mountains at dusk, whereas the German gun crews, initially disturbed by the blinding evening sun, saw the British ships as clear silhouettes after sunset. In a relatively short time, the outdated British armored cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth were sunk, with the Scharnhorst firing as the top ship on the British flagship Good Hope and scoring around 30-40 hits despite heavy seas and strong winds.
The light cruiser Glasgow managed to escape slightly damaged. The auxiliary cruiser Otranto had already expired. The Germans left the battle almost undamaged, but in some cases had used half of their ammunition.
After the squadron had replenished its supplies in Valparaíso on November 4 , it continued its journey south. It reached Cape Horn at the beginning of December . After a final takeover of coal, Graf Spee wanted to destroy the radio systems on the Falkland Islands on the morning of December 8, 1914 and seize the coal supplies there. It was also planned to take the British governor prisoner. However, the British had meanwhile sent two battle cruisers to the South Atlantic and one ( Princess Royal ) to the Caribbean to intercept the German squadron. The British battle group in the South Atlantic under Admiral Frederik Doveton Sturdee , with its two battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible and the three armored cruisers Kent , Carnarvon and Cornwall, was far superior to the German ships in terms of speed and armament.
Sinking in the Falkland Islands
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On December 8, 1914, the German cruiser association ran in the Falkland Islands near Port William this superior British squadron in front of the pipes and there was a sea battle in the Falkland Islands . First Graf Spee tried to escape to the east with his squadron. Unfortunately for him, the view was clear. The British had caught up around noon. The three small cruisers were dismissed with the signal: “Dismissed - try to escape!” And turned south, but were pursued by two British armored cruisers and the Glasgow , while the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau by the Invincible , the inflexible and the armored cruiser Carnarvon were attacked. The two German armored cruisers tried to make it possible for the small cruisers to escape by holding out their fight. The British ships led the battle very carefully at the greatest possible distance, which meant that they used up almost all of their ammunition. The German armored cruisers were often only able to return fire with the two twin towers, while the middle artillery of the casemate guns could not be used due to insufficient range. The Scharnhorst went down with Admiral Graf Spee and her crew of 860 men at 4:17 p.m. at 52 ° 40 ′ S , 55 ° 51 ′ W , bow first, after she had listed a strong list from 4:04 p.m. The Gneisenau , the small cruisers Leipzig and Nuremberg and the two utilities Santa Isabel and Baden (7,676 GRT ) were also sunk. Overall, more than 2000 Germans went down with their ships in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The small cruiser Dresden was the only ship of the association able to escape into the Chilean coastal waters.
On December 5, 2019 it was announced that the wreck of the Scharnhorst had been discovered 98 nautical miles southeast of Stanley at a depth of 1,610 meters the previous day. It was found by one of the autonomous underwater vehicles launched by the Seabed Constructor search ship .
The Scharnhorst flag is found
In mid-1915 a coastal steamer discovered the body of a German sailor floating in the sea off Brazil. A 21 cm cartridge case was attached to it, which contained the Scharnhorst reserve gaff flag, which was kept in the aft tower . The flag came to the Museum für Meereskunde in Berlin, but was lost during the Second World War.
literature
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Hamburg 1979–1983.
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German Warships 1815–1945 , Volume 1, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982.
- Hans Pochhammer: Graf Spee's last trip, memories of the cruiser squadron , publishing house of the daily Rundschau, Berlin 1918.
Web links
- Technical data of the Scharnhorst 1907 (engl.)
- Gallery of the German Federal Archives on the sea battle at Coronel
- Exhibition at the Google Cultural Institute on the sea battle at Coronel
Footnotes
- ↑ Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust: Discovery of the German armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst from the First World War. In: prnewswire.com . Cision , December 5, 2019, accessed December 7, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Erich Gröner, Dieter Jung and Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945. Volume 1. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, pp. 78-80
- ^ German WWI wreck Scharnhorst discovered off the Falklands. In: bbc.com , December 5, 2019, accessed December 6, 2019.
- ^ Tom Metcalfe: Famous World War I Battleship Discovered at the Bottom of the Atlantic. In: livescience.com . Retrieved December 7, 2019 .