Admiral Hipper

Admiral Hipper underway in 1939, location unknown.

History

Design

The design for Admiral Hipper began under the limitations of the Treaty of Versailles. Because Germany was forbidden from constructing heavy cruisers under the limitations of the treaty, the actual building of such ships was — in the early 1930s — politically undesirable. Planning was, however, impossible to prevent, and a design commission was authorized. In June 1935, the Anglo-German Naval Treaty was signed and Germany was authorized to build ships within a 35:100 tonnage ratio to Britain, though Germany was still to remain under the restrictions enforced by the Treaty of Versailles. At the time, Royal Navy possessed total cruiser displacement of 146,800 tons, which provided the Germans an allotment of 51,380 tons for cruisers of their own. The justification for the Admiral Hipper class was to be found under the terms of the First London Naval Treaty which limited cruiser displacement to roughly 10,000 tons per ship for all signatory nations. Though Germany was not a signatory to the First London Naval Treaty, the restrictions under Versailles made the construction of heavy cruisers politically dangerous for Germany and cruisers over 10,000 tons even more so, thus construction of the planned five cruisers of the Admiral Hipper class was begun in secret until the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles removed that necessity.

The design requirements for the Admiral Hipper class required the ships to be comparable to the French Algérie class, faster than the Dunkerque class, and capable of long range operations in the Atlantic Ocean, while still within 10,000 tons limit. While smaller, less politically dangerous designs with diesel or turbo-electric propulsion and 150mm to 190mm guns were initially considered, the final design settled on high pressure steam propulsion and 203mm guns. While the officially stated displacement would be 10,000 tons, the actual design displacement of the Admiral Hipper-class would exceed 14,000 tons.

Having settled the specifics of the design, the first two ships of the class, Admiral Hipper and Blücher, were laid down in 1934 and 1935 respectively. Prinz Eugen was authorized in late 1935 along with two more ships — Seydlitz and Lützow — and laid down in the spring of the following year. Admiral Hipper was named after Admiral Franz von Hipper, commander of the German battlecruiser squadron during the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and later commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet.

Service

Admiral Hipper saw a significant amount of action during the war. She led the assault on Trondheim during Operation Weserübung; while en route to her objective, she sank the British destroyer HMS Glowworm. In December 1940, she broke out into the Atlantic Ocean to operate against Allied merchant shipping, though this operation ended without significant success. In February 1941, Admiral Hipper sortied again, sinking several merchant vessels before eventually returning to Germany via the Denmark Strait. The ship was then transferred to northern Norway to participate in operations against convoys to the Soviet Union, culminating in the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31 December 1942, where she sank the destroyer Achates and the minesweeper Bramble but was in turn damaged and forced to withdraw by the light cruisers HMS Sheffield and HMS Jamaica.

Disappointed by the failure to sink merchant ships in that battle, Adolf Hitler ordered the majority of the surface warships scrapped, though Admiral Karl Dönitz was able to convince Hitler to retain the surface fleet. As a result, Admiral Hipper was returned to Germany and decommissioned for repairs. The ship was never restored to operational status, however, and on 3 May 1945, Royal Air Force bombers severely damaged her while she was in Kiel. Her crew scuttled the ship at her moorings, and in July 1945 she was raised and towed to Heikendorfer Bay. She was ultimately broken up for scrap in 1948–1952; her bell resides in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.

Blücher’s career in the Kriegsmarine was much shorter and far less distinguished. Commissioned in the fall of 1939, her first combat assignment was Operation Weserübung in April 1940, loaded with combat troops as the flagship of the force assigned to capture Oslo. While proceeding up the Oslofjord in the pre-dawn hours of 9 April, she was struck by both Norweigan coastal defense batteries and torpedoes. She sank with the loss of nearly 400 men, and the flotilla she was commanding failed to reach Oslo. The Norwegians salvaged both of her anchors; they are on display today in separate locations: one in Oslo, Norway and the other near Drøbak.

Prinz Eugen, conversely, was the lone ship of the class to survive the war afloat and intact. She acquitted herself well throughout the war, participating successfully in Operation Rheinübung and the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Operation Cerberus (also known as the "Channel Dash"), and various gunnery support missions in the North and Baltic Seas. Surrendered to the Royal Navy on 7 May 1945, she became a war prize of the United States Navy and was subsequently sailed to the Philadelphia Navy Yard and stripped of some of her equipment — notably her radar and two of her forward gun barrels — before being transferred to the Pacific for Operation Crossroads. Prinz Eugen survived both atomic detonations but was severely irradiated. After being towed to Kwajalein Atoll, the ship began to take on water and list heavily. Attempts were made to keep the vessel afloat, but all were unsuccessful. On 22 December 1946, the ship capsized in the shallow waters of the atoll where she remains visible today.

A handful of artifacts from Prinz Eugen have survived into the modern era. The US Navy salvaged one of her propellers in 1977, and presented it to the German Navy League in the summer of 1979. It is on display at the German Naval Memorial in Laboe, Germany. The ship's bell was removed before she was sent to the Pacific to participate in Operation Crossroads; it resides in the collection of the National Museum of the United States Navy and can be viewed in the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, DC. One of the guns removed from turret "Anton" prior to the ship being sent to the Pacific for Operation Crossroads remains in the archives of the Naval Surface Warfare Center ballistic testing facility in Dahlgren, Virginia.

Seydlitz was laid down in 1936 and launched in January 1939, but fitting out work on her was halted upon the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939. She was estimated to be 95% complete at the time. She languished close to completion until early 1942, when the Kriegsmarine — having come to appreciate the importance of aircraft carriers after the loss of Bismarck in May 1941 and the near-loss of Tirpitz in March 1942 — elected to resume work on Graf Zeppelin and convert Seydlitz into a light aircraft carrier. With a complement of ten (10) Bf109 fighters and ten (10) Ju87 dive bombers, she would have fulfilled a role similar to that of the Royal Navy's HMS Hermes or the US Navy's Independence class. Work was halted on this conversion in June 1943 and never completed. Seydlitz was transferred to Königsberg, Germany, where she was scuttled on 29 January 1945 to prevent her capture by Soviet forces. The Soviets eventually re-floated her for salvage; she was broken up for scrap in the late 1940's.

Lützow was the last Hipper-class cruiser to be ordered. Originally designed as a light cruiser variant of the Admiral Hipper armed with twelve (12) 150mm guns, the German admiralty made the decision to match her main battery to that of her sister ships in November 1936. Her keel was laid at Deschimag in Bremen on 2 August 1937 and she was launched on 1 July 1939. In October of that year, the Soviet Union approached Germany with a proposal to purchase Lützow in her current (unfinished) state, along with all of her technical specifications, trial and testing data, and spare parts. The sale was concluded in February 1940, and Lützow was towed to Leningrad on 15 April. On 25 September 1940, the Soviet Navy re-christened her Petropavlovsk and began work to finish her outfitting. Language barriers and other issues hampered efforts, and arrangements were made for Soviet and German officers to train together aboard sister ship Seydlitz as she worked up towards commissioning in the fall of 1941. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 put an end to such collaborative efforts.

• 

  The wappen (coat of arms) of Admiral Hipper.

• 

  The wappen (coat of arms) of Blücher.

• 

  The wappen (coat of arms) of Prinz Eugen.

• 

  The launch of Blücher, 15 August 1936.

• 

  Admiral Hipper fitting out at Blohm & Voss, 1937.

• 

  The launch of Prinz Eugen, 22 August 1938.

• 

  The launch of Seydlitz, 19 January 1939.

• 

  Commissioning ceremonies aboard Admiral Hipper, 29 April 1939.

• 

  Admiral Hipper with original bow and coat of arms, seen in the Kaiser Wilhelm Kanal during November 1939 while transiting from Brunsbuttel to Kiel after departing Blohm & Voss in Hamburg.

• 

  Admiral Hipper loading mountain troops in Cuxhaven, Germany in preparation for Operation Weserübung, April 1940.

• 

  The loss of Blücher during Operation Weserübung, 9 April 1940.

• 

  Prinz Eugen moored at the Krupp Germaniawerft yards in Kiel, autumn 1940.

• 

  Admiral Hipper in drydock in Brest, France, circa 1941.

• 

  Admiral Hipper in Norwegian waters, circa 1942.

• 

  The bombed out remains of Admiral Hipper in dry dock at Kiel, 3 May 1945.

• 

  The ship's bell of Admiral Hipper resides in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.

• 

  Both of Blücher’s anchors were salvaged from her wreck and are on display: this one in the harbor in Oslo, Norway; the other, farther down the Oslofjord near Drøbak.

• 

  One of Prinz Eugen’s propellers, salvaged from Kwajalein Atoll and on display at the German Naval Memorial in Laboe, Germany.

• 

  US Office of Naval Intelligence recognition drawing of an Admiral Hipper-class cruiser.

• 

  Artist's rendering of Seydlitz with her conversion to a light carrier completed.

• 

  Artist's rendering of Seydlitz with her conversion to a light carrier completed.