was the lead ship of the of heavy cruisers which served with Nazi Germany's during World War II. The ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1935 and launched in February 1937; entered service shortly before the outbreak of war, in April 1939. The ship 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. She was armed with a main battery of eight guns and, although nominally under the limit set by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, actually displaced over .
saw a significant amount of action during the war, notably in the Battle of the Atlantic. She also led the assault on Trondheim during Operation Weserübung; while en route to her objective, she sank the British destroyer . In December 1940, she broke out into the Atlantic Ocean to operate against Allied merchant shipping. This operation ended without significant success, but in February 1941, 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, in which she sank the destroyer and the minesweeper , but was in turn damaged and forced to withdraw by the light cruisers and .
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 persuade Hitler to retain the surface fleet. As a result, 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, Germany. 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 is currently on display at the Laboe Naval Memorial near Kiel.
Design
The of heavy cruisers was ordered in the context of German naval rearmament after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 and repudiated the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1935, Germany signed the Anglo–German Naval Agreement with Great Britain, which provided a legal basis for German naval rearmament; the treaty specified that Germany would be able to build five "treaty cruisers". The s were nominally within the 10,000-ton limit, though they significantly exceeded the figure.
was long overall and had a beam of and a maximum draft of . After the installation of a clipper bow during fitting out, her overall length increased to . The ship had a design displacement of and a full load displacement of . was powered by three sets of geared steam turbines, which were supplied with steam by twelve ultra-high pressure oil-fired boilers. The ship's top speed was , at . Her standard complement consisted of 42 officers and 1,340 enlisted men.
s primary armament was eight SK L/60 guns mounted in four twin gun turrets, placed in superfiring pairs forward and aft. Her anti-aircraft battery consisted of twelve L/65 guns, twelve guns, and eight guns. She had four triple torpedo launchers, all on the main deck next to the four range finders for the anti-aircraft guns.
s armored belt was thick; her upper deck was thick while the main armored deck was thick. The main battery turrets had thick faces and 70 mm thick sides. The heaviest armor with thickness was applied to the vertical surfaces of the conning tower, while the horizontal surfaces were limited to .
The initial design of included an aircraft hangar for one aircraft. During building, the requirements were changed and an aircraft hangar was constructed for two floatplanes that could be stored side by side. The wider aircraft hangar forced the rearrangement of the middle pair of 10.5 cm guns from the superstructure deck to the upper deck, which restricted their arc of fire towards the rear. The ship was equipped with three Arado Ar 196 seaplanes and one catapult. In 1941 the aircraft hangar was reduced with place for just one Arado and in total only two Arado floatplanes were carried.
Service history
was ordered by the from the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg. Her keel was laid on 6 July 1935, under construction number 501. The ship was launched on 6 February 1937, and was completed on 29 April 1939, the day she was commissioned into the German fleet. The Commander-in-Chief of the , (Grand Admiral) Erich Raeder, who had been Franz von Hipper's chief of staff during World War I, gave the christening speech and his wife Erika Raeder performed the christening. As built, the ship had a straight stem, though after her launch this was replaced with a clipper bow. A raked funnel cap was also installed.
(Captain at Sea) Hellmuth Heye was given command of the ship at her commissioning. After her commissioning in April 1939, steamed into the Baltic Sea to conduct training maneuvers. The ship also made port calls to various Baltic ports, including cities in Estonia and Sweden. In August, the ship conducted live fire drills in the Baltic. At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the ship was still conducting gunnery trials. She was briefly used to patrol the Baltic, but she did not see combat, and was quickly returned to training exercises. In November 1939, the ship returned to the Blohm & Voss dockyard for modifications; these included the replacement of the straight stem with a clipper bow and the installation of the funnel cap.
Sea trials in the Baltic resumed in January 1940, but severe ice restrained the ship to port. On 17 February, the Kriegsmarine pronounced the ship fully operational, and on the following day, began her first major wartime patrol during Operation Nordmark. She joined the battleships and and the destroyers and in a sortie into the North Sea off Bergen, Norway. A third destroyer, , was forced to turn back after sustaining damage from ice. The ships operated under the command of Admiral Wilhelm Marschall. The ships attempted to locate British merchant shipping, but failed and returned to port on 20 February.
Norwegian campaign Operation Weserübung
Following her return from the North Sea sortie, was assigned to the forces tasked with the invasion of Norway, codenamed Operation Weserübung. The ship was assigned as the flagship of Group 2, along with the destroyers , , , and . KzS Heye was given command of Group 2 during the operation. The five ships carried a total of 1,700 Wehrmacht mountain troops, whose objective was the port of Trondheim; the ships loaded the troops in Cuxhaven. The ships steamed to the Schillig roadstead outside Wilhelmshaven, where they joined Group 1, consisting of ten destroyers, and the battleships and under the command of Vice Admiral Günther Lütjens, which were assigned to cover Groups 1 and 2. The ships steamed out of the roadstead at midnight on the night of 6–7 April 1940.
Between 14:25 and 14:48 on 7 April, the ships were unsuccessfully attacked west of the Skagerrak by twelve bombers. By evening the weather had deteriorated and several of the destroyers were unable to maintain the high (27 knots) speed and remained behind the main force. On 8 April at 09:15 one of the trailing destroyers, the , signaled that it had engaged a British destroyer, and at 09:22 Lütjens ordered the to investigate. Upon arriving on the scene, was initially misidentified by the British destroyer as a friendly vessel, which allowed the German ship to close the distance and fire first. rained fire on Glowworm, scoring several hits. Glowworm attempted to flee, but when it became apparent she could not break away from the pursuing cruiser, she turned toward and fired a spread of torpedoes, all of which missed.
The British destroyer scored one hit on s starboard bow before a rudder malfunction set the ship on a collision course with the German cruiser. The collision with Glowworm tore off a section of s armored belt on the starboard side, as well as the ship's starboard torpedo launcher. Minor flooding caused a four degree list to starboard, though the ship was able to continue with the mission. Glowworms boilers exploded shortly after the collision, causing her to sink quickly. Forty survivors were picked up by the German ship. At 11:14 broke off the rescue operation and set course toward Trondheim with her four destroyers, whilst Group 1 set course for Narvik. and took a position south of the Lofoten in the Vestfjorden to cover both landings. The British destroyer had survived long enough to send a wireless message to the Admiralty, that allowed the battlecruiser time to move into position to engage and , though the German battleships used their superior speed to break contact.
Group 2 was sighted at 14:50 by a Short Sunderland, and signal intelligence indicated enemy ships were operating nearby. In order to clarify the situation, at 17:50 launched an Arado seaplane in the direction of Trondheim. The Arado reported no activity in the approaches to Trondheim and then made an emergency landing in Eide Municipality, since the weather was too bad to land at in open sea. After trying to purchase fuel from locals, the aircrew were detained and handed over to the police. The Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service captured the Arado, which was painted in Norwegian colors and used by the Norwegians until 18 April when it was evacuated to Britain.
When steaming at maximum speed through the long and narrow Trondheim Fjord towards Trondheim, successfully passed herself off as a British warship long enough to get past the Norwegian coastal artillery batteries. After the ships forced the most narrow part of the fjord between 04:04 and 04:14, one Norwegian battery belatedly opened fire but to no effect. responded with two salvoes from the rear turrets. The two remaining Arado seaplanes were flown off to scout and check for suitable places for airplane and seaplane bases. One of the aircraft also attacked a coastal battery with bombs. The cruiser entered the harbor and anchored at 05:25 to disembark the mountain troops. A German tanker which was scheduled to refuel Group 2 at Trondheim failed to show up, and the ships had to remain in harbor because of fuel shortage.
On 10 April an Arado seaplane from brought orders from Lütjens to attempt a breakout and return to Germany together with the two battleships on the following night. left Trondheim at 21:30, escorted by . The two ships first steamed northwest to clear the Norwegian coast. On 11 April, at 02:50, returned to Trondheim due to bad weather and lack of fuel. This same bad weather allowed to take a short, direct route to Germany. The ship joined and at 08:00 on 12 April, and they reached Wilhelmshaven at 22:00, with only 125 out of 3005 cubic meters of fuel remaining. went into dry dock where it was discovered the ship had been damaged more severely by the collision with Glowworm than had previously been thought. Nevertheless, repairs were completed in the span of two weeks.
Operation Juno