Admiral Hipper class cruiser
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| Admiral Hipper class Heavy cruiser | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Class Overview | |
| Type: | Heavy cruiser |
| Name: | Admiral Hipper |
| General characteristics | |
The Admiral Hipper class was a series of five heavy cruisers of which three served with the Kriegsmarine of Germany in World War II, one was sold unfinished to the Soviet Union in 1939, and one was converted to an aircraft carrier but never completed. The lead ship, and thus the class, was named after Admiral Franz von Hipper.
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[edit] Description
Designed as a treaty cruiser, Germany nonetheless gave little consideration to the treaty limit of 10,000 tons displacement. The design for the Hipper class began at 12,500 tons and increased steadily during development. To some degree, the ships were a German response to the French Algérie class, armed with 8 inch guns. Several calibers were considered, but finally a battery of eight 8 inch guns was selected for the Hipper. This gave them comparable firepower to a British County class cruiser, despite being considerably larger. Troublesome propulsion limited cruising range to 5,000 miles at 15 knots - far less than the original design goal of 6,500 miles at 17 knots. After construction of Hipper and Blücher, the design was slightly enlarged, although major features remained similar. Of this new design, only one was completed, Prinz Eugen.
The Admiral Hipper class ships, while comparable to heavy cruisers of other navies and considered beautiful ships, suffered from problems and were thus less suited for the circumstances of World War II. Designed as part of a larger Kriegsmarine, they were required to perform either as support for ground forces or as commerce raiders. As ground support (artillery fire and evacuation), they were effective although expensive and suffered the loss of the Blücher at Oslo in 1940 and collision damage to the Prinz Eugen in the Baltic in 1944. As commerce raiders, their range was rather short, lacking the cruising diesel engines of the Gneisenau class battlecruiser and the pocket battleships. Additionally, their power plants were quite unreliable. Admiral Hipper was affected by machinery breakdowns off Scandinavia and in the Atlantic, restricting its effectiveness. Prinz Eugen suffered engine problems after separating from Bismarck, forcing her to terminate her anti-commerce cruise.
[edit] Battery details
- Main armament - Eight 8 inch / 60 calibre guns:
- Shell weight: 269 lb. (broadside of 2,150 lb.)
- Range: 36,680 yards
- Rate of fire: 5 rounds per minute
- Secondary armament - Twelve 10.5 cm / 65 calibre dual-purpose guns:
- Shell weight: 33 lb.
- Range: 19,360 yards (ceiling of 41,000 feet)
- Rate of fire: 17 rounds per minute
[edit] Ships in class
[edit] Admiral Hipper
- Builder: Blohm & Voß in Hamburg
- Laid down: 6 July 1935
- Launched: 6 February 1937
- Commissioned: 29 April 1939
- Operations: Weserübung, merchant raiding in the Atlantic and Arctic, and Eastern Front evacuations
- Victories: HMS Glowworm and 7 merchants sunk, HMS Berwick and 2 merchants damaged
- Fate: Scuttled 2 May 1945 at Kiel
[edit] Blücher
- Builder: Deutsche Werke AG in Kiel
- Laid down: 15 August 1935
- Launched: 8 June 1937
- Commissioned: 20 September 1939
- Operations: Weserübung
- Victories: None
- Fate: Sunk 9 April 1940 near Drøbak just south of Oslo by the Norwegian coastal fortress Oscarsborg at the start of the German invasion of Norway.
[edit] Prinz Eugen
- Builder: Germaniawerft in Kiel
- Laid down: 23 April 1936
- Launched: 22 August 1938
- Commissioned: 1 August 1940
- Operations: Escorted Bismarck, Channel Dash, Eastern Front support and evacuation, Operation Crossroads
- Victories: Possibly HMS Hood
- Fate: Surrendered to the Allies 7 May 1945 and became IX-300 USS Prinz Eugen for use in nuclear testing
[edit] Seydlitz
- Builder: DeSchiMAG in Bremen
- Laid down: 29 December 1936
- Launched: 19 January 1939
- Commissioned: Never
- Operations: None. During construction, conversion to an aircraft carrier in August 1942 under name Weser
- Fate: Construction cancelled January 1943, hull scuttled 10 April 1945 at Königsberg
[edit] Lützow
- Builder: Deschimag in Bremen
- Laid down: 8 February 1937
- Launched: 7 January 1939
- Commissioned: Never
- Operations: None
- Fate: Sold incomplete to the USSR in May 1940 became Petropavlovsk, then Tallinn, and scrapped in 1950.
[edit] See also
- List of World War II ship classes
- List of naval ship classes of Germany
- Lists of ship launches in: 1937, 1938, 1939
- Lists of ship commissionings in: 1939, 1940
- Lists of shipwrecks in: 1940, 1945
[edit] External references
| German naval ship classes of World War II | |
|---|---|
| Battleships | Battlecruisers |
| Bismarck | Gneisenau |
| Light cruisers | Heavy cruisers |
| Emden | K | Leipzig | Deutschland | Admiral Hipper |
| Destroyers | |
| Type: 1934 | 1934A | 1936 | 1936A / 1936A (Mob) / Narvik | 1936B | |
| U-boats (submarines) | |
| Type: I | II | VII | IX | X | XIV | XXI | XXII | XXIII | |
| Other | |
| Auxiliary cruisers | |
| Prototypes | |
| Graf Zeppelin (aircraft carrier) | |
