 Admiral Hipper
| |
| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name | Admiral Hipper class |
| Operators | |
| Preceded by | Deutschland-class cruiser |
| Succeeded by | P class (planned) |
| In commission | 1939–1945, 1946[a] |
| Planned | 5 |
| Completed | 3 |
| Cancelled | 2 |
| Lost | 2 |
| Retired | 1 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Heavy cruiser |
| Displacement |
|
| Length | 202.8 m (665 ft 4 in) overall |
| Beam | 21.3 metres (69 ft 11 in) |
| Draft | Full load: 7.2 metres (24 ft) |
| Installed power | 132,000 shp (98 MW) |
| Propulsion |
|
| Speed | 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph) |
| Range | 6,800 nmi (12,600 km; 7,800 mi) at 20 kn (37 km/h; 23 mph) |
| Complement |
|
| Armament |
|
| Armor |
|
| Aircraft carried | 3 aircraft |
| Aviation facilities | 1 catapult |
| Notes | [b] |
The Admiral Hipper class was a group of five heavy cruisers built by Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine beginning in the mid-1930s. The class comprised Admiral Hipper, the lead ship, Blücher, Prinz Eugen, Seydlitz, and Lützow. Only the first three ships of the class saw action with the German Navy during World War II. Work on Seydlitz stopped when she was approximately 95 percent complete; it was decided to convert her into an aircraft carrier, but this was not completed either. Lützow was sold incomplete to the Soviet Union in 1940.
Admiral Hipper and Blücher took part in Operation Weserübung, the invasion of Norway in April 1940. Blücher was sunk by Norwegian coastal defenses outside Oslo while Admiral Hipper led the attack on Trondheim. She then conducted sorties into the Atlantic to attack Allied merchant shipping. In 1942, she was deployed to northern Norway to attack shipping to the Soviet Union, culminating in the Battle of the Barents Sea in December 1942, where she was damaged by British cruisers. Prinz Eugen saw her first action during Operation Rheinübung with the battleship Bismarck. She eventually returned to Germany during the Channel Dash in 1942, after which she too went to Norway. After being torpedoed by a British submarine, she returned to Germany for repairs. Admiral Hipper, while decommissioned after returning to Germany in early 1943, was partially repaired and recommissioned in the fall of 1944 for a refugee transport mission in 1945. Only Prinz Eugen continued to serve in full commission and stayed in the Baltic until the end of the war.
Admiral Hipper was scuttled in Kiel in May 1945, leaving Prinz Eugen as the only member of the class to survive the war. She was ceded to the United States Navy, which ultimately expended the ship in the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in 1946. Seydlitz was towed to Königsberg and scuttled before the advancing Soviet Army could seize the ship. She was ultimately raised and broken up for scrap. Lützow, renamed Petropavlovsk, remained unfinished when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. The ship provided artillery support against advancing German forces until she was sunk in September 1941. She was raised a year later and repaired enough to participate in the campaign to relieve the Siege of Leningrad in 1944. She served on in secondary roles until the 1950s, when she was broken up.
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