 Admiral Hipper in 1939
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 Nazi Germany | |
| Name | Admiral Hipper |
| Namesake | Admiral Franz von Hipper |
| Builder | Blohm & Voss, Hamburg |
| Laid down | 6 July 1935 |
| Launched | 6 February 1937 |
| Commissioned | 29 April 1939 |
| Fate | Scuttled, 3 May 1945, raised and scrapped in 1948–1952 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Admiral Hipper-class cruiser |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 202.8 m (665 ft 4 in) overall |
| Beam | 21.3 m (69 ft 11 in) |
| Draft | Full load: 7.2 m (24 ft) |
| Installed power | 132,000 shp (98 MW) |
| Propulsion |
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| Speed | 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph) |
| Complement |
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| Armament |
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| Armor |
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| Aircraft carried | 3 Arado Ar 196 |
| Aviation facilities | 1 catapult |
Admiral Hipper was the lead ship of the Admiral Hipper class of heavy cruisers which served with Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. The ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1935 and launched in February 1937; Admiral Hipper 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 20.3 cm (8 in) guns and, although nominally under the 10,000-long-ton (10,160 t) limit set by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, actually displaced over 16,000 long tons (16,260 t).
Admiral Hipper 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 HMS Glowworm. 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, 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, in which 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 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 persuade 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, 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.