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|6 x 280 mm (11 inch)<br>8 x 150 mm (5.9 inch)<br>6 x 105 mm (4.1 inch)<br>8 x 37 mm<br>10 x 20 mm<br>8 x 533 mm (21 inch) torpedo tubes | ||
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| |Armor: | |Armor: | ||
Revision as of 16:05, 2 June 2006
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| Career | Kriegsmarine Jack |
|---|---|
| Laid down: | June 25 1931 |
| Launched: | April 1 1933 |
| Commissioned: | November 12 1934 |
| Fate: | Sunk by bombs 9–10 April 1945 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 12,100 t standard; 16,200 t full load |
| Length: | 610 ft (186 m) |
| Beam: | 71 ft (21.6 m) |
| Draft (max.): | 24 ft (7.4 m) |
| Armament: | 6 x 280 mm (11 inch) 8 x 150 mm (5.9 inch) 6 x 105 mm (4.1 inch) 8 x 37 mm 10 x 20 mm 8 x 533 mm (21 inch) torpedo tubes |
| Armor: | turret face: (160 mm) belt: (80 mm) deck: 40 mm) |
| Aircraft: | Two Arado 196 seaplanes, one catapult |
| Propulsion: | Eight MAN diesels, two screws, 52,050 hp (40 MW) |
| Speed: | 28.5 knots (53 km/h) |
| Range: | 8,900 nmi. at 20 knots (16,500 km at 37 km/h) |
| Crew: | 1,150 |
Admiral Scheer was a Deutschland class heavy cruiser (often termed a pocket battleship) which served with the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany during World War II.
The vessel was named after Admiral Reinhard Scheer. Originally classified as an armored ship (Panzerschiff) in Germany, in February 1940 the Kriegsmarine reclassified the three ships of this class as a heavy cruisers. The pocket battleship title was provided by the British. The ship was one of the few that was considered to be male, meaning that its crew referred to the ship as he instead of the usual she (however this article will use the common female form).
History
During World War II, Admiral Scheer, under Captain Theodor Krancke, was by far the most successful capital ship commerce raider of the war, with a raid as far as the Indian Ocean. Near the end of the war, she was bombed by the RAF while docked in Kiel, causing her to capsize and sink. After the war her upturned hulk was partially scrapped, with what remained being buried under rubble as the dock was filled in to make a car park.
Spanish Civil War
Her first mission began in July 1936 when she was sent to Spain to evacuate German civilians caught up in the Spanish Civil War. She also spied on Soviet ships carrying supplies to the Republicans and protected ships delivering German weapons to Nationalist forces. On 31 May 1937 she bombarded Republican installations at Almería in reprisal for an air attack on her sistership Deutschland two days earlier. By the end of June 1938 she had completed eight deployments to Spain.
World War II
Her wartime career began on 4 September 1939 when RAF Bristol Blenheim bombers attacked her at Wilhelmshaven. She was hit by three bombs, but they failed to cause major damage, and flak downed four of the attackers. She underwent an overhaul, whilst her sister ships set out commerce raiding. Deutschland accounted for two ships before returning home, but Admiral Graf Spee sunk nine before she was discovered by the Royal Navy and scuttled following the Battle of the River Plate. Although they had not been hugely successful, the concept of commerce raiding was proven. Admiral Scheer was modified throughout the early months of the war and went to sea on 14 October 1940.
Her first target was convoy HX-84 from Halifax which had been identified by B-Dienst radio intercepts. Her floatplane located the convoy on 5 November 1940 and, believing it to be unescorted, she closed in. However, as the convoy appeared over the horizon one vessel sailed out to challenge her. The Jervis Bay, commanded by Captain Edward Fegen, was an armed merchant ship and was the only defence the convoy had (due to insufficent numbers at this early stage in the war, convoys received destroyer escorts only on the last three days of the journey). She was hopelessly outclassed, but the German ship was forced to deal with her before chasing after the convoy, which had already begun to scatter and make smoke. Admiral Scheer succeeded in sinking five other ships, but her haul would have been far greater if not for the sacrifice of Jervis Bay. The attack led to a change in Admiralty policy, and subsequent large convoys were usually escorted by battleships—which had significant implications in terms of other commitments.
The Royal Navy sent out several ships to trap the commerce raider, but she slipped away to the south to rendezvous with Nordmark, her oiler. Over the next two months she sunk several ships, capturing supplies and transferring prisoners to Nordmark or other ships which she took as prizes. She spent Christmas 1940 at sea in the mid-Atlantic, several hundred miles from Tristan da Cunha, before making a foray into the Indian Ocean in February 1941. She found two more ships, but the last of these managed to get out a distress signal which attracted various British cruisers. She managed to sink a coal ship as she escaped the closing net and slipped back into the Atlantic. Captain Krancke sailed northwards, passed through the Denmark Strait and eventually reached Kiel on 1 April 1941, having steamed over 46,000 nautical miles and sinking 16 merchant ships.
Admiral Scheer did not sortie again until 2 July 1942 when she set off on an abortive attempt to intercept arctic convoy PQ-17. In August 1942 she sailed into the Arctic Ocean to hunt convoys. She bombarded the Soviet meteorological station at Cape Zhelaniya on 25 August, and then sank an armed ice breaker, the Aleksandr Sibiryakov, but failed to find a convoy which was in the area. She moved on to shell a radio station at Novy Dikson, but the garrison had some artillery of its own and Admiral Scheer did not sink any of the vessels in the harbour. She returned to Wilhelmshaven without finding any allied convoys.
Following Hitler's anger at the alleged failings of the Kriegsmarine, its commander-in-chief, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder was replaced by Admiral Karl Dönitz, and the German surface fleet rarely left port thereafter. In the autumn of 1944 Admiral Scheer provided artillery support to retreating German army units on the Sorvemaa Peninsula in the Baltic Sea. Throughout January and February 1945 she was engaged in further coastal bombardment operations, but her gun barrels were worn out by March and she returned to Kiel. It was here, on the night of 9 April 1945, during a general RAF bombing raid on the dockyard by over 300 aircraft, that she was struck and capsized at her berth. Most of her crew were ashore at the time, but 32 men were killed.
See also
- List of World War II ships
- List of Kriegsmarine ships
- List of naval ships of Germany
- List of ship launches in 1933
- List of ship commissionings in 1934
- List of shipwrecks in 1945
- Other ships of the Deutschland class