Admiral
Hipper
German
Heavy Cruiser
1937-49
Admiral Hipper
was laid down at the Blohm and Voss works at Hamburg in July 1935.
She was the first ship of her class, being launched on the 6th
February 1937. After she was completed on 29th April 1939, she
undertook trials and training in the Baltic before commencing
modifications towards the end of the year at Hamburg.
These included the addition of a funnel cap and the increasing of
the rake to her bow. Further
changes followed in early 1940 before she joined the active fleet on 17th
February 1940.
Hippers first and uneventful operation (Nordmark)
was to hunt down allied merchantmen off Scandinavia, along with the
battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in late
February 1940. In April 1940,
she participated in Operation Weser (the invasion of Norway). During the
capture of Trondheim, Admiral Hipper and her destroyer escort attacked the
British destroyer HMS Glowworm.
Damaged, Glowworm rammed the Hipper before she blew up and
sank. The 40-metre hole torn
in Hippers hull did not prevent her from completing her mission before
repairs were carried out at Wilhelmshaven.
On the 4th June 1940, Admiral
Hipper joined the battlecruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and four
destroyers to take part in Operation Juno (strike against allied forces in
the Harstadt region). The
group sank the tanker Oil Pioneer, the troop transporter Orama
and the trawler Juniper before Hipper withdrew to Trondheim.
The following two months saw the Hipper operating in the arctic
region without the aid of the two battlecruisers (withdrawn due to torpedo
damage). She returned to
Wilhelmshaven for repairs after sinking the small steamer Ester Thorsen. She remained in port but at constant readiness to take part
in Operation Sealion (invasion of England), which never materialised.
On 27th November 1940 she
participated in Operation Nordseetour (North Atlantic Raid).
She located convoy WS-5A on the 24th December 1940 and
sank the merchant cruiser Jumna on Christmas day.
She later damaged another merchantman and scored four hits on the
Kent Class cruiser HMS Berwick before withdrawing.
Hipper arrived at the port of Brest (France) on the 27th
December. She left for the
Atlantic again on 1st February 1941, being past information on
the whereabouts of convoy HG-35 by the shadowing U-Boat U37.
On route, U-37 lost the convoy but Hipper came across the
unescorted convoy SLS-64 instead. Hipper
had no trouble in sinking seven out of the nineteen ships in this convoy.
Yet again her thirsty engines forced a re-fuel, this time at Brest
(France), after which she sailed for Kiel via the Denmark straits,
arriving on 28th March 1941.
Admiral Hipper spent the next months at Kiel
under refit, which included the conversion of water tanks into fuel tanks
to improve her range. On the
21st March 1942 she sailed for Trondheim with an escort of
three destroyers and three torpedo boats.
She next set sail in early July 1942 (Operation Rösselsprung, the
attempt to hunt down the ill-fated convoy PQ-17) in company with the
battleship Tirpitz and the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer.
This battle group never sited the convoy but its mere presents in
the area forced the convoy to scatter, allowing U-Boats to sink two thirds
of the convoy’s number. Between
24th and the 28th September the Hipper escorted by
four destroyers, laid mines off Novoya Zemelya.
On the 31st December 1942 Admiral
Hipper, the pocket battleship Lützow and six destroyers attacked
the convoy JW-51B (which later became known as the battle of the Barents
Sea). During the battle, the
British destroyers Orwell, Onslow and Achates defended their
convoy admirably by engaging Admiral Hipper.
HMS Achates was badly damaged by the heavy cruiser and later
sank. Admiral Hipper next came under fire from the advancing
cruisers HMS Jamaica and HMS Sheffield; the serious damage
she received below the waterline forced her withdrawal Kaafjord. When Hitler heard of the outcome of the battle, he uttered
the famous orders to scrap all his capital ships!
After carrying out minor repairs in Norway,
Hipper arrived at Kiel on 7th February 1943.
From here she moved to Wilhelmshaven where she was decommissioned
on the 28th February. Adolf
Hitler cancelled her proposed repair work and heavy bombing of
Wilhelmshaven forced the ship to be towed to Pillau on the 17th
April 1943. After many months of inactivity, repairs were granted in late
1943, which required a further move to Götenhaven, followed shortly after
by her recommissioning on 30th April 1944.
Work was still outstanding by the end of the year and, as January
1945 came, a more serious effort was made to ready her for operations.
Due to advancing Russian forces, Hipper was
forced to leave Götenhaven on the 30th January, carrying
fleeing refugees; she accompanied the Passage Liner Wilhelm Gustloff to
Kiel (the later being sunk on route).
On the 3rd February 1945 she was heavily damaged by RAF
bombers and again on the 9th.
To prevent her capture, she was blown up and scuttled on 3rd
May 1945 in the Deutche Werke dock by her crew.
In 1946 she was raised and moved to
Heikendorfer
Bay. She remained there until she was broken up between 1948 and
1949.
Contributed by Carl
Proctor
