KMS Admiral Hipper

Admiral Hipper, the first of five ships of her class, was the lead ship of the Admiral Hipper--class of heavy cruisers which served with the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. The ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1935 and launched 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.
Admiral Hipper saw a significant amount of action during the war. She 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, though this operation ended without significant success. 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, where she was damaged and forced to withdraw by the light cruisers HMS Sheffield and HMS Jamaica.
Enraged by the defeat at the battle, Adolf Hitler ordered the majority of the surface warships scrapped, though Admiral Karl Dönitz was able to convince 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 Admiral Hipper while she was in Kiel. 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.

Displacement: 16,170 t (15,910 long tons; 17,820 short tons)
Full load: 18,200 long tons (18,500 t)
Length: 202.8 m (665 ft 4 in) overall
Beam: 21.3 m (69 ft 11 in)
Draft: 7.2 m (24 ft)
Propulsion: 3 × Blohm & Voss steam turbines 3 × three-blade propellers 132,000 shp (98 MW)
Speed: 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph)
Complement: 42 officers 1,340
Armament: 8 × 20.3 cm (8.0 in) guns 12 × 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns 12 × 3.7 cm (1.5 in) guns 8 × 2 cm (0.79 in) guns (20×1) 6 × 53.3 cm (21 in) torpedo tubes
Armor: Belt: 70 to 80 mm (2.8 to 3.1 in)
Armor deck: 20 to 50 mm (0.79 to 2.0 in)
Turret faces: 105 mm (4.1 in)
Aircraft carried: 3 aircraft

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Education

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[rampking1]

@DrGull1888 I am at a loss.

Hitler ( regardless of his micro-managing mistakes) devoted his absolute full attention to winning the war, while his Nazi Henchmen like Himmler and Heydrich and the gang at Wannsee devoted full attention to large-scale genocide regardless of it's effects on the German war effort. More important to kill Jews and others than try to win the damn war.

Got off topic here, going to check out your Gneisenau video right now.

[rampking1]

@DrGull1888 Yep, broke the treaty.

U-boats had real impact in WWI and the Brits / French wanted to be sure not to face the same menace gain.

As you know better than I, the whole point of the "pocket battleships" was to get around these same kind of treaties.

U-boats a lot easier to conceal and develope than a capital ship.

I am at a loss, why mistreat and starve the same people that you are counting on to maintain war production? Slaughtering people.

Assembly line battle surrendered!

[rampking1]

@DrGull1888 Even the Jews after the war never thought that Doenitz was an actual member of the party.

It was an extreme rarity for any soldier, of any rank to belong to the party.

The Jews would have taken out after he was released.

Personal beliefs? Perhaps completely in line with Nazi ideology, I never read his books or any autobiography.

I get your point though, perhaps Doenitz was guilty of being a "yes man" for Adolf .

[rampking1]

@DrGull1888 I was referring to Doenitz buying time after the fall of Berlin specifically to allow more ( est. 1.5 mil) refugees and retreating soldiers) to flee the east towards the western allies lines.

He did this by delaying the negotiations that were pending under General Jodl.

This is of course offset to a point by the fact that some fighting continued in some areas.

On top of all this many of these same soldiers who surendered to the U.S Army were then transfered to Soviet custody.

[DrGull1888]

@rampking1 In my humble opinion the evacuation of the German refugees is indeed the most important task of the Kriegsmarine.

[DrGull1888]

@rampking1 Dönitz might have started his career in Nazi Germany as an unpolitical soldier but with every promotion he got closer to Hitler, gained direct access and started to adapt his masters viewpoints. During the war (I don't know the year) he even joined the party and used the usual Nazi rhetoric (and if I may add the usual Nazi denial of reality) for his orders of the day and decrees. His men even mocked him for his blind faith as Hitlerjunge Dönitz.

[DrGull1888]

@rampking1 And finally, he as head of the Kriegsmarine was also master (and responsible) for the Navy owned Kriegsmarinewerft - Germany's greatest Navy supplier - which like many others too, employed slave labors.

[DrGull1888]

@rampking1 Was building up the U-Bootwaffe really the issue? GB accepted it in the Naval Treaty of 1935. I think it was their and Dönitz' participation in an war of aggression. As for details in ship production. Well, you surely know that this war was also lost/won at the assembly line as it was on the battle field and with Dönitz crying for more and more boats all means of fulfilling his demands were allowed.

[DrGull1888]

@rampking1 Hard to imagine Model telling Hitler the game is over. I mean the only time he disobeyed the Führer was when he disbanded army group B in the Ruhr pocket in Spring 45 but never mind.

I'm no expert but I think the massive communication was necessary to tracking down convoys and summoning enough submarines for the attack.

[rampking1]

@DrGull1888 You are correct, Doenitz is not a Guderian, Manstein, Rommel, Hauser, Model, Kesselring and a step below Von Runstedt

He is not a hero of mine, I just don't think he deserved the treatment he got at Nuremburg.

The thing that most upset me about Doenitz was his insistance on heavy communication with his U-boats during the war and being naive that their enigma machine could never be compromised.

So much for newer stealthy U-boats, we knew where they were ahead of time!