German cruiser Admiral Scheer

Career

Laid down:	June 25 1931
Launched:	April 1 1933
Commissioned:	November 12 1934
Fate:	Sunk by bombs 9 April–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 × 280 mm (11 inch) 8 × 150 mm (5.9 inch) 6 × 105 mm (4.1 inch) 8 × 37 mm 10 × 20 mm 8 × 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 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 hull 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 sister ship 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 sank 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 had been demonstrated. Admiral Scheer was modified during the early months of 1940: the command tower was replaced and she was reclassified as a heavy cruiser.

Admiral Scheer sailed on 14 October 1940 and her first target was convoy HX-84 from Halifax Nova Scotia, which had been identified by B-Dienst radio intercepts. Her seaplane located the convoy on 5 November 1940 and, believing it to be unescorted, the Scheer 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 for the convoy. Due to insufficient numbers at this early stage in the war, convoys received destroyer escorts only on the last three days of the journey. Jervis Bay was hopelessly outclassed, but the German ship had to deal with her before pursuing 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 but 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 for the Royal Navy's 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 and establish a German presence in the USSR's Arctic region. 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. The icebreaker's crew managed to send word to the station of Novy Dikson. She moved on to shell Novy Dikson harbour and deployed troops there. The garrison, however, had an old field howitzer, which opened fire on the ship, causing minor damage to the equipment on board. Admiral Scheer recalled the troops and 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 Sorve 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.[1]The author of the book "The Damned don't drown", Arthur V. Sellwood leaves no doubt that indeed the Hipper made a valiant effort to rescue some of the survivors of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons all as valid as the next, the Hipper's attempts seemed to have succeeded only in scaring the survivors more than anything. On one of its 'passes', the Hipper turned on its powerful searchlight only to convince some of the hapless survivors that it was an attempt by their attacker to gun them down. Only when the Hipper received radio signals indicating the presence of enemy subs in their immediate area did it leave the scene at all speed. But a serious attempt had been made to rescue survivors. 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. According to Cajus Bekker, the wreck of Admiral Scheer was buried under a newly constructed pier in Kiel Harbour.

Commanding Officers

KzS Wilhelm Marschall - 12 November 1934 - 22 September 1936

KzS Otto Ciliax - 22 September 1936 - 31 October 1938

KzS Hans-Heinrich Wurmbach - 31 October 1938 - 31 October 1939

KzS / KADM Theodor Krancke - 31 October 1939 - 12 June 1941 (Promoted to KADM on 1 April 1941.)

KzS Wilhelm Meendsen-Bohlken - 12 June 1941 - 28 November 1942

FK Ernst Gruber - 28 November 1942 - 1 February 1943

KzS / KADM Richard Rothe-Roth - 1 February 1943 - 4 April 1944 (Promoted to KADM on 1 April 1944.)

KzS Ernst-Ludwig Thinemann - 4 April 1944 - 9 April 1945

Raiding career

Date	Ship	Nationality	Tonnage	Fate
5 November 1940	SS Mopan	British	5,389	Sunk
5 November 1940	HMS Jervis Bay	British AMC	14,164	Sunk in combat
5 November 1940	SS Maidan	British	7,908	Sunk
5 November 1940'	SS Trewellard	British	5,201	Sunk
5 November 1940	SS Kenbane Head	British	5,225	Sunk
5 November 1940	SS Beaverford	British	10,142	Sunk
5 November 1940	SS Fresno City	British	4,995	Sunk
24 November 1940	SS Port Hobart	British	7,448	Sunk
1 December 1940	SS Tribesman	British	6,242	Sunk
17 December 1940	SS Duquesa	British	8,652	Captured
17 January 1941	SS Sandefjord	Norwegian	8,083	Captured
20 January 1941	SS Barneveld	Dutch	5,597	Sunk
20 January 1941	SS Stanpark	British	5,103	Sunk
20 February 1941	SS British Advocate	British	6,994	Captured
20 February 1941	SS Grigorios C.	Greek	2,546	Sunk
21 February 1941	SS Canadian Cruiser	British	6,992	Sunk
22 February 1941	SS Rantau Pandjang	Dutch	2,542	Sunk
25 August 1942	SS Aleksandr Sibiryakov	Soviet	1,384	Sunk in combat

External links