KMS Admiral Hipper
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KMS Admiral Hipper
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KMS
Admiral 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without the aid of the two battlecruisers (withdrawn due to torpedo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
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