German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer

"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 remaining two 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.Fact|date=February 2008 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, which failed to cause major damage, and flak downed four of the attackers. She underwent an overhaul whilst her sister ships set out on commerce raiding. "Deutschland" accounted for two ships before returning home, but "Admiral Graf Spee" sank nine before she was discovered by the Royal Navy, damaged, and then scuttled following the Battle of the River Plate. Although these pocket battleship raids had not been hugely successful, the concept of commerce raiding had been demonstrated. "Admiral Scheer" was modified during the early months of 1940: her 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. Owing to insufficient Allied warship numbers at this early stage in the war, convoys received destroyer escorts only on the last three days of their 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: subsequent large convoys were usually escorted by battleships or battlecruisers — which had significant implications for the Royal Navy's other commitments.

The Royal Navy sent out several ships to trap the commerce raider "Admiral Scheer", but she slipped away to the south to rendezvous with "Nordmark", her replenishment oiler. Over the next two months, she sank several ships, capturing supplies and transferring prisoners to "Nordmark", meeting them at "Planquadrat Anadalusien", 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 second of these managed to send 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, known as Unternehmen Wunderland. She bombarded the Soviet meteorological station at Cape Zhelaniya on 25 August, and then sank an armed ice breaker, the "Aleksandr Sibiryakov" off the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, 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, but badly damaged the ships "Dezhnev" (SKR-19) and "Revolutsioner" which lay anchored there. She returned to Narvik without finding any allied convoys owing to persistent bad weather and fog in the Kara Sea.

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. 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

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
* Operation Wunderland

External links

* [http://www.deutschland-class.dk/admiral_scheer/admiral_scheer_menu.html Deutschland-Class.dk Admiral Scheer]
* [http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/panzerschiffe/admiralscheer/index.html German-Navy.de Admiral Scheer]
* [http://www.maritimequest.com/warship_directory/germany/pages/cruisers/admiral_scheer.htm Maritimequest Admiral Scheer photo gallery]