SMS Blücher

:"See German cruiser Blücher for World War II ship."

SMS "Blücher" was the last armoured cruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine and was considered an intermediate stage toward the future German battlecruiser. The ship was built at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel, between 1907 and 1909 and commissioned in October 1909.

Design

The design for the ship was influenced by early reports of a new British class of armored cruisers, which were expected to be merely larger than their predecessors but in fact were a substantially new type of ship, equipped with 30.5 cm guns like battleships and, at Lord Fisher's recommendation, eventually classified as battlecruisers. Being merely an upgrade of the traditional armored cruisers, "Blücher" was significantly inferior to the ships of the new "Invincible" class in speed and firing power. The Germans had expected the new British ships to be armed with six to eight 9.2 inch guns and therefore equipped "Blücher" with a larger number (12) of convert|8.2|in|mm|sing=on guns. When the actual facts about the armament of "Invincible" class became known, it was too late to redesign "Blücher". Germany responded instead by initiating her own construction of battlecruisers, starting with SMS "Von der Tann".

History

When World War I began, "Blücher" was posted in the Baltic, but was soon transferred to the North Sea station where she participated in artillery raids on Great Yarmouth (3 November 1914) and Hartlepool (16 December 1914). During this second raid she was hit by a coastal battery, but returned to port under her own power.

On 24 January 1915 "Blücher" was part of the German squadron commanded by Vice Admiral Franz Hipper that was surprised by a superior British force of five battlecruisers, under Vice Admiral David Beatty on HMS "Lion". In the ensuing Battle of Dogger Bank, two of Beatty's ships concentrated their fire on "Blücher", the slowest and rearmost ship of the retreating German line of battle.

At 11:30 a.m. "Blücher" suffered a major hit which caused her speed to drop to convert|17|kn|km/h. To save the rest of his squadron in the face of superior force, Hipper had no choice but to abandon "Blücher". Due to a misunderstanding of "Lion's" flag signals, the British battlecruisers abandoned their pursuit and circled "Blücher". She was bombarded by heavy fire from four of the five battlecruisers and finally sunk at 13:13 p.m. by torpedoes. 792 of her crew went down with her. 260 were rescued by Beatty's ships.

Nomenclature

The World War II German heavy cruiser "Blücher" was named both after Prussian Fieldmarshall Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, (most famous for joining with the Duke of Wellington to defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo) and to honor her predecessor. The first warship named after the Fieldmarshal was a German corvette built at Kiel's "Norddeutsche Schiffbau AG" (later renamed the "Krupp-Germaniawerft") and launched 20 March 1877. Taken out of service after a boiler explosion in 1907, she ended her days as a coal freighter in Vigo, Spain.

External links

* [http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/armoured-cruiser/sms-blucher.html Blucher Class Armoured Cruiser]
* [http://www.maritimequest.com/warship_directory/germany/pages/cruisers/sms_blucher.htm MaritimeQuest SMS Blücher Photo Gallery]