Germany - Admiral Hipper class Heavy Cruiser - Page 14

DG_Alpha

Post subject: Re: Germany - Admiral Hipper class Heavy Cruiser

Posted: January 19th, 2014, 7:22 pm

Posts: 762
Joined: January 1st, 2012, 7:01 pm
Location: Germany

Thanks once again for all the comments.

The last finished cruiser, Admiral Hipper:
Until the early thirties, the German Navy had been restricted in their shipbuilding abilities by the Treaty of Versailles. For cruisers, that meant a displacement of 6000t and a resulting caliber of 150mm. That also meant that Germany had not been involved in the arms-race in the construction of so-called ‘Washington-Cruisers’ between other nations. With some relaxations of the Versailles Treaty and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the way was paved for heavier ships in the cruiser category. The Agreement allowed for a total tonnage of 51380t of heavy cruisers – five ships of 10000t each. The higher-ups in the German Navy, including Erich Raeder, were not really convinced of the usefulness of a heavy cruiser, but the presence of this type of ship in other navies that a corresponding ship would be needed, or else the current German cruisers were left in an inferior position.
The early designs began as a ‘heavy light cruiser’, a 10000t ship with twelve 150mm cannons, and slowly increased to 190mm cannons to 203mm cannons. The desired speed of 33kn originally (faster than the French Dunkerque-class was finally reduced to 32kn, with power coming from high-pressure, high temperature steam engines. Diesel engines had to be disregarded, as they were capable of only 27kn and required a lot more room. The displacement had climbed in the meantime to 14000t, a fact that was kept a closely guarded secret, of course.
Admiral Hipper began as its existence as cruiser ‘H’, together with Blücher (cruiser ‘G’) and replaced the two aging Bremen-class cruisers Hamburg and Berlin. Despite being the second ship in the budget (letter H), Admiral Hipper was laid down July 6th, 1935, and launched on Februrary 6th, 1937. Construction was heavily delayed due to the whole re-armament and shipbuilding program in these years. Other delays were caused due to heavy reconstructions when the originally planned boiler rooms proved too small when the original boilers were replaced with new ones. Admiral Hipper finally entered service on April 29th, 1939.
Admiral Hipper was the only ship of her class to enter service with the old, vertical bow form. By that time the German Navy had realized the disadvantages of this bow form in the conditions of the Atlantic and decided to equip the new cruisers with an Atlantic Bow. However, adding the bow on Admiral Hipper would delay the cruiser further, something that the leadership did not want in these rather troublesome times. The plan was to add the bow later during normal maintenance shipyard session.
[ img ]

@KimWerner: Sorry I didn't answer to you in the CoA thread. I had a second look at the crest and made some modifications.

_________________
My worklist
Any help and source material is always welcome.

Top

Shipbucket

Germany - Admiral Hipper class Heavy Cruiser

Who is online