Prinz Eugen (1940)

The Prinz Eugen was a German Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser, third in a series of five, that served in the Kriegsmarine during World War II. She was laid down in April 1936 and launched in August 1938, entering active service after the outbreak of world conflict in August 1940. She was named after Prince Eugene of Savoy, an 18th-century Austrian general..

The Prinz Eugen was one of the protagonists of Operation Rheinübung, a German attempt in May 1941 to cut off Allied merchant shipping in the Atlantic in which he was accompanied by the battleship Bismarck. Both ships engaged two British ships, the battlecruiser HMS Hood and the battleship HMS Prince of Wales in what has been called the Battle of the Denmark Strait, during which the Hood was sunk and the Prince of Wales seriously damaged. The Prinz Eugen was separated from the Bismarck during this operation to continue attacking Allied merchants, but breakdowns in the cruiser's machines forced its interruption. After calling at occupied France and undergoing repairs, the cruiser participated in Operation Cerberus, a daring daylight crossing of the English Channel to reach Germany. In February 1942 the Prinz Eugen was sent to Norway, although her stay there was interrupted days after her arrival after being torpedoed by the British submarine Trident. The torpedo seriously damaged the cruiser's stern, which required repairs in Germany.

After returning to active service the ship spent several months training new officer cadets in the Baltic Sea before serving as artillery support in the German army's withdrawal from the Eastern Front. Following the German surrender in May 1945, the Prinz Eugen was delivered to the British Royal Navy before being transferred to the United States Navy as war booty. After being examined in the United States, the US Navy assigned the cruiser to the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. After surviving two atomic explosions the cruiser was towed to Kwajalein Atoll, to be used as a target ship where she eventually listed and sank. The wreck is still visible above the water's surface; One of her propellers was saved and is displayed at the Marine-Ehrenmal Laboe naval memorial in Germany.

Construction

The Prinz Eugen was ordered by the Kriegsmarine from the Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel. Her keel was laid down on April 23, 1936 under construction number 564. She was originally going to be named in honor of Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, the Austrian winner of the Battle of Lissa (1866), but after considering that this could be an insult to the Italian allies, defeated by Tegetthoff in Lissa, the Kriegsmarine opted for the name Prinz Eugen. The cruiser was launched on August 22, 1938 and completed two years later, on August 1, 1940, the day she was commissioned into the German fleet. She was initially built with a roda with a straight bow, but after its launch this was replaced by a rounded "Atlantic bow". She also had a chimney cap installed.

The heavy cruiser was 207.7 m long, with a beam of 21.7 m and a maximum draft of 7.2 m. According to its design, it displaced 16,970 tons. She was powered by three sets of geared steam turbines which were supplied with steam by twelve high-pressure liquid fuel boilers. Her maximum speed was 32 knots (59 km/h) thanks to her 132,000 hp. According to her design, her usual crew was 42 officers and 1,340 sailors.

The main armament of the Prinz Eugen was composed of a battery of eight 203 mm SK L/60 guns mounted in four twin turrets, located in pairs fore and aft. Its anti-aircraft battery was made up of twelve 105 mm L/65 guns, twelve 37 mm guns, and eight 20 mm guns. The cruiser also carried a pair of triple 533 mm torpedo tubes located behind the rear superstructure. The ship was also equipped with three Arado Ar 196 seaplanes and a catapult for launching. The armored belt of the Prinz Eugen was between 70-80 mm thick, its The upper deck had between 12 and 30 mm of armor, while the main protective deck was 20-50 mm. The turrets of the main batteries had 105 mm in front and rear and 70 mm on both sides.

Service History

At the beginning of July 1940, shortly before commissioning into the fleet, the Prinz Eugen was attacked by British bombers and hit by a bomb. She was not seriously damaged and was commissioned a month later. following. The cruiser spent the rest of the year on sea trials in the Baltic Sea, and in early 1941 the ship's gunner crew conducted gunning training. This was followed by a brief period in dry dock for final modifications and improvements. In April, Prinz Eugen joined the new battleship Bismarck for maneuvers in the Baltic. Both ships had been selected for Operation Rheinübung, a raid against Allied merchant shipping in the Atlantic Ocean.

On 23 April, while crossing the Fehmarn Belt en route to Kiel, the Prinz Eugen detonated a magnetic mine dropped by British bombers. The mine caused serious damage, including a ruptured fuel tank, damage to propeller couplings, and damage to fire control equipment. The planned sortie with the Bismarck was delayed while repairs were underway. Admirals Erich Raeder and Günther Lütjens discussed the possibility of delaying the operation, in the hope that repairs to the battleship Scharnhorst would be completed or Bismarck's sister ship Tirpitz would be completed., will finish her sea trials in time to join the Prinz Eugen and the Bismarck. Both decided that it was best to resume surface raids in the Atlantic as soon as possible, so the two designated ships would leave without further reinforcements.

Operation Rheinübung

On May 11, repairs to the cruiser had been completed, after which she sailed to Gotenhafen, where her crew prepared the ship for departure. On May 18, the Prinz Eugen met the Bismarck off Cape Arkona. The two ships were escorted by three destroyers—Hans Lody, Friedrich Eckoldt and Z23—and a flotilla of minesweepers. The Luftwaffe provided air cover during the voyage out of German waters. Around 1:00 p.m. on May 20 The German flotilla encountered the Swedish cruiser HMS Gotland, which followed it for two hours through the Kattegat Strait. The Gotland relayed the news to naval command, noting: " Two large ships, three destroyers, five escort ships and ten or twelve aircraft passed through Marstrand, heading 205°/20'. The German High Command was not concerned about the security risk posed by the Gotland, although Lütjens believed that operational security had been lost. The report eventually reached Captain Henry Denham, the British naval attaché in Sweden, who relayed the information to his Admiralty.

Bletchley Park code breakers confirmed that an Atlantic raid was imminent, having deciphered reports from the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in which they They requested more navigation charts from headquarters. A pair of Supermarine Spitfire fighters were sent to locate the German flotilla off the coast of Norway. On the night of 20 May, Bismarck and the rest of the flotilla reached the Norwegian coast; The minesweepers separated and the two raiders and their destroyer escort continued north. The next morning Prinz Eugen's radio interception officers picked up a signal ordering British reconnaissance aircraft to search for two battleships and three destroyers north of the Norwegian coast. At 07:00 on the 21st, the Germans sighted four unidentified aircraft, although they quickly left. Shortly after 12:00 the flotilla arrived in Bergen and dropped anchor in Grimstadfjord, where the crews painted the Baltic camouflage ships with the "exterior grey" color used by German warships operating in the Atlantic.

In Bergen the Prinz Eugen refueled 764 t of fuel; The Bismarck inexplicably failed a similar refueling. At 19:30 on 21 May the two ships and their three escort destroyers departed Bergen, and by midnight the force was already at sea. open and towards the Arctic Ocean. At this time Admiral Erich Raeder finally informed Hitler of the operation, who reluctantly gave his consent to continue the raid. The three escort destroyers separated at 04:14 on 22 May, while the force was sailing off Trondheim, and at around 12:00 Lütjens ordered his two ships to turn towards the Denmark Strait to attempt to penetrate the open waters. of the Atlantic Ocean.

At around 04:00 on 23 May Lütjens ordered Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to increase speed to 27 knots (50 km/h) to quickly bypass the Danish Strait. Upon entering this, both ships activated their FuMo radar equipment. The Bismarck was sailing about 700 m ahead of the Prinz Eugen i>; The fog reduced visibility to about three or four thousand meters. The Germans encountered ice around 10:00, forcing them to reduce speed to 24 knots. Two hours later both ships had reached a point north of Iceland, and had to navigate in a zigzag pattern to avoid ice floes. At 19:22 the hydrophone and radar operators of the German ships detected the English cruiser HMS Suffolk at a distance of approximately 12,500 m. The radio interception equipment of the Prinz Eugen deciphered the Suffolk signals and they knew that he had reported their location.

Admiral Lütjens gave permission to Prinz Eugen to attack it, but the captain of the heavy cruiser was unable to define the objective. The enemy cruiser quickly withdrew to a safe distance and followed the German ships. At 20:30 the heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk joined the Suffolk, but it got too close to the German ships and Lütjens ordered his ships to attack the English cruiser. The Bismarck fired five salvos, three of which pinned the Norfolk and hit her on her decks, but the cruiser set up a smoke screen and took refuge in a bank of fog, thus ending the brief encounter. The shock of the powerful 380mm guns disabled the FuMo 23 radars of the Bismarck, so Lütjens had to ask the Prinz Eugen to move in. will overtake to use its radars to recognize.

The Battle of the Denmark Strait

The British cruisers followed them all night, continuously transmitting the position and conduct of the German ships. The bad weather stopped on the morning of May 24 and gave way to clear skies. At 05:07 that morning the hydrophone operators of the Prinz Eugen detected a pair of unidentified vessels approaching the German formation at a speed of 20 knots (37 km/h), reporting «! Noise of two fast-moving ship turbines at 280° relative bearing!" At 05:45 German ship observers sighted smoke on the horizon, smoke from the chimneys of the battlecruiser HMS Hood and the battleship HMS Prince of Wales, under the command of Admiral Lancelot Holland. Lütjens ordered the crew of his ships to their battle stations. At 05:52 the range had been reduced to 26,000 m and the Hood opened fire, followed by the Prince of Wales a minute later. The Hood i> targeted the Prinz Eugen thinking it was the Bismarck, while the Prince of Wales did the same with the Bismarck.

The British ships advanced towards the Germans, forcing them to use only their forward batteries, while the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen fired broadsides from all their guns.. Several minutes after opening fire Holland ordered a 20° turn to port, which would allow his ships to make use of all their turrets. The two German ships concentrated their salvoes on the Hood, and one minute after starting their cannon fire, the Prinz Eugen hit her with a 203-mm high-explosive projectile; Its explosion started a large fire that was quickly extinguished. Holland then ordered a second turn of 20° to port to put his ships on a course parallel to the German ships. Lütjens ordered Prinz Eugen to change objective and attack the Prince of Wales in order to keep his two opponents under fire. A few minutes later, the Prinz Eugen made a couple of hits on the British battleship and reported the start of a small fire.

Lütjens then ordered his cruiser to drop behind the Bismarck so that he could continue monitoring the position of the cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, which were still 19-22 km to the east. At 06:00 Hood was completing her second turn to port when Bismarck fired her fifth salvo. Two of her shells fell short, landing in the water near the cruiser, but at least one of her 380 mm shells hit her and penetrated her thin deck armor. The projectile reached the Santa Bárbara and detonated 112 tons of cordite. A massive explosion blew out the stern of the cruiser between the main mast and the rear funnel; The forward half of the ship advanced a little further before the flood of water raised the bow at a steep angle. The stern rose similarly as water poured into its blast-torn compartments. After an exchange of gunfire lasting just eight minutes, the Hood had disappeared along with a crew of 1,419 men.

The battle only lasted a few more minutes, in which the Prince of Wales had time to hit the Bismarck with three howitzers and retreat badly damaged. The Germans ceased firing as the distance increased, although Ernst Lindemann, commander of the Bismarck, advocated pursuing the English ship and destroying it. Lütjens firmly rejected the idea and instead ordered the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen set course for the open waters of the North Atlantic. After the combat Lütjens reported that a "battle cruiser, probably the Hood, sunk. Another battleship, King George V or Renown, was damaged. Two heavy cruisers maintain contact." At 08:01 he transmitted a damage report and his intentions to the German Naval High Command, which were to separate the Prinz Eugen so that it could continue its raid against the merchant ships and call at the French port of Saint-Nazaire for repairs. Shortly before 10:00 Lütjens ordered the Prinz Eugen to stand aft of the Bismarck to determine the severity of the leaks. bow impact oil. After confirming "large oil flows on both sides of [the Bismarck's] wake", the Prinz Eugen returned to the vanguard position.

With the weather getting worse, Lütjens attempted to separate the Prinz Eugen at 16:40. The storm was not thick enough to cover their retreat from the eyes of the British cruisers, which continued to maintain radar contact, so the Prinz Eugen was temporarily recalled. Her final departure was possible. take place at 18:14. The Bismarck turned to face the formation of Wake-Walker, commander of a formation composed of the two cruisers and the Prince of Wales, forcing the Suffolk i> to move away at high speed. The Prince of Wales fired twelve salvos at the German battleship, which responded with new volleys, none of which hit a target. The action distracted the attention of the British and allowed Prinz Eugen to disappear.

On May 26, the Prinz Eugen rendezvoused with the supply ship Spichern to refuel. The cruiser had suffered serious defects in its propulsion system that required return to occupied France for repairs. On May 31 she was accompanied by a destroyer escort off the French coast and the next day she arrived at Brest. Repairs continued for the next eight months during which the Prinz Eugen and others German ships in the area were repeatedly attacked by Allied bomber aircraft. On the night of 1/2 July the cruiser was hit by a bomb that killed or wounded about 100 men.

Operation Cerberus

In 1942 the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had joined the Prinz Eugen in Brest. The ships were under constant threat from Allied air attacks, so Adolf Hitler ordered their return to Germany. The intention was to deploy the ships in Norway to intercept Allied convoys bound for the Soviet Union. Hitler insisted that They were to make the journey through the guarded and dangerous English Channel, despite the protests of Erich Raeder. Vice-Admiral Otto Ciliax was given command of the operation. In early February minesweepers swept a route through the channel, but the British did not notice their activity.

At 23:00 on February 11, the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau and the Prinz Eugen left Brest. They entered the channel an hour later, sailing at a speed of 27 knots (50 km/h) and staying close to the French coast throughout the journey. Around 06:30 they passed Cherbourg, where they were joined by a flotilla of torpedo boats, led by Captain Erich Bey from the destroyer Z29. Fighter Force General Adolf Galland led the Luftwaffe fighters and bombers—Operation Donnerkeil—during Operation Cerberus. The fighters flew at their flight ceiling to avoid detection by the British radar network. Liaison officers were on board all three vessels. German aircraft later arrived to jam and evade enemy radars. By 13:00 the ships had cleared the Calais Pass, but half an hour later a formation of six Fairey Swordfish torpedo boats with an escort of Supermarine Spitfire fighters attacked the Germans.. The British were no match for the German fighter shield and all the Swordfish were shot down.

In front of Dover the Prinz Eugen fell under fire from the British coastal artillery batteries, although none of them hit her. She was then attacked by several torpedo boats, but Prinz Eugen's destroyer escort pushed them aside before they could launch their torpedoes. At 16:43 the heavy cruiser encountered five British destroyers: Campbell, Vivacious, Mackay, Whitshed and Worcester. He fired his main batteries at them and managed to hit the Worcester, but was forced to maneuver erratically to avoid the torpedoes that were launched at him. Despite everything, the cruiser managed to arrive at Brunsbüttel in on the morning of February 23 completely unscathed.

Subsequent operations

On February 21, 1942 the Prinz Eugen, the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer and the destroyers Richard Beitzen, Paul Jakobi , Z25, Hermann Schoemann and Friedrich Ihn sailed to Norway. After briefly calling at Grimstadfjord, the ships arrived in Trondheim. Two days later, sailing off the Trondheim Fjord, the British submarine Trident torpedoed the Prinz Eugen in the stern area, causing serious damage and leaving the cruiser unmanageable. She had to be towed to Lofjord where, over the course of the following months, emergency repairs were carried out. Her entire stern was removed and armored and two improvised rudders operated by winches were installed.

On May 16, the Prinz Eugen made the return trip to Germany under its own power, although on the way to Kiel it was attacked by a British force composed of nineteen bombers and twenty-seven torpedo bombers, although They did not manage to make a single hit. The cruiser remained out of service for repairs until October, and from the 27th of this month it began sea trials in the Baltic that lasted for the next two months. In early January 1943 the Kriegsmarine ordered the cruiser to return to Norway to reinforce her naval deployment there. That month she twice attempted to sail to the Nordic country alongside the battleship Scharnhorst, but both departures were aborted after being spotted by British surveillance planes. When it became clear that it would be impossible to move the cruiser to the Norwegian coast, Prinz Eugen was assigned to the Fleet Training Squadron. For nine months, the cruiser trained new cadets in the waters of the Baltic.

As the Soviet Red Army pushed the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, it became necessary to reactivate the Prinz Eugen as an artillery support ship. To this end, on October 1, 1943 the cruiser was reassigned to combat missions. In June 1944 the Prinz Eugen, the heavy cruiser Lützow and the 6th Destroyer Flotilla formed the Second Special Force, later renamed Thiele Task Force. Prinz Eugen was then sailing in the eastern Baltic, northwest of the island of Utö, and on 19–20 August she sailed into the Gulf of Riga and bombarded Tukums. Four destroyers provided support. into action together with the Ar 196 seaplanes of the cruiser itself. The bombing of the Prinz Eugen was essential in the successful rejection of the Soviet attack.

In early September the heavy cruiser supported an unsuccessful attempt to seize the fortress of Hogland Island. She then returned to Gotenhafen, before escorting a convoy of ships bringing German soldiers from Finland. The convoy, consisting of six freighters, sailed on September 15 from the Gulf of Bothnia with the entire Second Task Force escorting it. Swedish aircraft and destroyers followed, but did not intervene. The following month, Prinz Eugen returned to artillery support tasks, and on October 11 and 12 she used her batteries to support the German troops in Memel. On those two days the heavy cruiser It fired about 700 shells from its main batteries. She returned on the 14th and 15th after having replenished ammunition from her main guns to fire another 370 projectiles.

On the return trip to Gotenhafen on the 15th she inadvertently collided in dense fog with the light cruiser Leipzig north of Hela. The Leipzig ended up almost cut into two parts and both ships were stuck for fourteen hours. The Prinz Eugen was taken to Gotenhafen for repairs that lasted a month. On November 20-21, it acted again as artillery support for the German troops. on the Sworbe Peninsula, on which occasion it fired about 500 shells from its main batteries. She returned to Gotenhafen to be resupplied and to refit her guns.

The cruiser was again ready for action in mid-January 1945, when she was deployed to Samland against Soviet forces. She fired some 870 rounds from her primary batteries against the Soviets at Cranz as they advanced towards Königsberg. At this point the cruiser ran out of ammunition, but critical ammunition shortages kept her in port until March, when she again bombed the Soviets surrounding Gotenhafen, Danzig, and Hela. On 8 April, the Prinz Eugen i> sailed to Swinemünde alongside the Lützow, in whose port both ships were attacked by 34 Lancaster bombers. A thick layer of clouds forced the British to abort the attack, but they returned days later and managed to sink the Lützow with a single Tallboy bomb hit, weighing more than 5.4 tons of weight. The Prinz Eugen then left for Copenhagen, where she arrived on April 20 and was removed from commission on May 7. The next day she passed into the control of the British Royal Navy.

In the United States Navy

On May 27, 1945, the Prinz Eugen and the light cruiser Nürnberg were escorted by the British cruisers Dido and Devonshire to Wilhelmshaven. On 13 December the heavy cruiser was delivered as war booty to the United States, which sent it to Wesermünde. The ship was commissioned into the United States Navy as an "unclassified miscellaneous ship" USS < i>Prinz Eugen (IX-300). A mixed crew of Germans and Americans under the command of Captain A. H. Graubart sailed with the Prinz Eugen to Boston on a voyage that lasted from January 13 to 22, 1946. There the cruiser was thoroughly inspected by the US Navy, which removed its powerful GHG passive sonar to be installed on the USS Flying Fish submarine for testing. American interest in magnetic amplifier technology increased after various discoveries in the Prinz Eugen's fire direction system.

The ship was later assigned to the fleet of ships targeted by Operation Crossroads in Bikini Atoll. The Prinz Eugen was towed to the Pacific Ocean via Philadelphia and the Panama Canal. The German cruiser managed to survive the explosion of two atomic bombs, those from the Able tests, on July 1, 1946, and Baker, on the 25th of the same month. Although it was contaminated by radioactive fallout, it suffered no structural damage in the detonations. The irradiated ship was towed to Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific, where a small water leak was left unrepaired. On August 29, 1946, the The United States Navy put Prinz Eugen out of commission.

By the end of December the cruiser was in very bad condition, and on the 21st it began to list. A rescue team could not be taken to the distant atoll in time, so the North American navy tried to run it aground to prevent its shipwreck, which they failed to do because on December 22 it listed and sank. The turrets of its main batteries broke loose from their barbettes when it capsized. The stern and its propeller assemblies remain visible above the water's surface to this day. The US government denied salvage rights on the basis that it did not want the ship's irradiated steel to end up on the market. In August In 1979 one of the cruiser's propellers was removed and placed in the Marine-Ehrenmal Laboe naval memorial in Germany.