GERMAN CRUISER PRINZ EUGEN

The '''Prinz Eugen''' (ger. IPA-pron. , the stressed "e" as "é" in French) was an enlarged ''Admiral Hipper''-class heavy cruiser which served with the Kriegsmarine of Germany during World War II.
She was named after Prince Eugene of Savoy (''Prinz Eugen'' in German).
''Prinz Eugen'' was the third ship of the ''Hipper''-class heavy cruisers. Like her sister ships, ''Admiral Hipper'' and ''Blücher'', she was built in the mid-1930s. During the planning and design stage she was known as "''Kreuzer J''" (Cruiser J). Her keel was laid at the Krupp Germania shipyard in Kiel on April 23 1936, and her full cost would be 104.5 million Reichsmark. ''Prinz Eugen'' was launched on August 22 1938, and commissioned on August 1 1940. Considered a "lucky ship", she survived to the end of the war although she participated in only two major actions at sea.

Contents

Battle of Denmark Strait

Channel dash

Baltic deployment

USS Prinz Eugen

Commanding Officers

Tradition

Other ships of the class

See also

External links

Battle of Denmark Strait

On 24 May 1941, ''Prinz Eugen'' fought alongside ''Bismarck'' in the Battle of the Denmark Strait against HMS ''Hood'', hitting the British battlecruiser at least once and starting a huge fire, and HMS ''Prince of Wales'', hitting that battleship three times. The ''Hood'' was sunk during the engagement and the ''Prince of Wales'' damaged but the German ships were still shadowed by British warships. Later that day she was ordered off on her own from ''Bismarck'', escaping the British ships, and headed south to rendezvous with the tanker ''Spichern'' and prepare for eventual commerce raiding in the Atlantic. After narrowly avoiding several British heavy units which were looking for ''Bismarck'', she arrived at Brest, France, on 1 June 1941. The port was regularly bombed by the RAF, and on the night on 1 July ''Prinz Eugen'' was hit on the port side behind the bridge. The bomb detonated in the forward main artillery command centre, killing 60 of the crew.

Channel dash

After the loss of ''Bismarck'' Hitler banned further Atlantic surface raids. Fearing an Allied invasion of Norway, he wanted all capital ships back in home waters. Together with the battlecruisers (or battleships) ''Scharnhorst'' and ''Gneisenau'', ''Prinz Eugen'' made the "Channel Dash" - ''Operation Cerberus'' - back to Germany during 11 February – 12 February 1942.
''Prinz Eugen'' left Germany for Norway in February 1942. On 23 February she was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS ''Trident'', destroying her stern. After some preliminary patch-up repairs in Trondheim, the cruiser returned to Kiel on 16 May 1942 to receive a new stern. ''Prinz Eugen'' was not operational again until January 1943. Two attempts to relocate to Norway, where she could pose a threat to Allied convoys, failed and she was assigned instead to training duties in home waters.

Baltic deployment

From August 1944 onward, ''Prinz Eugen'' was deployed to shell advancing Soviet troop concentrations along the Baltic coast and to transport German refugees to the west. On 15 October 1944, she collided with the light cruiser ''Leipzig'' in heavy fog in the Baltic Sea, nearly cutting the smaller ship in two. For 14 hours the two ships drifted, locked together, until they could be separated. ''Prinz Eugen'' was repaired at Gotenhafen (Gdynia) and continued her tasks of shelling Soviet land forces and evacuating German refugees. On 29 March 1945 she left Gotenhafen for the last time with a load of refugees, reaching Swinemünde on 8 April 1945. The ship then departed for Copenhagen arriving on 20 April 1945. Lack of fuel meant that she did not leave port again. At the end of the war, she was one of only two operational German cruisers left (the other was the light cruiser ''Nürnberg''), and was surrendered at Copenhagen on 7 May 1945.

USS Prinz Eugen

She was awarded to the United States and commissioned into the US Navy as the unclassified miscellaneous vessel USS ''Prinz Eugen'' (IX-300). After examination and tests she was allocated to the target fleet for the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests. She survived the ''Able'' and ''Baker'' tests (July 1946) but was too radioactive to have leaks repaired. In September 1946 she was towed to Kwajalein Atoll and capsized on 22 December 1946 over Enubuj reef where she remains to this day (8°45'9.49"N 167°40'59.60"E). In 1978 her port propeller was salvaged and is preserved at the German Naval Memorial at Laboe.

Commanding Officers

★ Helmuth Brinkmann - 1 August 1940 - 1 August 1942

★ Wilhelm Beck - 1 August 1942 - 8 October 1942

★ Hans-Erich Voss - 8 October 1942 - 28 February 1943

★ Werner Ehrhardt - 28 February 1943 - 5 January 1944

★ Hans-Jürgen Reinicke - 5 January 1944 - 8 May 1945

★ A. H. Graubart, USN - January 1946 - May 1946

Tradition

After the annexation of Austria in 1938 some former Austrian naval officers were reactivated and served with the Kriegsmarine. The naming of the ship was a tribute to the maritime tradition of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. On 21 November 1942 ''Prinz Eugen'' was presented the bell of the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought ''Tegetthoff'' (scrapped in Italy in 1924) by the Italian naval attache assigned to Berlin. The four main gun turrets were named after the Austrian towns of Graz, Braunau, Innsbruck and Wien (Vienna).

Other ships of the class

★ ''Admiral Hipper''

★ ''Blücher''

★ ''Seydlitz''

★ ''Lützow''

See also

★ List of World War II ships

★ List of Kriegsmarine ships

★ List of naval ships of Germany

★ List of ship launches in 1938

★ List of ship commissionings in 1940

★ List of ship decommissionings in 1945

★ List of shipwrecks in 1946

★ 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen

External links

★ Prinz Eugen - British Armed Forces Website

★ Prinz Eugen - An Illustrated Technical History

★ ''The Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen'' at KBismarck.com

★ ''Prinz Eugen'' technical data – From German naval history website german-navy.de

★ Maritimequest Prinz Eugen photo gallery

★ Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen