Blücher

Second of the five Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruisers, Blücher was laid down at the Deutsche Werke yard in Kiel on 15 August 1935 as construction number 246, launched on 8 June 1937 and completed on 20 September 1939. She was named for Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, the Prussian victor of Waterloo. Admiral Conrad Albrecht gave the christening speech; the ceremony was performed by Mrs Erdmann, widow of the commander who died in the sinking of the armoured cruiser SMS Blücher.

Three sets of Blohm & Voss geared turbines on twelve ultra-high-pressure oil-fired boilers gave 132,000 shaft horsepower and 32 knots. Eight 20.3 cm SK L/60 guns sat in four twin turrets in superfiring pairs, with twelve 10.5 cm anti-aircraft guns, twelve 3.7 cm and eight 2 cm guns, and four triple torpedo mounts. The belt ran 70 to 80 mm and the main armoured deck 20 to 50 mm — thin protection for a ship of over 16,000 tons, well above the treaty figure she nominally observed.

Trials in the Baltic ran to mid-December 1939, then severe ice held her in port through much of January 1940, and she was pronounced ready for action only on 5 April. Three days later she sailed for Norway. She was equipped for three Arado 196 floatplanes but never carried more than two, and on the way to Oslo one had to sit out on the catapult because one of the hangars was being used to store bombs and torpedoes.

Konteradmiral Oskar Kummetz came aboard at Swinemünde on 5 April 1940, along with an 800-strong detachment of the 163rd Infantry Division. Blücher led Group 5 — the heavy cruiser Lützow, the light cruiser Emden and several smaller escorts — with orders to seize Oslo. The British submarine Triton fired a spread at the force in the Kattegat and missed. Shortly after 23:00 on 8 April the Norwegian patrol boat Pol III sighted them and got a radio warning away before the torpedo boat Albatros set her on fire.

The south battery on Rauøy caught the flotilla in a searchlight, fired two warning shots and then four rounds; visibility was poor and nothing hit. The German ships had orders to open fire only if fired on directly. Between 00:30 and 02:00 the flotilla stopped to transfer 150 infantrymen to the R-boats. Surprise was plainly gone, but Blücher pressed deeper into the fjord to keep the timetable that had her at Oslo by dawn.

At 04:21 the two old 28 cm guns of Oscarsborg Fortress opened fire at very close range. The first shell struck high above the bridge, at the battle station for the anti-aircraft commander; the second hit near the aircraft hangar and started a major fire that set off explosives carried for the infantry, burned both Arados and probably holed the armoured deck over turbine room 1. The Germans could not locate the source of the gunfire, and she never got much above 12 knots.

The 15 cm guns at Drøbak, some 400 yards off her starboard side, joined in, and their first salvo disabled the steering from the bridge. At 04:34 two torpedoes from a concealed battery at Oscarsborg struck: one in Boiler Room 2 under the funnel, the other in the turbine room driving the side shafts. She had passed the worst of the firing zone, but the Kopås guns could still bear. Their crews asked for orders; the fortress commander, Birger Eriksen, answered: "The fortress has served its purpose."

Gun crews were put onto the fires. With an 18-degree list, the flames reached a 10.5 cm ammunition magazine, which exploded violently, ruptured bulkheads in the engine rooms and ignited the fuel stores. Blücher rolled over and sank at 07:30. Casualty figures differ: Henrik Lunde gives between 600 and 1,000 dead, Jürgen Rohwer 125 seamen and 195 soldiers. The withdrawal that followed her loss let the Norwegian government and royal family leave the capital before it fell.

The wreck lies in the Drøbak Narrows at a depth of 64 metres, south-east of the Askholmene. Her screws were removed in 1953, and proposals to raise her have come and gone since 1963 without result. She had left Germany with about 2,670 cubic metres of oil aboard, spent some on passage and lost some in the sinking, but leaked constantly thereafter; when the rate reached 50 litres a day in 1991 the Norwegian government decided to act.

In October 1994 the company Rockwater AS and deep-sea divers drilled 133 fuel tanks and drew off 1,000 tonnes of oil, which was cleaned and sold; 47 bunkers could not be reached. The work allowed one of her two Arado 196 floatplanes to be raised on 9 November 1994, now at the Flyhistorisk Museum at Sola near Stavanger. By 2023 some 1,600 tonnes had been removed. The wreck was protected as a war memorial and war grave on 16 June 2016, to keep looters off it.