Seydlitz

The Admiral Hipper class came out of German naval rearmament after 1933 and the repudiation of the Versailles disarmament clauses. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 gave that rearmament a legal footing and allowed Germany five 10,000-long-ton "treaty cruisers"; the Hippers were nominally within the limit and significantly over it in fact. Seydlitz, the fourth of the class, was ordered from the Deschimag yard in Bremen. She was first drawn as a light cruiser variant carrying twelve 15 cm guns, but on 14 November 1936 the Kriegsmarine decided to complete her identically to Admiral Hipper.

Her keel was laid on 29 December 1936 under construction number 940, and she was launched on 19 January 1939. Admiral Richard Foerster, who had been gunnery officer of the earlier battlecruiser Seydlitz, spoke at the ceremony, and the widow of that ship's First World War commander christened her — the name reaching back through one navy into another. She was 210 metres long overall with a design displacement of 17,600 tonnes, driven by three sets of geared turbines fed from twelve ultra-high-pressure oil-fired boilers for 132,000 shaft horsepower and 32 knots.

Her main battery was to be eight 20.3 cm SK L/60 guns in four twin turrets in superfiring pairs, with twelve 10.5 cm, twelve 3.7 cm and eight 2 cm anti-aircraft guns, two triple 53.3 cm torpedo launchers and three Arado Ar 196 seaplanes on a single catapult. Protection was light for the tonnage: a belt of 70 to 80 mm, a main armoured deck of 20 to 50 mm and turret faces of 105 mm. She had been launched with a straight stem, and during the slow war years her bow was rebuilt to the standard "Atlantic" form her sisters carried.

After September 1939 work slowed sharply as priority went to what could be finished quickly — destroyers, U-boats, small craft. She crept forward anyway, and when work stopped altogether in June 1942 she stood at roughly 95 percent complete, wanting only her anti-aircraft armament, masts, cranes and aircraft catapult. That was as close to a commission as she ever came.

Two events pushed the Kriegsmarine towards carriers: the loss of Bismarck in May 1941, in which British carrier aircraft proved decisive, and the near torpedoing of Tirpitz in March 1942. Work resumed on the purpose-built Graf Zeppelin, and a set of hulls was picked for conversion into auxiliary carriers — Seydlitz, the liners Europa, Potsdam and Gneisenau, and the unfinished French cruiser De Grasse. On examination Europa and Gneisenau were too slow and Potsdam fit only for training, leaving Seydlitz and De Grasse as the intended front-line ships. The navy meant to run them from northern Norway against the Soviet supply convoys.

Renamed Weser, she was cut down through 1942 and 1943, some 2,400 tonnes of material stripped out and her superstructure razed to the upper deck save the funnel. The plans gave her a flight deck 200 metres by 30, a hangar 137.5 metres long served by two lifts, an island to starboard, and an air group of ten Bf 109T fighters — a navalised E model with lengthened wings for a shorter take-off — and ten Ju 87E divebombers fitted for catapult launch and arresting gear. Work ceased in June 1943 with none of it finished.

As British and American raids intensified through 1943 the Germans decided to move the hull beyond the bombers' reach. She could not be shifted until March 1944, when she was towed to Kiel and on from there to Königsberg between 30 March and 2 April. She stayed for the rest of the war, with little or no work done on her, and in December she was formally classified as a hulk.

On 29 January 1945 she was scuttled before the advancing Red Army could take her. The Soviet Navy afterwards considered cannibalising the wreck for parts to finish the cruiser Lützow, her sister, which the Soviets had bought unfinished before the war. That came to nothing either. She was eventually raised, and breaking up began in 1958 — a ship laid down in 1936, launched in 1939, and never once at sea under her own power.