Kreigsmarine Panzerschiffe - Deutschland (Lützow) Class ==========================================================================




The Deutschland class was a series of three Panzerschiffe ("armoured ships"), a form of heavily armed cruiser, built by the German Reichsmarine more or less in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The class is named after the first ship of this class to be completed (the Deutschland). She and her sister ships, the Admiral Scheer and the Admiral Graf Spee, were all launched between 1931 and 1934 and served in Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II.

The prototype of the Panzerschiff was ordered under the 1929 Program for the Reichsmarine of the Weimar Republic. Germany was limited by the Treaty of Versailles to building only replacements for her six predreadnought coast defense battleships, and they were to displace only 10,000 tons and have guns no larger than 11in (28cm) caliber. The idea was to limit Germany to nothing more than coastal defence ships - which could not challenge the major naval powers of Britain, France and the United States. However, a number of technical innovations were used by Germany to still build a formidable warship within this restricted weight class; among them were the large-scale use of welding to join hull components together (as opposed to the then-standard rivets), triple-gun main armament turrets (which had first been used by the Austro-Hungarian Navy in battleships in the Tegetthoff class of 1912), and the use of diesel engines for propulsion. Even so, all members of the class were well over that weight limit (first constructed as 10,600 tons, later enlarged to 12,100 tons), although for political reasons their announced displacement was always misrepresented as the 10,000 tons of the Treaty limit.

Although this particular part of the Versailles Treaty's restrictions was no more onerous than others, the German Navy was determined to use all its technical resources to show that it could build ships to operate on the oceans. While this was not forbidden, the framers of the Washington Treaty had labored hard to ensure that no warship type between the 35,000-ton battleship and the 10,000-ton heavy cruiser with eight-inch guns could be built. But this was exactly what the German Navy did, without violating the conditions of either Treaty (in fact Hitler claimed that Germany was not a signer of the latter one). The new ship had a nominal displacement of only 10,000 tons, had the 11in guns appropriate to a coast-defense ship, and her diesels gave her massive endurance and a good turn of speed, sufficient to make her a potent commerce-raider. She was faster than contemporary battleships but carried guns which could drive off any cruiser afloat - in short she could outrun anything she could not outgun, and outgun anything she could not outrun, apart from eight British and Japanese battlecruisers built during World War I (like HMS Hood).

Two other very similar ships were built in her class, Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer. Since Deutschland was the lead ship (first of her class), she was less advanced, and she lacked the distinctive high conning tower, bridge, and masts of Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee (which made the latter two ships superficially resemble contemporary battleships). Though all ships were technically of the same class, there were some considerable differences between the members, with the Admiral Graf Spee being the most improved, as well as being the heaviest.

There was an immediate uproar when the new ship appeared. The British began referring to the vessels as pocket battleships ("a battleship that fits into a pocket"), in reference to the heavy firepower of the relatively small vessels and the fact they significantly outgunned similar-sized cruisers of any other navy. The German term for her class was merely "Panzerschiffe" ("armored ship"). They were considerably smaller than a true battleship and their armor and guns were nothing compared to those of actual battleships and battlecruisers; however, they could outgun any contemporary cruiser. The ships were actually two feet longer than the American Pennsylvania-class battleships, and superficially resembled contemporary battleships due to their unusually high conning tower/bridge and the masts of the Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee. The Deutschlands design and displacement was very similar to that of a heavy cruiser, though they were armed with guns larger than the heavy cruisers of other nations, albeit at the expense of slower speed than a cruiser. The term capital ship typically encompassed battleships and battlecruisers, and not heavy cruisers, but the Deutschlands were sometimes classified as capital ships (though by importance rather than attributes).

The principal feature of the Deutschland design was that it had guns of large enough calibre—280 mm (11 inches)—to out-gun almost any enemy cruiser fast enough to catch it, while being fast enough to outrun almost any enemy powerful enough to sink it. The Royal Navy had three modernized battlecruisers that could be effective in pursuing the Deutschlands; the HMS Repulse, HMS Renown, and HMS Hood were equal to the Deutschland ships in speed and were far better protected and better armed. World War I-era Japanese battlecruisers of the Kongo class could do the same. The German naval staff also knew that new ships would be built that were both faster and more powerful than the Deutschland class ships—the announced intention to build six of the Deutschland ships led the French, for example, to draw up their own small "fast battleship" (the Dunkerque class)—but they hoped for a temporary advantage. The advantage did not last long: Deutschland ships had a maximum speed of 28.5 knots, which would already be considered to be too slow at the beginning of the Second World War, only eight years after the first ship was launched. The ships had a range of about 30,000 km (18,650 miles). The diesels proved disappointing in service, and as larger battleship speeds soon rose to 28-30 knots the rationale of the design disappeared. As the Battle of the River Plate showed, the Panzerschiff was no match for well-handled cruisers, being too slow and having no means of coping with more than one opponent. Her speed was only 26 knots, enough to outrun contemporary battleships but nowhere near enough to outrun cruisers. Her displacement did not permit more than a modest scale of armor protection, a 3.25-inch belt and a 3.75-inch deck, which was no better than the best heavy cruisers in other navies. Finally, her armament of two triple 11-inch turrets, although impressive, was ludicrously heavy, and not capable of rapid fire against a fast-moving target.

The Kriegsmarine, which superseded the Reichsmarine and thus inherited the ships, was much more cognizant of the ships' limitations, and during the war they intended to use the Deutschland class ships purely as commerce raiders on the high seas. In the early years of the conflict—before the Allies closed the air gap over the North Atlantic, developed better Huff-Duff (radio triangulation equipment) and airborne centimetric radar, and provided escort carrier protection to the merchant ship convoys—the Deutschland ships' speed and heavy armament made them very difficult to bring to task, as they could generally avoid any fight they did not like; indeed, they were ordered not to fight enemy ships unless they were much stronger than them.

The Deutschland cruisers illustrate one aspect of fleet advantage in that the hunt for the Admiral Graf Spee in 1939 alone tied up a total of three battleships, two battlecruisers, four aircraft carriers, and 16 cruisers, all in seach of her.


Deutschland's keel was laid down in February 1929, at the Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel, and launched in May 1931. She completed fitting out in late 1931 and took her maiden voyage in May 1932.

During the Spanish Civil War, Deutschland was deployed to the Spanish coast in support of Franco's Nationalists in a total of seven operations between 1936 and 1939. During one of these deployments, on May 29, 1937, Deutschland was attacked by two Fuerza Aérea de la República Española (FARE) Republican bombers, and as a result 31 German sailors were killed and 101 were wounded. In retaliation, Deutschland's sister ship Admiral Scheer bombarded Almería, killing 19 civilians and destroying 35 buildings. The dead German sailors were first taken to Gibraltar and buried there, but the bodies were exhumed on Hitler's orders and accompanied Deutschland back to Germany for a large military funeral with Hitler attending.

Deutschland had been at sea with the Admiral Graf Spee before the outbreak of war and sank two ships. Her machinery was giving trouble and so she returned to Germany for repairs in November 1939. Her sister ship, Admiral Graf Spee, was sunk in December 1939 in the Battle of the River Plate. In February 1940, she was renamed Lützow, because Adolf Hitler feared that the loss of a ship with the name Deutschland (German for Germany) would have a significant negative psychological and propaganda effect on the German people. Deutschland class ships were initially classified as panzerschiffe or "armoured ships", but the Kriegsmarine re-classified them as heavy cruisers when they re-named the Duetschland. She was named in honor of the Prussian general Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow who fought in the Napoleonic Wars.

As the Lutzow, she participated in the invasion of Norway, where she followed the ill-fated Blücher into the Oslofjord. In the ensuing Battle of Drøbak Sound, the lead ship German cruiser Blücher was sunk by the Norwegian coastal fortress of Oscarsborg. While Lützow made good her escape, the fortress managed to cause significant damage to her too, the 15-centimetre (5.9 in) guns of the Kopaas battery scoring three hits and knocking out Lützow's aft Bruno 28-centimetre (11 in) gun turret. After the German squadron had retreated out of Oscarsborg's range Lützow used her remaining Anton turret to bombard the defenders from a range of 11 kilometers down the fjord. The fortress was also heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe later on the same day, but without any Norwegian casualties, since the defenders had been ordered down into the underground tunnels of the fortress. Reports to the effect that the Norwegian King and his government had been safely evacuated from Oslo had been received, and the fortress's commander, Colonel Birger Eriksen, considered that to be his main goal.

Lützow was then to return to Germany for repairs and to refit for an extended raiding mission into the Atlantic Ocean, but she was torpedoed by the RN submarine HMS Spearfish in the Skagerrak north of Denmark. The hit nearly tore off her entire stern, and repairs were not finished until the spring of 1941. Later on in June, Lützow was again torpedoed - this time by an RAF Bristol Beaufort torpedo bomber from the No. 42 Squadron RAF. The ship returned to the port of Kiel, Germany, and she underwent repairs there. She was later stationed in northern Norway to threaten Allied convoys to Russia.

On 31 December 1942 she and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper fought an abortive action against a convoy defended by eight destroyers - the feeble performance of the Lützow and Admiral Hipper in the Battle of the Barents Sea drove Hitler to threaten to disband the Navy. This led to the resignation of Grand Admiral Raeder and his replacement by Admiral Dönitz, but the restrictions on the heavy ships were later reprieved. She generally remained close to home through the remainder of the war.

She participated in various minor encounters during the next year, but her only other significant service came beginning in September 1944 in the Baltic Sea, where she fired upon land targets in support of the retreating German Wehrmacht troops against the Soviets, a service she would continue to provide in the following months.

Deutschland survived until the last weeks of the war. On 16 April 1945 she was badly damaged by three six-ton Tallboy bombs dropped by the RAF, while she laid off Swinemünde, Germany, and she came to rest on the bottom. After repairs, she then continued to provide artillery support of the army. Lützow was finally scuttled by her crew on 4 May 1945 as the war was ending.

After the war, the hulk was raised and salvaged in 1947 by the Soviet Navy and towed to Kaliningrad (Königsberg), where they then used her as a target ship for land artillery practice. She finally sank for good in the Baltic Sea in 1949.




Naval Radar development:
In Germany, it was the Reichsmarine which showed interest in the development of this new ranging device, which could 'see behind the clouds", although they entered the field of electromagnetic echo-ranging from a totally different direction. As early as 1929 the Nachrichten-Versuchsabteilung (NVA: Communication trials department) at Kiel were working on a horizontal sound-plummet capable of detecting submerged targets by measuring returning sound echoes; this was the German forerunner of sonar.

NVA's scientific director, Dr. Rudolf Kühnhold, decided to use the same basic principles above water by employing electromagnetic waves, and in 1933 NVA managed to pick up echoes from 13.5cm short-wave transmissions via a parabolic dish aerial. However, due to the rather primitive technical possibilities of the time (a transmitting power of only 100 milliwatts), no return echoes were obtained from metallic objects. At the same time, one of the leading firms in this field. Philips Eindhoven, produced a 50W magnetron for general sales and the German scientist purchased a few to boost their transmitters to 80W. Unfortunately the transmitting system proved unstable.

Dr. Kühnhold now contacted Telefunken to ask if they could take over the development in their highly skilled experimental laboratories. As they rejected this approach, he initiated the foundation of the Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische und Mechanische Apparate (GEMA) in 1934 specifically for this promising field of research. GEMA took over the trials sets, which worked on a wavelength of 48cm (630MHz), and found, in trials on the old battleship Hessen, that the transmitting impulse had to be pulsed to 'clear' the receiver to allow range as well as bearing information to be obtained.

NVA's original civilian contractor, Pintsch (at Berlin), was in the meantime stimulated by the appearance of this new competitor. After feverish work, they succeeded in trebling the emitting power of the 13.5cm valve to 300mW. With the transmitter and receiver spaced 10m (30.4 ft) apart, the echo of the trails vessel Welle (ex. Grille) could be picked up to 2km range but beyond this it faded away due to limited transmitting energy.

Before being returned to GEMA, the 48cm set was placed on Welle and she thus became the first German naval unit to carry a radar set (albeit temporarily). To improve its efficiency and bearing accuracy, this set was modified to a wavelength of 82cm (368-370MHz), and thus became the ancestor of the German Seetakt set.

Although it had no direct connection with naval radar, it should be mentioned that Telefunken also entered te field of radar development in 1935. Their 50cm set, characterized by its parabolic dish and spinning lobe, was the ancestor if the air-warning Würzburg radar. This was a land service set but at a later date a few were adapted for naval use.

Various small German firms became involved in the development of radar and valve technology expanded rapidly, but, due to the need for secrecy and to the limited finance with which to follow up the many proposals made, development was concentrated mainly with the firms GEMA, Telefunken, Siemens, Lorenz and AEG. In the years immediately before the the Second World War German scientists tended towards the employment of the fixed frequencies, one for each of the three services, in order to facilitate IFF-definitions: 125MHz for aircraft reconnaissance, 368MHz for the navy and 560MHz for AA-ranging.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, radar development became very complex and, from the historian's point of view, it is difficult to provide a complete record of events. On the one hand the needs of the three services resulted in separate development to meet their individual requirements, and in each case a different system of code designation was adopted. For reasons of secrecy, and due to a degree of jealousy, inter-service communication was poor, and subsequent development depended significantly on personal contacts between the services and the contractors' scientist. On the other hand the contractors themselves were working for all three services and, naturally used ideas developed for the equipment of one service in that of the others.

Both Admiral Graf Spee and Deutschland have been claimed to be the first German naval vessels to be officially fitted with radar. Trenckle says that Admiral Graf Spee had an experimental FuMO 22, and Prager that the Deutschland had a Seetakt set in the autumn of 1937 (which proved very useful for night navigation in Spanish waters). Photographic analysis shows that the frame of this first experimental set was slightly smaller (0.8m x 1.8m) than the final FuMO 22 frame, but it is not known if there were fewer dipoles or alternatively if the dipoles were placed closer together.

R V Jones, in his memories (Most Secret War, Hamish Hamilton, 1978) describes how the British Admirality sent L H Bainbridge-Bell to the River Plate to examine the radar installation aboard the wreck of the Graf Spee. According to Price (Instruments of Darkness, Kimber, 1967) the resultant report took one and a half years to pass through the official channels, a statement I find hard to believe considering that Bainbridge-Bell had been sent half around the world to abtain the information. It adds yet another intriguing possibility of further information, as this report, possibly including photos of Graf Spee's installation, may yet come to light.

The Deutschland (later to be renamed Lützow in 1940) had a 2m x 6m mattress antenna for a FuMO 22 throughout her wartime career. From January 1942 until March 1944 she also had a Timor frame at the rear of her radar tower, as in the Scharnhorst. To follow German practice there should also have been fixed Sumatra antennas but they cannot be traced in photographs.

It is noteworthy that the foretop radar of the armoured ships (later reclassified as heavy cruisers) were provided with the best positioning of any German heavy units. It was situated at the highest point in the ship, and the foremast was removed, and replaced by a short pole mast, to provide completely unobstructed all-around coverage.

Admiral Scheer was similarly equipped before the removal of the top-heavy pyramidal armoured mast. After that she had a 2m x 4m FuMO 27 mattress antenna and a Timor frame, bearing in opposite directions, on the forward rangefinder tower. Three of the four fixed Sumatra antennas, spaced 90° apart, were fitted on small horizontal lattice constructions. Scheer also had a FuMO 27 antenna on the aft rangefinder tower.


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NB: The above text has been collected / excerpted / edited / mangled / tangled / re-compiled / etc ... from the following online sources :

Deutschland class cruiser - wikipedia article #1

German pocket battleship Deutschland - wikipedia article #2

Deutschland (Lutzow) - www.geocities.com/pentagon/2833

German Naval Radar - www.navweaps.com