The heavy cruiser "Prince Eugen" was the heavy cruiser of Nazi German Admiral hippel at that time. 1938 August 22nd is his birthday. It was built in Kiel and officially launched. "prinz eugen" has a standard displacement of14,240 tons, a maximum displacement of18,500 tons, a total length of 2 12.5 meters, a width of 2 1.3 meters and a water inlet of 5.83 meters. The thickest part of the hull armor is 80mm, which can carry 1600 crew, 3 turbines and 12 boilers. Power can reach 133000 horsepower, maximum speed can reach 32.5 knots, endurance 17 knots, 6500 nautical miles. The front and rear of the hull are equipped with four 203mm double main guns, and the two sides of the hull are equipped with six 105mm anti-aircraft guns and six 37mm double anti-aircraft guns, as well as six 20mm anti-aircraft guns and three 533mm torpedo launchers. In addition, it is equipped with four Arado 196 seaplanes. At that time, the cruiser equipped in this way was very advanced, just like a fortress moving on water.
Plinz Eugen's first operation was not very smooth, and it took a long time of training and familiarity. 194 1 in April, he received his first military mission and asked to be sent to Gdynia to meet the battleship Pismir and go to the allied Atlantic transport line to attack the passing transport ships. Unfortunately, on the second day of departure, prinz eugen arrived at the attack point of the magnetic mine ahead of time, so he was not seriously injured. However, the optical part of the main gun shooting director and the range finder were damaged, which meant that the main gun lost its eyes and had to shoot blindly. For this reason, the prinz eugen had to return to Kiel for maintenance and the attack had to be postponed. With only minor injuries, the prinz eugen was quickly repaired. 10 days later, it met the long-awaited battleship Pismai again in Gdynia. On May 18, under Hitler's gaze, two huge water fortresses slowly sailed out of the harbor and embarked on a journey destined to be remembered by future generations.
When the two warships set sail, the British got the news and sent the heavy cruiser Suffolk and its sister ship Norfolk to patrol the Danish Strait that day.
On May 20th, the fourth-class easterly wind slowly blew across the Taggart Strait, and the fleets of prinz eugen and Pishimi were guided by destroyers and minesweepers to the only way to the North Sea. Gunther Gunther Lutjens, the commander-in-chief of the fleet, hoped to pass through this area quietly and safely, but his dream failed. At one o'clock in the afternoon, a Swedish patrol plane came to patrol this sea area and found the German fleet. Shortly thereafter, Sweden's "Gotland" mine cruiser was found passing by. It is true that Gunther Lutjens can only hope that the Swedish military can strictly abide by the principle of neutrality and not expose the whereabouts of the German fleet. However, his dream was shattered, and two pro-British Swedish intelligence personnel quickly informed the British embassy of the whereabouts of the German fleet. A few hours later, the British navy learned this information again. Admiral john tovey, commander of the British fleet at home, immediately ordered the British fleet to get ready for departure and monitor the course of the German fleet at any time.
Since the encounter with Swedish patrol aircraft, the German fleet has been advancing along the S-line to prevent the attack of British submarines. At 6 o'clock the next morning, the German side deciphered the British wireless telegram, which was provided by Sweden to Britain to expose the information of the German fleet.
Under the cover of other destroyers and small ships, two warships hid in the Danish Strait. At this time, it was May 23, and both warships were in a state of combat and sailed cautiously. In the afternoon 19 or so, what should come is still there. At that time, there was a shadow of a ship in the direction of 340 of the battleship Pismai, about 7 nautical miles away. Battleship Smythe fired five rounds at the suspicious warship, but none of them hit. Followed by the prinz eugen, judging from the size of the ship, the buildings on the deck and three chimneys, their opponent is a heavy cruiser, and prinz eugen's judgment is correct. That's the Royal Navy heavy cruiser Suffolk, which has been patrolling the Danish Strait for three days.
The Suffolk, which found two German superstar warships, quickly joined hands with its sister ship Norfolk to track the two German warships and brought all the ships about 300 nautical miles closer to the two sister ships.
At 5: 23 am on May 24, the naval battle in the Danish Strait started. In this battle, the battleship prinz eugen * * * fired 179 203mm shells and 56 105mm shells, and she was really unscathed. The famous British warship Hood was sunk by spy Mai in this naval battle. Before being sunk, prinz eugen hit the British combat cruiser with one shell and the British warship Prince of Wales with four 203mm shells. Under the joint attack of the battleship Pishmir, the British "Prince of Wales" was seriously damaged. Other 105mm shells didn't hit anything.
After this war, spies sank the Hood and the Prince of Wales together with the prinz eugen, which made the British side very angry. After the battle, Bismi was injured and returned to the port for maintenance, but prinz eugen was unscathed and continued to perform its current mission. After a refuelling, the prinz eugen continued to kill in the middle of the Atlantic.
But as a hunter, Prince Eugen doesn't know if he is lucky. Since the naval battle in the Danish Strait, there have been no British warships or even transport ships. Sailors in Prince Eugen's world, on the whole, have been sailing around looking for hunting objects. Until May 29th, prinz eugen's engine broke down and he had to return to brest. However, in this hunting, no British transport ship was found, and nothing was found. At that time, the fleet commander was really humiliated. During the idle period of prinz eugen, the British navy launched a crazy revenge on the battleship Pismai, assembled hundreds of warships, fired more than 2,000 shells on the battleship Pismai and hit more than 400 shells on the battleship Pismai. Finally, Pismai couldn't resist sinking into the sea.
In the days after that, the life of the German navy was very leisurely and there were no major combat missions. By 1944, with the progress of the Soviet-German battlefield, Germany was losing ground, and the smoke in the Baltic Sea was getting thicker and thicker. Therefore, the prinz eugen was once again assigned to combat missions to support the Germans along the Baltic Sea. On August 19, the main gun of Prince Eugen, which had been silent for more than two years, fired again. "prinz eugen" sailed for gulf of riga, and in the next two days, it shelled the town of Tukum, helping the German group in the north to restore contact with the rear forces once cut off by the Soviet Union. Prince Eugen has been very busy since the war.
10 On June 5438+05, heavy fog began to fall on the sea, which affected our sight. On this day, the battleship "prinz eugen" suffered misfortune. The bow of the battleship "prinz eugen" actually hit the abdomen of the friendly light cruiser "Leipzig" and almost split the battleship "Leipzig" in half. Two warships were so embarrassed that they stuck together and floated in the Baltic Sea. Fortunately, during this period, the two warships were not attacked by the enemy and successfully separated after 14 hours. The collision took prinz eugen more than a month to repair, but the situation of Leipzig light cruiser was even worse. In the last struggle of German Nazis, prinz eugen always supported the army and released thousands of 203mm shells back and forth.
1On May 7th, 945, Germany was defeated, and the remaining German warships, such as the prinz eugen, surrendered to the British after receiving the surrender notice. On the same day, Britain took over other German warships, including the prinz eugen. Six months later, according to the lottery results of the victors and captured Axis ships, the prinz eugen was drawn by the United States and became the property of the United States. After the Americans accepted the prinz eugen, they renamed it prinz eugen. Hearing the news, all the German sailors aboard prinz eugen breathed a sigh of relief. They feared that they would be accepted by the Soviet Union and then taken to a prison camp. However, Americans accept that at least they don't have to go to jail.
Later, the German crew on the American prinz eugen had a good time. During their stay in Boston, they were invited by American local media to tell their lives in Germany before the war and introduce some actions of the battleship prinz eugen during the war, and so on. Because of the spread of the official media, the legendary warship "Prince Eugen" was made public, forcing the European prince to become a "white mouse" in the atomic bomb test.
On July 1946, Prince Eugen became a guinea pig on bikini atoll. At 7 o'clock in the morning, the air explosion experiment of the atomic bomb began. A bomber dropped an atomic bomb at high altitude and detonated it at 5 18 feet above the water. Prince Eugen is only 1 194 yards away from the critical point. Except for prinz eugen, all other experimental ships sank, while prinz eugen was only slightly injured and still floating on the water. On July 25th of the same month, prinz eugen participated in the second nuclear test again. The atomic bomb is an explosion test in water. At 8: 35 am, the atomic bomb detonated 90 feet underwater. The same thing happened. All the other experimental ships sank. The Prince Eugen, which is 0/990 yards away from the critical point, is still floating on the water. From the outside, Prince Eugen was almost unscathed. Due to the great destructive power of the second atomic bomb explosion, the third experiment of detonating an atomic bomb in the deep sea was cancelled, and prinz eugen successfully escaped this experiment.
On August 29th, weather-beaten prinz eugen officially retired. In early September, the prinz eugen was towed to Kwajalein Atoll. Because Prince Eugen was polluted by nuclear radiation, no one dared to go near this area. In his later years, Prince Eugen spent sunrise and sunset in that distant place. Until three months later, the stern of the prinz eugen was badly damaged by the storm, and the seawater flooded and sank into a coral reef. 65438+February 2 1 day, the German heavy cruiser "prinz eugen" officially fell.