Atlantic Operations
Admiral Hipper left the Norwegian theater in September 1940 for an overhaul in Wilhelmshaven. After the routine maintenance was completed toward the end of the month, the ship attempted to break out into the Atlantic Ocean to raid merchant traffic. The engine oil feed system caught fire and was severely damaged. The fire forced the crew to shut down the ship's propulsion system until the blaze could be brought under control; this rendered Admiral Hipper motionless for several hours on the open sea. British reconnaissance failed to locate the ship, and after the fire was extinguished, the ship returned to Hamburg's Blohm & Voss shipyard, where repairs lasted slightly over a week.
The ship made a second attempt to break out into the Atlantic on 30 November; she successfully navigated the Denmark Strait undetected on 6 December. Admiral Hipper intercepted a convoy of 20 troopships on 24 December, some 700 nautical miles (1,300 km; 810 mi) west of Cape Finisterre. Five of the twenty ships were allocated to Operation Excess. The convoy was protected by a powerful escort composed of the aircraft carriers Furious and Argus, the cruisers Berwick, Bonaventure, and Dunedin, and six destroyers. Admiral Hipper did not initially spot the escorting warships, and so began attacking the convoy. She badly damaged two ships, one of which was the 13,994-long-ton (14,219 t) transport Empire Trooper, with her main guns before spotting the heavy cruiser Berwick and destroyers steaming toward her. She quickly withdrew, using her main guns to keep the destroyers at bay.
Ten minutes later, Berwick reappeared off Admiral Hipper's port bow; the German cruiser fired several salvos from her forward turrets and scored hits on the British cruiser's rear turrets, waterline, and forward superstructure. Admiral Hipper then disengaged, to prevent the British destroyers from closing to launch a torpedo attack. By now, the ship was running low on fuel, and so she put into Brest in occupied France on 27 December. While en route, Admiral Hipper encountered and sank an isolated 6,078-long-ton (6,176 t) cargo ship. Another round of routine maintenance work was effected while the ship was in Brest, readying her for another sortie into the Atlantic shipping lanes.
On 1 February 1941, Admiral Hipper embarked on her second Atlantic sortie. The Kriegsmarine had initially sought to send the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to operate in concert with Admiral Hipper, but after Gneisenau suffered storm damage in December that prevented the participation of the two ships. Repairs were effected quickly, however, and the two battleships broke out into the Atlantic in early February. Admiral Hipper rendezvoused with a tanker off the Azores to top up her fuel tanks. On 11 February, the ship encountered and sank an isolated transport from convoy HG 53, which had been dispersed by U-boat and Luftwaffe attacks. That evening, she picked up the unescorted convoy SLS 64, which contained nineteen merchant ships. The following morning, Admiral Hipper closed in and sank several of the ships. The British reported only seven ships were lost, totaling 32,806 long tons (33,332 t), along with damage to two more. The Germans claimed Admiral Hipper had sunk thirteen of the nineteen freighters, while some survivors reported fourteen ships of the convoy were sunk.
Following the attack on convoy SLS 64, Admiral Hipper's fuel stocks were running low. She therefore returned to Brest on 15 February. British bombers were regularly attacking the port, however, and the Kriegsmarine therefore decided Admiral Hipper should return to Germany, where it could be better protected. Before the ship could leave, damage caused to the ship's hull by wrecks in the harbor had to be repaired. On 15 March, the ship slipped out of Brest, unobserved, and passed through the Denmark Strait eight days later. While en route, Admiral Hipper stopped to refuel in Bergen. By 28 March, the cruiser was docked in Kiel, having made the entire journey without being detected by the British. Upon arrival, the ship went into the Deutsche Werke shipyard for an extensive overhaul, which lasted for seven months. After completion of the refit, Admiral Hipper conducted sea trials in the Baltic before putting in to Gotenhafen on 21 December for some minor refitting. In January 1942, the ship had her steam turbines overhauled at the Blohm & Voss shipyard; a degaussing coil was fitted to the ship's hull during this overhaul. By March, the ship was again fully operational.
Read more about this topic: German Cruiser Admiral Hipper, History
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