SMS Bremse - Career

Career

Over the period 11–20 October 1916, Bremse and Brummer served with the High Seas Fleet in the North Sea. On 10 January 1917, the two ships laid a minefield off Norderney. They escorted minesweepers on 1–13 March based in Emden and Wilhelmshaven. Their first major offensive operation was an attack on a British convoy in October 1917. Britain had agreed to ship 250,000 t (250,000 long tons; 280,000 short tons) tons of coal per month to Norway, and a regular stream of convoys carrying shipments of coal was crossing the North Sea by late 1917. These were usually weakly escorted by only a couple of destroyers and armed trawlers. Attempts to interdict them with U-boats had to that point been ineffective, so Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the chief of the Admiralstab, decided to deploy a surface force to carry out a surprise attack to supplement the U-boat campaign. In addition to damaging British shipping, Scheer sought to divert escorts from the Atlantic theater, where his U-boats were concentrated. Bremse, commanded by Fregattenkapitän Westerkamp, and Brummer, commanded by Fregattenkapitän Leonhardi, were selected for the first such operation. Their high speed and large radius of action, coupled with their resemblance to British light cruisers, made them suited to the task. In preparation for the raid, their crews painted the ships dark gray to further camouflage them as British vessels.

Half an hour after dawn on the morning of 17 October, Brummer and Bremse attacked a westbound convoy about 70 nautical miles (130 km; 81 mi) east of Lerwick. The convoy consisted of twelve merchantmen and was escorted by the destroyers HMS Strongbow and Mary Rose and a pair of armed trawlers which had departed from Bergen. At dawn lookouts aboard Stronghold reported two unidentified ships closing on the convoy. Mistaking them for British cruisers Strongbow flashed recognition signals, but was suddenly fired upon at a range of 2,700 m (8,900 ft) by a barrage of 15 cm shells. Mary Rose tried to come to her assistance but was also hit; both ships were quickly sunk. Brummer and Bremse then turned their attention to the convoy, hunting down and sinking nine of the merchantmen, before returning to port. One of the armed trawlers, the Elise, was fired on by Bremse while attempting to pick up survivors. None of the ships were able to send a wireless report, and despite having a squadron of sixteen light cruisers at sea to the south of the convoy, the British did not learn of the attack until 16:00, when it was too late. Admiral David Beatty said of the action that 'luck was against us.' The Admiralty responded to the raid by adding more and bigger escorts.

Late in the war, the Admiralstab considered sending Brummer and Bremse on a commerce raiding mission into the Atlantic. They were to operate off the Azores in concert with an oiler. The central Atlantic was out of the normal range of the U-boats, and convoys were therefore lightly defended in the area. The Admiralstab canceled the plan, however, after it was determined that refueling at sea would be too difficult. Another problem was the tendency of the two ships to emit clouds of red sparks when steaming at speeds over 20 kn (37 km/h; 23 mph); this would hamper their ability to evade Allied ships at night. On 2 April 1918, Bremse laid a minefield consisting of 304 mines in the North Sea. She laid another 150 mines in the same area on 11 April. Bremse and her sister ended the month with a fleet sortie with the rest of the battle fleet on 22–24 April. On 11 May, Bremse laid another minefield in the North Sea with 400 mines. Three days later, she laid another 420 mines in the North Sea. She was to have been part of the final sortie of the High Seas Fleet in October 1918, but the operation was cancelled due to the outbreak of mutiny in the German Fleet.