Service History
The ship was stationed off the west coast of Mexico at the outbreak of war in 1914. She soon joined Admiral Maximilian von Spee's East Asiatic Cruiser Squadron and participated in the Battle of Coronel, where the German squadron virtually wiped out a smaller Royal Navy force sent to stop them.
Within a few weeks of Coronel, a force led by two Royal Navy battlecruisers, HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, had assembled at the Falkland Islands. Admiral Spee's squadron of two armored cruisers (SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau) and three light cruisers, appearing at Stanley for a planned raid on the port installations, was caught by surprise by the presence of the faster and more powerful battlecruisers and was destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands.
While Scharnhorst and Gneisenau engaged the battlecruisers, Admiral von Spee ordered his light cruisers to try to escape. SMS Leipzig was caught and sunk several hours after the start of the engagement by the faster and more heavily gunned British light cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Glasgow. She was severely battered by Glasgow before rolling over and sinking, leaving only 18 survivors.
Read more about this topic: SMS Leipzig
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