was the lead ship of the of heavy cruisers which served with Nazi Germany's during World War II. The ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1935 and launched February 1937; entered service shortly before the outbreak of war, in April 1939. The ship was named after Admiral Franz von Hipper, commander of the German battlecruiser squadron during the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and later commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet. She was armed with a main battery of eight guns and, although nominally under the limit set by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, actually displaced over .
saw a significant amount of action during the war, notably present during the Battle of the Atlantic. She led the assault on Trondheim during Operation Weserübung; while en route to her objective, she sank the British destroyer . In December 1940, she broke out into the Atlantic Ocean to operate against Allied merchant shipping, though this operation ended without significant success. In February 1941, sortied again, sinking several merchant vessels before eventually returning to Germany via the Denmark Strait. The ship was then transferred to northern Norway to participate in operations against convoys to the Soviet Union, culminating in the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31 December 1942, where she sank the destroyer and the minesweeper but was in turn damaged and forced to withdraw by the light cruisers and .
Disappointed by the failure to sink merchant ships in that battle, Adolf Hitler ordered the majority of the surface warships scrapped, though Admiral Karl Dönitz was able to persuade Hitler to retain the surface fleet. As a result, was returned to Germany and decommissioned for repairs. The ship was never restored to operational status, however, and on 3 May 1945, Royal Air Force bombers severely damaged her while she was in Kiel, Germany. Her crew scuttled the ship at her moorings, and in July 1945, she was raised and towed to Heikendorfer Bay. She was ultimately broken up for scrap in 1948–1952; her bell is currently on display at the Laboe Naval Memorial near Kiel.
Design
The of heavy cruisers was ordered in the context of German naval rearmament after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 and repudiated the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1935, Germany signed the Anglo–German Naval Agreement with Great Britain, which provided a legal basis for German naval rearmament; the treaty specified that Germany would be able to build five "treaty cruisers". The s were nominally within the 10,000-ton limit, though they significantly exceeded the figure.
was long overall and had a beam of and a maximum draft of . After the installation of a clipper bow during fitting out, her overall length increased to . The ship had a design displacement of and a full load displacement of . was powered by three sets of geared steam turbines, which were supplied with steam by twelve ultra-high pressure oil-fired boilers. The ship's top speed was , at . Her standard complement consisted of 42 officers and 1,340 enlisted men.
s primary armament was eight SK L/60 guns mounted in four twin gun turrets, placed in superfiring pairs forward and aft. Her anti-aircraft battery consisted of twelve L/65 guns, twelve guns, and eight guns. She had four triple torpedo launchers, all on the main deck next to the four range finders for the anti-aircraft guns.
s armored belt was thick; her upper deck was thick while the main armored deck was thick. The main battery turrets had thick faces and 70 mm thick sides. The heaviest armor with thickness was applied to the vertical surfaces of the conning tower, while the horizontal surfaces were limited to .
The initial design of included an aircraft hangar for one aircraft. During building, the requirements were changed and an aircraft hanger was constructed for two floatplanes that could be stored side by side. The wider aircraft hanger forced the rearrangement of the middle pair of 10.5 cm guns from the superstructure deck to the upper deck, which restricted their arc of fire towards the rear. The ship was equipped with three Arado Ar 196 seaplanes and one catapult. In 1941 the aircraft hangar was reduced with place for just one Arado and in total only two Arado floatplanes were carried.