The Kriegsmarine #1 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Captain Hellmuth Heye of Admiral Hipper

Kapitän zur See Hellmuth Heye of the 14,000-ton heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, was so impressed by the astonishing and, some say, reckless bravery of Lieutenant Commander Gerard Roope of the 1,345-ton destroyer HMS Glowworm, in tackling a ship ten times the size of his own, and somehow managing to ram her, off Norway in April 1940, that he contacted the ICRC, in what was the first case in British history of such a recommendation coming from the enemy!
The second case was that of Oberleutnant zur See Klemens Schamong of the U-468, who, having survived with only a pitiful six others to tell the tale of the bravery of Flying Officer Lloyd Trigg - the New Zealand born pilot of a Liberator bomber that sank his boat with 42 of her crew off West Africa in August 1943, in pressing home that attack - still had the extraordinary generosity of spirit when picked up by a British naval vessel, to make the recommendation that be awarded the Victoria Cross. Both Commander Roope and Flying Officer Trigg were posthumously awarded the VC after the war.

Answer: Nürnberg

At the end of the war the light cruiser Nürnberg, was moored at Copenhagen. Having survived an attempt by the newly-liberated Danes to sink her, she surrendered, and with the Prinz Eugen, returned to Germany, where she was handed over to the Soviet Union. Re-named Admiral Makarov and commissioned into the Baltic Fleet of the Soviet Navy, she served until 1959, and was scrapped in 1961.

Answer: Admiral Scheer

During her South Atlantic and Indian Ocean cruises in 1940-41, the Admiral Scheer rendezvoused with auxiliary cruisers, supply ships, tankers and U-boats on a regular basis. She operated with the HK Atlantis for a week in February 1941, but as the ships were so fundamentally different, their captains decided that hunting together probably wouldn't work, much to the annoyance of the SKL! In December 1941 there was the possibility of joining forces with the HK Thor, but this idea was also abandoned due to the vast difference in their respective speeds, and Thor's captain Otto Kähler's view that his raider would simply become a supply tender and prison ship for the battleship!

Answer: Scuttled as a block-ship in Gotenhafen

Severely damaged by RAF bombers while in drydock at Kiel in February 1942, she was moved out of their range to Gotenhafen [Gdynia] for repairs, refit and an upgrade of her main armament. But, following the failure of the task force led by the Admiral Hipper and Lützow against an Arctic convoy, and Hitler's subsequent order that the surface fleet be scrapped, all work on Gneisenau was stopped.

In March 1945, she was towed by the destroyer Z.31 to the harbour entrance and sunk as a block-ship.

Answer: Oslofjord

On April 9 1940, the brand-new Hipper-class heavy cruiser Blücher, while leading the heavy cruiser Lützow, the light-cruiser Emden and torpedo boats Kondor Albatros and Möwe, and carrying troops up Oslofjord to occupy the Norwegian capital, came under fire from the 47-year old German-made 28cm shore batteries of Oscarsborg and Dröback, before being hit by two 40-year old torpedoes fired at point blank range from Kaholmen in the Dröback Narrows. With her port side ripped open and several fires raging out of control, a 10.5cm magazine blew up and the cruiser capsized and sank with great loss of life.

Answer: Lützow

On April 10 1940, while heading back to Germany for repairs following the Oslofjord debacle, during which the heavy cruiser Blücher was ambushed and sunk, the heavy cruiser Lützow was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Spearfish, almost severing her stern. With no rudder or screws, taking water and settling deeper by the minute, she drifted helplessly as preparations were made to abandon ship, but luckily for her, the Spearfish had inexplicably disappeared, and she somehow remained afloat to be towed back to Kiel!

Answer: Günther Lütjens was in overall command of each group

In December 1939, as Konteradmiral, Günther Lütjens commanded the cruiser force of Leipzig, Nürnberg and Köln, covering destroyers returning from a mine-laying operation to the north-east of England, In April 1940, in Operation Weserübung, now Vizeadmiral, Lütjens commanded the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and their destroyer escorts. As Admiral, he again commanded the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during Operation Berlin in March 1941, and, most controversially, as Fleet Commander, led the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in Operation Rheinübung in May 1941, during which he, and nearly 4,000 other sailors, lost their lives.

Answer: Cruisers HMS Belfast and HMS Jamaica

At 19.19 hours, with the Scharnhorst, slowed by several hits from the 14-inch guns of the battleship Duke of York, torpedo hits from the two destroyers, and with her main armament out of action, Admiral Bruce Fraser ordered the cruisers HMS Belfast and HMS Jamaica to ' ... finish her off with torpedoes'

Answer: HMS Barham

On November 25 1941, U-331, commanded by Leutnant Hans-Dietrich Baron von Tiesenhausen, fired a salvo of four torpedoes at a squadron of the British Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Cunningham. The battleship HMS Barham, fatally damaged, slowly capsized and, in what must be one of the most famous and spectacular images of the war, exploded, taking over two thirds of her crew with her to the bottom of the sea.

Answer: Horst Gerlach

All the Hilfskreuzer commanders who completed raider cruises received the Knight's Cross, or Ritterkreuz, with four of them - Krüder, Rogge, Kähler and von Ruckteschell adding the Oak Leaves. The unfortunate Gerlach, commander of the ill-fated HK Stier, the last raider to make it out into the Atlantic, which was sunk by the lightly-armed American 'Liberty Ship' Stephen Hopkins in September 1942, in what must be one of the most extraordinary naval battles of the war, was the odd man out.

Answer: Königsberg

Damaged by Norwegian shore batteries during the taking of the port of Bergen, the light cruiser Königsberg was forced to carry out emergency repairs there before she could attempt to escape back to Germany. Spotted alongside the pier, and attacked by RAF Skua dive-bombers, she sustained three hits and sank, and has the dubious distinction of being the first major warship in history to be sunk by enemy aircraft.

Answer: U-48

On June 22 1942, the U-48, the single most successful U-Boat in the Kriegsmarine, returned from her twelfth, and final, operational war patrol, to spend the remainder of the war as a training vessel. Under the respective commands of Herbert Schultze, Heinrich 'Ajax' Bleichrodt and Hans Rudolf Rösing, she sank 51 ships for a total of 307,000 tons.

The second most successful boat was the U-103 under the respective commands of Victor Schütze and Werner Winter, with 237,600 tons. Contrary to popular belief, the U-99 was not the most successful, but the eighth most successful boat.

Her commander, 'Silent Otto' Kretchmer, was the most successful commander, but his impressive tonnage record was racked up in two boats: U-23 - 5 ships sunk, among them the British destroyer HMS Daring, and the U-99 - 35 ships sunk, including the British Armed Merchant Cruisers HMS Laurentic, HMS Patroclus and HMS Forfar, for a total of 238,900 tons.

Answer: Duquesa

One of the first refrigeration ships, the coal-burning British freighter Duquesa was captured by the Admiral Scheer in December 1940, carrying a cargo of 9,000 tons of meat and 14.8 million eggs! The many German raider and U-Boat crews who subsequently lived off her bounty, nicknamed her 'The Floating Delicatessen' or 'The Commissary Department - Wilhelmshaven South! Re-named Herzogin, and re-designated a naval supply ship, she was taken in tow by the tanker Nordmark to conserve what little remained of her fuel, simply to keep her refrigeration plant working. With her bridge and upper works being steadily dismantled, her decks, masts, indeed anything that could be used, was burned, to maintain the condition of her valuable cargo.

In February 1941 however, with nothing left to burn, and having provided a last 360,000 eggs to Captain Ernst-Felix Krüder's Hilfskreuzer Pinguin, under his supervision, her dilapidated remains were blown up.

Answer: Rösselsprung

In June 1942, the objective of Operation Rösselsprung, or 'Knight's Move', was the Russia-bound convoy PQ17, a reported thirty-six ships, escorted by six destroyers and assorted smaller vessels. The Germans assembled two battle groups, the Tirpitz and the Admiral Hipper, under Fleet Commander Admiral Schniewind, and the Lützow, with the Admiral Scheer, under Vice Admiral Kummetz. With the Lützow dropping out, the other three ships put to sea together, but having been spotted, were ordered to turn back for fear of attack from carrier-borne aircraft. Unaware that the German ships had been recalled, and with the heavy escort too far away to be of any help, the convoy was controversially ordered to 'scatter'! With each ship proceeding totally unprotected, nineteen were sunk by U-Boats and aircraft over the next three days.

In the end, of the thirty-six vessels that had sailed, twenty-three were sunk, two turned back and a mere eleven reached Russia. The mere possibility of an attack by the Tirpitz, which in the end, didn't get near it, let alone fire a shot, led to an entire convoy being virtually wiped out.

Answer: Max Schultz and Leberecht Maass

On February 22 1940, the first destroyer flotilla was attacked, while negotiating a mine-free channel in the German Bight south of the Doggerbank, by Luftwaffe bombers, whose crews had not been informed of their presence. Both Leberecht Maass and Max Schultz were hit, and also possibly strayed into a minefield while taking evasive action, and were lost, with their commanders and most of their crews.