Tirsdag 18. juni 1935 signerer Tyskland en marineavtale med England. Avtalen begrenser størrelsen på Tysklands marine til 35 prosent i forhold til den britiske marine. For Tyskland er ikke dette et problem da de ikke ville kunne overstige avtalen på mange år. Men tyskerne trenger større og bedre skip enn Frankrike og England for å få overtaket. Derfor jukser tyskerne med de offisielle tallene som også var tilfellet med krysseren Blücher. I følge deres offisielle tall var krysseren Blücher på underkant av 13.000 tonn, men skipet var faktum nesten så stort som på 18.000 reell depl. tonn! Altså en særdeles tung krysser innen sin klasse! Under invasjonen av Norge, operasjon Weserübung, seilte den tunge krysseren Blücher sammen med krysserne Emden og Lutzow samt andre støtte og eskorteskip i den såkalte Kampfgruppe V, deriblant med torpedojageren Albatros som også gikk tapt dagen etter Blücher. Kampgruppen hadde til oppgave å besette Oslo og ta Kong Haakon VII og hans familie til fange. Planene tyskerne hadde ble ødelagt av Oscarsborg festning som åpnet ild mot den tyske kampgruppen i Oslofjorden. Blücher ble raskt truffet av granater og torpedoer og sank rett nord for Oscarsborg nær Askholmene. Under operasjonen senket den tyske kampgruppen det norske skipet Sørland som var så uheldig å befinne i det samme området som tyskerne, og flere private og sivile hus i den lille byen Drøbak ble truffet. Rundt seks hundre tyske soldater omkom i brannene og det kalde vannet da Blücher gikk ned. Blücher ligger i dag med kjølen opp på dypt vann fra sekstifem til nitti meter...

Thursday 18th of June 1935 Germany signs a navy agreement with England. The agreement reduces the German navy to 35 percent of the British navy. For Germany this isn't a problem since they won't be able to go pass this limit for years. But Germany needs bigger and better ships than France and England to get the upper hand. Therefore the Germans cheats with their official numbers on their new ships as it also was for the heavy cruiser Blücher. In their official papers the cruiser Blücher were under 13,000 tons, but were in fact as a big almost 18,000 real depl. tons! Therefore a really big heavy cruiser for her class! During the invasion of Norway, operation Weserübung, the heavy cruiser Blücher sailed together with the other German cruisers Emden and Lutzow and several support and escorting ships in the so-called Kampfgruppe V, which included the destroyer Albatros who also was lost the day after Blücher. The task force were supposed to occupy Oslo and capture King Haakon VII and his family. The German plans for the operation were destroyed by the Norwegian fortress Oscarsborg who opened fire on the German task force in the Oslofjord. Blücher was rapidly hit by gun shells and torpedoes and sunk just north of Oscarsborg close to Askholmene. During the operation the German battle group sunk the Norwegian ship Sørland which were so unlucky to be in the same area as the Germans, and several private civilian houses were hit in the small city of Drøbak. Some six hundred German soldiers lost their lives in all the fires and the cold water when Blücher went down! Blücher lies today with her keel up in deep waters down to a depth of sixty five to ninety meters...

GPS: N 59 42.024 E 10 35.787

Supplementary information provided by German Kriegsmarine Encyclopedia;

These heavy cruisers of the Kriegsmarine were a result of the Washington Fleet Treaty of 1921, so called " Washington Cruisers". Their displacement was not to exceed 10.000 tons and their main artillery was limited to 8" (20,3 cm) guns, but in reality they were up to 60% bigger than allowed. Between 1935 and 1937 the keels of five of this ships were laid down which belonged to two slightly different classes of ships: The Admiral Hipper and her sister Ship Blücher, the improved second batch consisting of the Prinz Eugen, Seydlitz and Lützow. The last two were originally planned to be big CLs with an armament of twelve 15 cm guns, but due to the lack of guns and turrets and the threat of a new class of Soviet cruisers, the ships were built as additional ships of the Prinz Eugen design. Those ships were designed with the idea of commerce war in mind, they should attack allied merchant shipping and evade allied warships, but it soon got obvious that they were not ideal for this task. With their high-pressure steam engine their fuel consumption was too high and their operational range was not big enough to be used in the North Atlantic. In addition, the complicated engine construction often broke down. Of the five ships, only three got completed at all. The Admiral Hipper was destroyed by her own crew in the final days of the war. Blucher was sunk on April 9th 1940 in the Oslo fjord. Prinz Eugen, often called the "lucky ship" was the only major german warship that survived the war and was sunk after atomic bomb test in the Kwajalein Atoll. Some parts of the ship's equipment is still existing today: One of its float planes, the Arado 296, is now in the Silverhill Storage Facility of the Smithsonian. The ship bell is now in the US Naval Museum at Washington, the guns of turret Anton (which were removed before the atomic bomb tests) are still at weapons Testing Facility in Dahgren, Virginia. One of the props was salvaged from the wreck and is now on display at the Marineehrenmal in Laboe, Germany. Lützow was uncompleted sold to Russia in 1940 and was never completed. She was scraped in the late 1950s. The Seydlitz was to be converted to an aircraft carrier, but was never completed, too. The ship was captured by the Russians in Königsberg and scrapped in 1958

Edited 29.06.2007