The Buried Battleship!

[Music] if I was to tell you that beneath an unassuming patch of scrubby grass and the Kiel Naval Base in Germany one of Germany's most famous battleships has been buried you'd probably think I was lying or mad but incredibly is completely true the remains of a battleship does indeed lie unmarked and forgotten today how this came about is a fascinating and slightly unreal story associated with the destruction of Hitler's wartime Navy the ship's name the admiral scheer the 1919 treaty of versailles signed after world war one stipulated that germany was not allowed any warships over 10,000 tons in displacement effectively preventing Germany from possessing battleships the post-war vimar Republic's Navy the Reich's marina was already edging towards disregarding these restrictions before Hitler came to power and a clear plan was hatched to circumvent their sigh and build more powerful capital ships the Germans created the so called Panzer shiver were armored ships basically heavily armored cruisers that mounted battleships guns giving rise to the term pocket battleships three ships were built between 1929 and 1936 the Deutschland class each vessel was about twelve and a half thousand tons at standard displacement and radical in how weight was saved they were the first major warships to use welding rather than riveting and were all diesel powered instead of using oil fired boilers when the Nazis came to power in January 1933 they continued the program resulting in the completion of the three vessels Deutschland Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee the class first saw action in the Spanish Civil War the Admiral Scheer bombarding the port of almería with her 11 inch or 28 centimeter guns just before world war ii broke out the Germans put Deutschland and Admiral Graf Spee to sea to start commerce raiding as soon as Britain declared war on the 3rd of September 1939 the Deutschland to Germany and was hastily renamed the loot Seoul it was thought wise not to risk a ship carrying the nation's name the Graf Spee had a spectacular run until brought to battle by three British cruisers in the South Atlantic damaged she put into neutral montevideo harbor in uruguay her captain convinced that strong British reinforcements awaited his ship if he left the harbour scuttled the Grouch Bay in the River Plate where she still lies today the admiral scheer was like her sisters a hundred and eighty six meters or six hundred and ten feet long with a beam of twenty one and a half meters or seventy feet her full load displacement was fifteen thousand four hundred and twenty tons her top speed was twenty eight point three knots and she could cruise at twenty knots for nine thousand nautical miles her compliment was thirty officers and up to one thousand and forty ratings the admiral scheer was in action interdicting allied convoys supplying the soviet union through the Arctic including the famous attack on convoy PQ 17 from the end of 1942 until the end of 1944 she was used as a training vessel in Germany before using a heavy guns to support German ground forces resisting the advancing Red Army by March 1945 the Admiral Shia's guns were worn out by constant use and she was in need of repair on the 8th of March she began a voyage to kill to have her guns reliant carrying 800 civilian refugees and 200 wounded German soldiers but a minefield prevented her arrival and she instead unloaded at chena Mandir before returning to action shelling Soviet forces outside the city of kohlberg until she ran out of ammunition loaded with refugees the Admiral Scheer arrived in Kiel on the 18th of March 1945 mooring of the Deutsche warka basin her Stern turret had its guns replaced in early April allied airpower proved to be the downfall of many of Germany's capital ships in 1944 245 the battleship Tirpitz was the first to go bombed on the 12th of November 1944 by the Royal Air Force's famous Dambusters squadron number six one seven hit several times by enormous 12,000 pound tallboy bombs in Tromso fjord in Norway the Tirpitz capsized Germany's remaining surface warships were often immobile imports due to lack of fuel and ammunition making them prime targets for aerial attack the wrecked battle cruiser denies now was scuttled as a block ship in Gdynia harbour in Poland the night of the 9th of April 1945 the admiral scheer was in the Kiel harbour when 300 British Lancaster's attacked at least five 12,000 pound tallboy bombs struck the ship or near the ship crippled she rolled over and completely capsized her superstructure resting on the floor of the key it has been suggested that the admiral scheer along with other heavy cruisers and battleships was specifically targeted for destruction by the raf as there was a fear that the soviets would claim the pocket battleship as a war prize keel fell under the british zone of occupation in post-war Germany in July 1945 the British authorities began scrapping the Admiral Scheer the valuable manganese bronze propellers were the first to be removed followed by sections of armour plate the keel steel sheets and other non-ferrous metals some of it was removed using explosives divided up into 200 to 350 tonnes segments and taken ashore by cranes a scrap as the scrapping process reached the waterline the wreck was rolled slightly so some items above the waterline could be removed the metal removed from the admiral scheer was shipped to hamburg and thence to england by july 1946 as much as possible had been removed from the ship she then sat in economic limbo the only way to complete the scrapping was to tow the wreck to a graving dock which was too expensive a proposition the time then in 1949 the decision was taken to get rid of the section of harbor where the wrecks at this section of the old naval base was artificial a basin connected by a narrow channel to the main harbor at the time no one thought that Germany would be permitted a navy again less alone large warships in late 1949 the channel into the basin was coffer dammed off and drained then the key where the wreck of the Admiral Scheer sat was filled in with a huge volume of sand and thousands of tons of rubble from Kiehl's bombed out districts it is possible to locate the pocket battleship today where she lies inside the new keel naval Arsenal below a long line of trees and grass beside a carpark as possible to pinpoint the location because of this large building seen in this 1945 photograph this buildings survived the bombing and the war and still exists today and provides a point of reference for locating the wreck so though no marker lists the spot today below some scrubby grass and stumpy trees in a quiet corner of the keel Naval Base lies the desiccated carcass of the last World War 2 German battleship in existence above water the admiral scheer the battleship that history literally buried thanks for watching please subscribe and share and also help support my channel at PayPal and patreon details in the description box below [Music]

Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 1,172,627

Keywords: The Buried Battleship!, Mark Felton Productions, Admiral Scheer, Admiral Graf Spee, Kiel, Pocket Battleship

Id: d0lsdvdOdQs

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2019