After having completed the minefield and the bombardment the German group turned back for German waters. The British Submarine D5 attempted to stop the bombardment but struck a mine and was sunk. Seeing no other Russian ships the operation was cancelled and the German fleet turned back.īlucher then joined a group of 3 battlecruisers and 4 cruisers and headed out to bombard the British port of Yarmouth and to lay a minefield there. One of the German cruisers spotted 2 Russian armored cruisers and attempted to lure them back to the Blucher so she could destroy them, the Russians refused to take the bait and instead withdrew to the Gulf of Finland. Then on September 3rd 1914 The Blucher joined a fleet of 7 pre-dreds, 5 cruisers and 24 destroyers and sailed into the Baltic in an attempt to draw out the Russian fleet and destroy it. The fleet began an inconclusive sweep of the Baltic in search of Russian forces. Blucher was built at a cost of $28,532,000.Ĭommisioned in 1909 she began her career in 1911 as a gunnery training ship before being transfered to the 1st Scouting Group with 3 Battlecruisers. Really the Blucher was more of a Hyper-Armored cruiser rather than a true armored cruiser because of it immense offensive capabilities, but they also werent quite battlecruisers, so the Germans called them Armored cruisers in an attempt to conceal their true power. By the time the Germans learned of this it was too late to turn back, and construction of the Blucher took place as scheduled. When the Germans learned of the true details of these new British ships, called Invincible class, and that they were to be armored with 12" battleship guns, they realized that the Invincible class was a completely new type of warship, soon to be known as battlecruisers. Germany built the Blucher to counter the new Armored cruisers rumored as being built by the British, the Germans expected this new ship to be armed with 6 or 8 230mm guns, so they designed the Blucher to have 12 210mm guns, significantly more powerful than Germany's last Armored cruisers of the Schnarnhorst class which only carried 8 210mm guns. Today we shall be looking at Germany's last armored cruiser the SMS Blucher.
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