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SMS ''Blücher'' was the last armored cruiser built by the German Empire. She was designed to match what German intelligence incorrectly believed to be the specifications of the British s. ''Blücher'' was larger than preceding armored cruisers and carried more heavy guns, but was unable to match the size and armament of the battlecruisers which replaced armored cruisers in the British Royal Navy and German Imperial Navy (''Kaiserliche Marine''). The ship was named after the Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher, the commander of Prussian forces at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. ''Blücher'' was built at the Kaiserliche Werft shipyard in Kiel between 1907 and 1909, and commissioned on 1 October 1909. The ship served in the I Scouting Group for most of her career, including the early portion of World War I. She took part in the operation to bombard Yarmouth and the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in 1914. At the Battle of Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915, ''Blücher'' was slowed significantly after being hit by gunfire from the British battlecruiser squadron under the command of Vice Admiral David Beatty. Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper, the commander of the German squadron, decided to abandon ''Blücher'' to the pursuing enemy ships in order to save his more valuable battlecruisers. Under heavy fire from the British ships, she was sunk, and British destroyers began recovering the survivors. However, the destroyers withdrew when a German zeppelin began bombing them, mistaking the sinking ''Blücher'' for a British battlecruiser. The number of casualties is unknown, with figures ranging from 747 to around 1,000. ''Blücher'' was the only warship lost during the battle. == Design == German armored cruisers—referred to as ''Große Kreuzer'' (large cruisers)—were designed for several tasks. The ships were designed to engage the reconnaissance forces of rival navies, as well as fight in the line of battle. The earliest armored cruiser——was rushed through production specifically to be deployed to China to assist in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Subsequent armored cruisers—with the exception of the two ships—served with the fleet in the reconnaissance force. On 26 May 1906, the ''Reichstag'' authorized funds for ''Blücher'', along with the first two s. Though the ship would be much larger and more powerful than previous armored cruisers, ''Blücher'' retained that designation in an attempt to conceal its more powerful nature. The ship was ordered under the provisional name "E". Her design was influenced by the need to match the armored cruisers which Britain was known to be building at the time. The Germans expected these new British ships to be armed with six or eight guns. In response, the German navy approved a design with twelve guns in six twin turrets. This was significantly more firepower than that of the previous of German armored cruisers, which only carried eight 21 cm guns. One week after the final decision was made to authorize construction of ''Blücher'', the German naval attache obtained the actual details of the new British ships, called the . In fact, HMS ''Invincible'' carried eight guns of the same type mounted on battleships. It was soon recognized that these ships were a new type of warship, which eventually came to be classified as the battlecruiser. When the details of the ''Invincible'' class came to light, it was too late to redesign ''Blücher'', and there were no funds for a redesign, so work proceeded as scheduled. ''Blücher'' was therefore arguably obsolete even before her construction started, and was rapidly surpassed by the German Navy's battlecruisers, of which the first () was ordered in 1907. Despite this, ''Blücher'' was typically deployed with the German battlecruiser squadron. The ship ultimately cost the German government 28,532,000 Goldmarks. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「SMS Blücher」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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