Plate 023 — Naval
REF: BF-NAV-023List of German Navy (Kriegsmarine) Ships in World War 2
Every major class of German Kriegsmarine warship from the Second World War, from the battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz to the U-boat fleet, with commissioning dates and how each ship met its end.
The Kriegsmarine went to war in 1939 with a fleet still years from the size Hitler's naval planners had wanted, and it never grew large enough to challenge the Royal Navy directly. What follows is a class-by-class list of its major surface ships, submarines, and auxiliary cruisers of the Second World War, with commissioning dates and final fates.
Battleships (Schlachtschiffe)
Germany commissioned four fast battleships during the war, in two related but distinct classes.
| Class | Ship | Commissioned | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bismarck class | Bismarck | 24 August 1940 | Sunk after a three-day chase and surface action with the Royal Navy, 27 May 1941 |
| Bismarck class | Tirpitz | 25 February 1941 | Capsized after RAF Lancaster bombers scored direct hits at Tromsø, 12 November 1944; 1,204 killed |
| Scharnhorst class | Scharnhorst | 7 January 1939 | Sunk at the Battle of the North Cape, 26 December 1943; 36 survivors from a crew of 1,968 |
| Scharnhorst class | Gneisenau | 21 May 1938 | Sunk as a blockship at Gotenhafen, 23 March 1945; hull raised and scrapped, 1951 |
Pocket Battleships (Panzerschiffe)
Officially classed as armored ships (Panzerschiffe), the three Deutschland-class vessels were nicknamed "pocket battleships" by the British press for combining battleship-caliber guns with a cruiser's size and speed.
| Ship | Commissioned | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| Deutschland (renamed Lützow, 1940) | 1 April 1933 | Sunk in Soviet weapons tests after being raised post-war, July 1947 |
| Admiral Scheer | 12 November 1934 | Sunk in an air raid on Kiel, 9 April 1945; the wreck lies partly buried beneath a quay |
| Admiral Graf Spee | 6 January 1936 | Scuttled off Montevideo after the Battle of the River Plate, 17 December 1939 |
Aircraft Carriers
The Kriegsmarine never commissioned an operational aircraft carrier. Its one attempt, Graf Zeppelin, was launched but abandoned unfinished as war priorities shifted.
| Ship | Status | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| Graf Zeppelin | Launched 8 December 1938; roughly 85% complete by September 1939; construction halted January 1943, never commissioned | Scuttled by her own crew near Stettin, April 1945; raised by the Soviet Navy in 1946 and sunk during weapons trials in the Baltic, August 1947; wreck located 2006 |
Heavy Cruisers (Admiral Hipper Class)
Germany's heavy cruisers fared no better than its carrier program. Of five planned Hipper-class ships, only three saw active service; a fourth was converted, unsuccessfully, into a carrier project of its own.
| Ship | Commissioned | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| Admiral Hipper | 29 April 1939 | Scuttled after an air attack, 3 May 1945; broken up for scrap, 1948–1952 |
| Blücher | 20 September 1939 | Sunk by Norwegian coastal defenses in the Oslofjord during the invasion of Norway, 9 April 1940 |
| Prinz Eugen | 1 August 1940 | Survived the war as a US war prize; sunk during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Kwajalein Atoll, 22 December 1946 |
| Seydlitz | Never completed; construction halted at roughly 95%, then a 1942 conversion to the carrier Weser was also abandoned in 1943 | Scuttled, 29 January 1945; scrapped 1953 |
Light Cruisers
The Kriegsmarine's light cruiser force dated largely from the Weimar-era rebuilding of the fleet, and most of these ships were already old by the standards of the Second World War.
| Class | Ship | Commissioned | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emden class | Emden | 15 October 1925 | Scuttled 3 May 1945; wreck scrapped in place by 1950 |
| Königsberg class | Königsberg | 17 April 1929 | Sunk by British dive bombers at Bergen, 10 April 1940 |
| Königsberg class | Karlsruhe | 6 November 1929 | Torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Truant off Kristiansand and scuttled, 9 April 1940 |
| Königsberg class | Köln | 15 January 1930 | Sunk at her moorings in Wilhelmshaven by US heavy bombers, 30 March 1945 |
| Leipzig class | Leipzig | 8 October 1931 | Reduced to a barracks ship after severe collision damage in 1944; scuttled 16 December 1946 |
| Leipzig class | Nürnberg | 2 November 1935 | Transferred to the Soviet Navy as Admiral Makarov, 5 November 1945; scrapped by 1960 |
Pre-Dreadnought Battleships Retained From the First World War
Two elderly pre-dreadnoughts, launched before the First World War, were still in commission in 1945 as training and coastal-defense ships. Older sources sometimes list them among the Kriegsmarine's cruisers, but both were battleships of the 1904-era Deutschland class.
| Ship | Fate |
|---|---|
| Schlesien | Mined off Swinemünde, 3 May 1945; sunk in shallow water by her own crew after being towed in; used her anti-aircraft guns to defend the port until the end of the war |
| Schleswig-Holstein | Used as a Baltic anti-aircraft platform from 1944; set ablaze by RAF bombing at Gdynia in December 1944 and finally sank in shallow water, 21 March 1945 |
Destroyers by Class
Germany built its destroyer force in three related classes through the late 1930s. Ten of the eighteen ships listed here, nearly the entire force sent north, were lost in the two Battles of Narvik in April 1940.
| Class | Ship | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| Type 1934 | Z1 Leberecht Maass | Sunk by German bombs in a friendly-fire incident, 22 February 1940 |
| Type 1934 | Z2 Georg Thiele | Beached and destroyed at the Second Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1934 | Z3 Max Schultz | Sunk by a mine with all hands, 22 February 1940 |
| Type 1934 | Z4 Richard Beitzen | Survived the war; scrapped 1949 |
| Type 1934A | Z5 Paul Jacobi | Survived the war; transferred to France as Desaix |
| Type 1934A | Z6 Theodor Riedel | Survived the war; transferred to France as Kléber |
| Type 1934A | Z7 Hermann Schoemann | Scuttled after battle damage, May 1942 |
| Type 1934A | Z8 Bruno Heinemann | Sunk by a mine off the French coast, January 1942 |
| Type 1934A | Z9 Wolfgang Zenker | Scuttled at the Second Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1934A | Z10 Hans Lody | Survived the war; transferred to Britain |
| Type 1934A | Z11 Bernd von Arnim | Scuttled at the Second Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1934A | Z12 Erich Giese | Sunk at the Second Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1934A | Z13 Erich Koellner | Sunk at the Second Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1934A | Z14 Friedrich Ihn | Survived the war; transferred to the Soviet Union |
| Type 1934A | Z15 Erich Steinbrinck | Survived the war; transferred to the Soviet Union |
| Type 1934A | Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt | Sunk at the Battle of the Barents Sea, 31 December 1942 |
| Type 1936 | Z17 Diether von Roeder | Scuttled at the First Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1936 | Z18 Hans Lüdemann | Scuttled at the Second Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1936 | Z19 Hermann Künne | Scuttled at the Second Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1936 | Z20 Karl Galster | Survived the war; scrapped 1958 |
| Type 1936 | Z21 Wilhelm Heidkamp | Sunk at the First Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
| Type 1936 | Z22 Anton Schmitt | Sunk at the First Battle of Narvik, April 1940 |
Torpedo Boats (Torpedoboote)
Smaller than the fleet destroyers, German torpedo boats filled escort and coastal roles throughout the war. Most classes were built or laid down in the years just before and during the conflict.
| Class | Ships | Built |
|---|---|---|
| Type 1923 (Möwe class) | 6: Möwe, Falke, Greif, Kondor, Albatros, Seeadler | 1926–1928 |
| Type 1924 (Wolf class) | 6: Wolf, Iltis, Jaguar, Leopard, Luchs, Tiger | 1927–1929 |
| Type 1935 | 12: T1–T12 | 1937–1939 |
| Type 1937 | 9: T13–T21 | 1939–1941 |
| Type 1939 (Elbing class) | 15: T22–T36 | 1941–1944 |
Auxiliary Cruisers (Hilfskreuzer)
Converted merchant ships disguised as neutral or Allied freighters, Germany's eleven auxiliary cruisers sailed alone into distant oceans to raid Allied shipping, most successfully in the first two years of the war.
| Ship | Designation | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| Orion | HSK-1 | Raided April 1940 to August 1941, sinking or mining 13 ships; bombed and beached off Swinemünde while carrying survivors of the battleship Schlesien, 4 May 1945 |
| Atlantis | HSK-2 | Sunk by the British cruiser HMS Devonshire, 22 November 1941 |
| Widder | HSK-3 | Raided May–October 1940; survived the war as a repair ship, transferred to Britain |
| Thor | HSK-4 | Destroyed by the explosion of the supply ship Uckermark at Yokohama, 30 November 1942 |
| Pinguin | HSK-5 | Sunk by the British heavy cruiser HMS Cornwall off the Seychelles, 8 May 1941 |
| Stier | HSK-6 | Scuttled after a gun duel with the Liberty ship SS Stephen Hopkins, 27 September 1942 |
| Komet | HSK-7 | Sunk by British destroyers and motor torpedo boats in the English Channel, 14 October 1942 |
| Kormoran | HSK-8 | Sunk in a mutually destructive gun battle with the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney, 19 November 1941 |
| Michel | HSK-9 | Torpedoed by the American submarine USS Tarpon off Yokohama, 17 October 1943 |
| Coronel | HSK-10 | Never completed a raiding cruise; damaged attempting a Channel breakout in early 1943 and converted to the fighter-direction ship Togo, which survived the war |
| Hansa | HSK-11 | Commissioned 12 February 1944 but never sailed as a raider; served as a cadet training ship and in the 1944–45 Baltic evacuations |
U-Boat Types (Summary)
The U-boat arm dwarfed every other part of the Kriegsmarine in numbers built. The table below summarizes the main combat types; individual boats and sub-variants are covered on dedicated pages for the Type II, Type VII, Type IX, and Type XXI and XXIII boats.
| Type | Role | Built | Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type II (IIA–IID) | Coastal training and short-range boat | 50 | 1934–1940 |
| Type VII (all variants) | Mainstay Atlantic attack boat | 709 | 1936–1945 |
| Type IX (all variants) | Long-range Atlantic and Indian Ocean boat | 194 | 1938–1945 |
| Type XXI | Late-war high-speed "Elektroboot"; only one completed a war patrol | 118 commissioned | 1944–1945 |
| Type XXIII | Coastal Elektroboot; six conducted war patrols | 61 | 1944–1945 |
Frequently asked questions
How many German battleships were built in World War 2?
Four fast battleships were commissioned: Bismarck and Tirpitz of the Bismarck class, and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau of the Scharnhorst class. All four were lost during the war, the last, Gneisenau, scuttled as a blockship in March 1945.
What was a German pocket battleship?
It was the British press's nickname for the Deutschland-class Panzerschiffe: Deutschland (renamed Lützow), Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee. They combined 28 cm guns with a cruiser-sized hull, fast enough to outrun most warships that outgunned them.
Did Germany ever complete an aircraft carrier?
No. Graf Zeppelin was launched in 1938 and reached roughly 85 percent completion before work stopped in 1943. She was scuttled near Stettin in 1945, raised by the Soviet Navy, and sunk during weapons trials in 1947.
How many German destroyers were lost at Narvik?
Ten of the eighteen Type 1934, 1934A, and 1936 destroyers listed here were sunk or scuttled during the two Battles of Narvik in April 1940, destroying nearly the entire force Germany had sent to Norway.
What were German auxiliary cruisers used for?
Converted merchant ships disguised as neutral or Allied freighters, the eleven Hilfskreuzer raided Allied shipping alone in distant oceans. Ships such as Atlantis and Pinguin sank or captured dozens of vessels before the Royal Navy hunted most of them down by 1943.
How many U-boats did Germany build in World War 2?
Numbers varied sharply by type: 50 Type II coastal boats, 709 Type VII boats (the mainstay of the Atlantic campaign), 194 Type IX long-range boats, 118 Type XXI, and 61 Type XXIII late-war electric boats, most of the last two types built too late to see significant action.