SMS Niobe

SMS ''Niobe'' was the second member of the ten-ship of light cruisers that were built for the German ''Kaiserliche Marine'' (Imperial Navy) in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The ''Gazelle'' class was the culmination of earlier unprotected cruiser and aviso designs, combining the best aspects of both types in what became the progenitor of all future light cruisers of the Imperial fleet. Built to be able to serve with the main German fleet and as a colonial cruiser, she was armed with a battery of ten guns and a top speed of . The ship had a long career, serving in all three German navies, along with the Yugoslav and Italian fleets over the span of more than forty years.

''Niobe'' served in both home and overseas waters in the Imperial Navy, serving in a variety of roles, including as a flotilla leader for torpedo boats, as a scout for the main fleet, and as a station ship with the East Asia Squadron. After the outbreak of World War I, the ship joined the vessels tasked with defending Germany's North Sea coast. By late 1915, she was withdrawn from active service and used as a headquarters ship for various commands. She was disarmed in 1917, but as one of the cruisers permitted to the postwar ''Reichsmarine'' (Navy of the Realm) by the Treaty of Versailles, she was modernized and rearmed in the early 1920s.

The ship saw no active service with the ''Reichsmarine'' and, in 1925, Germany sold the ship to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia). There, she was renamed ''Dalmacija'' and served in the Royal Yugoslav Navy until April 1941, when she was captured by the Italians during the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. Renamed ''Cattaro'', she served in the Italian ''Regia Marina'' (Royal Navy) until the Italian surrender in September 1943. She was then seized by the German occupiers of Italy, who restored her original name. She was used in the Adriatic Sea briefly until December 1943, when she ran aground on the island of Silba, and was subsequently destroyed by British Motor Torpedo Boats. The wreck was ultimately salvaged and broken up for scrap between 1947 and 1952.

Design

Following the construction of the unprotected cruisers of the and the aviso for the German (Imperial Navy), the Construction Department of the (Imperial Navy Office) prepared a design for a new small cruiser that combined the best attributes of both types of vessels. The designers had to design a small cruiser with armor protection that had an optimal combination of speed, armament, and stability necessary for fleet operations, along with the endurance to operate on foreign stations in the German colonial empire. The resulting ''Gazelle'' design provided the basis for all of the light cruisers built by the German fleet to the last official designs prepared in 1914.

After construction of had begun, the German Navy secured the passing of the Naval Law of 1898; this act authorized a total cruiser strength of thirty small cruisers. Two were ordered immediately, the second of which became ''Niobe''. Both of these new ships differed in minor details from ''Gazelle'', ''Niobe'' being fitted with more powerful Thornycroft boilers, which significantly increased the power of the ship's propulsion system and thus top speed compared to ''Gazelle''.

''Niobe'' was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced normally and up to at full combat load. Her propulsion system consisted of two four-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines manufactured by AG Germania in Tegel. They were designed to give , for a top speed of . The engines were powered by eight coal-fired Thornycroft water-tube boilers. ''Niobe'' carried of coal, which gave her a range of at . She had a crew of 14 officers and 243 enlisted men.

The ship was armed with ten SK L/40 guns in single mounts protected by gun shields. Two were placed side by side forward on the forecastle, six were located amidships, three on either side, and two were placed side by side aft. The guns could engage targets out to . They were supplied with 1,000 rounds of ammunition, for 100 shells per gun. She was also equipped with two torpedo tubes with five torpedoes. They were submerged in the hull on the broadside. She was protected by an armored deck that was thick. The conning tower had thick sides, and the gun shields were thick.

Service history

Construction and early career

''Niobe'' was ordered under the contract name "B" and was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen on 30 August 1898 and launched on 18 July 1899, after which fitting-out work commenced. Named after Niobe, a figure from Greek mythology, she was commissioned on 25 June 1900 to begin sea trials, which lasted until 22 August. She was thereafter placed in reserve. On 11 April 1901, the ship returned to service and was assigned as the flagship of I Torpedo-boat Flotilla on the 18th, replacing the elderly aviso , which was by then worn out. ''Niobe'' served in this position until 26 June, and during this period, took part in training exercises in the Baltic Sea and the Kattegat. On 28 June, she left I Flotilla and escorted the imperial yacht on a trip to Norway. The visit was cut short following the death of Kaiser Wilhelm II's mother, Victoria. ''Niobe'' then joined I Squadron for the annual fleet exercises in late August and early September. At the conclusion of the maneuvers, the Germans held a naval review for the visit of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia; ''Niobe'' was again tasked with escorting Wilhelm II in ''Hohenzollern'' while he met with Nicholas from 11 to 13 September. ''Niobe'' then returned to Wilhelmshaven, where she went into drydock for alterations that lasted from 1 October to 1 April 1902.

After ''Niobe'' returned to active service in April 1902, she resumed operations with I Torpedo-boat Flotilla, and was stationed in the Baltic. On 2 July, she was transferred back to I Squadron for the annual training exercises and a winter cruise toward the end of the year. During this period, ''Korvettenkapitän'' (Corvette Captain) Franz von Hipper served as the ship's commander. In early 1903, she again returned to the I Torpedo-boat Flotilla, her last stint as the flotilla flagship. The Navy initially planned on sending ''Niobe'' to reinforce the squadron participating in the naval blockade of Venezuela of 1902–1903, but the incident concluded before she could be sent. Instead, on 1 March, she joined the cruisers of I Scouting Group for her second trip to Norway. She remained in I Scouting Group for the annual maneuvers that followed later in the year, and through 1904 as well. Following the fleet maneuvers in August and September 1904, ''Niobe'' was decommissioned on 29 September. She spent the following two years out of service, during which time she underwent a major overhaul.

On 19 June 1906, ''Niobe'' was recommissioned for an overseas deployment as part of the East Asia Squadron. She left Wilhelmshaven on 9 July and rendezvoused with the squadron, the flagship of which was the armored cruiser , on 8 September. The ship cruised Chinese and Japanese waters for the next three years; her time in the East Asia Squadron was uneventful. On 31 January 1909, ''Niobe'' steamed out of the main German port in the region, Tsingtao, and made the return voyage to Germany. She reached Kiel on 21 March, and having become badly worn out during her three years abroad, she was decommissioned ten days later.

World War I

After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, ''Niobe'' was recommissioned for coastal defense, stationed in the German Bight. Between 28 August to 2 September, and from 23 December, ''Niobe''s commander also served as the commander of the torpedo-boat flotillas defending the Jade Bight and the mouth of the Weser River. She was removed from front-line service on 5 September 1915, and her crew was reduced four days later. The commander of the torpedo-boat flotillas returned to ''Niobe'' on 14 January 1916, as his previous flagship, the old coastal defense ship , was decommissioned. ''Niobe'' nevertheless remained in service with a reduced crew. '' Kommodore'' (Commodore) Ludwig von Reuter, the commander of the IV Scouting Group, and his staff briefly used ''Niobe'' as a headquarters ship, from 6 June to 3 July. Starting on 20 August, she became the headquarters ship for now-'' Konteradmiral'' (Rear Admiral) von Hipper, the commander of the I Scouting Group.

During this period, Hipper organized the office of ''Befehlshabers der Sicherung der Nordsee'' (BSN—Commander of the Defense of the North Sea), which was also stationed on ''Niobe''. In 1917, she was disarmed so her guns could be used to reinforce the defenses of Wilhelmshaven. In October that year, ''Konteradmiral'' Friedrich Boedicker, then the commander of the I Squadron, came aboard ''Niobe''; the bulk of the High Seas Fleet had gone into the Baltic to launch Operation Albion, and Boedicker temporarily took control of the BSN. Hipper and his staff left ''Niobe'' on 11 August 1918, having been promoted to command of the High Seas Fleet. The BSN remained aboard ''Niobe'' until January 1919, two months after the war ended with the Armistice; it was then transferred to the old pre-dreadnought battleship , also in use as a headquarters ship. ''Niobe'' was then decommissioned on 3 February.

''Niobe'' was among the ships permitted by the Treaty of Versailles after the end of the war, and so she continued on in service with the newly reorganized ''Reichsmarine''. During this period, she was significantly modernized; her old ram bow was replaced with a clipper bow. Her old 10.5 cm SK L/40 guns were replaced with newer SK L/45 guns in U-boat mountings and two torpedo tubes in deck-mounted launchers were installed. On 24 June 1925, ''Niobe'' was stricken from the naval register and sold to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia).

Yugoslav service

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS) had initially been given the ships of the old Austro-Hungarian Navy after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the closing days of World War I, but the Allied powers quickly seized the majority of the ships and allocated them to the various Allied countries. Left with only twelve modern torpedo boats, the new country sought more powerful vessels. It therefore purchased ''Niobe'' when Germany placed her for sale in 1925. The copper sheathing of her hull was a significant factor in the purchase, as naval infrastructure in the new state was very limited, and it was not expected that she could be dry docked regularly. Since Germany was forbidden from exporting armed warships, ''Niobe'' was taken to the Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel and disarmed. She also had her conning tower removed. On 7 August 1926, she began sea trials before being transferred to her new owners. ''Niobe'' was taken to the Tivat arsenal in the Bay of Kotor, arriving on 3 September 1927. There, she was rebuilt as a training cruiser, based on a design developed by a KSCS naval commission, with the work supervised by the Dutch Piet van Wienen Company, which had also been responsible for the negotiating the purchase contract. The rebuild included shortening the masts and funnels, a crow's nest was placed atop the foremast, and a radio shack was built in place of the conning tower.

She was renamed ''Dalmacija'' (Dalmatia), and also received her new armament before she entered Royal Yugoslav Navy service, though the details are uncertain. According to ''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships'', she was equipped with six Škoda L/55 quick-firing guns, and initially four and later six anti-aircraft (AA) guns were added. The naval historian Henry Lenton states that the main battery caliber was , states that they were dual-purpose guns, and specifies four 2 cm single-mount AA guns. But naval historian Milan Vego states that she carried six L/35 anti-aircraft guns, four guns, and six machine guns. The historian Aidan Dodson concurs with Vego that the ship received six 8.3 cm guns, but instead states that they were 55-caliber guns of the Skoda M27 type. Dodson also agrees that she had four 47 mm guns but states her armament was rounded out by two Zbrojovka ZB-60 anti-aircraft machine-guns. According to the naval historian Zvonimir Freivogel, six Škoda M27 L/55 anti-aircraft guns were ordered in Czechoslovakia and fitted by the arsenal in Tivat. Freivogel goes on to state that the M27 was an improved model of the M22/24 gun. Single guns were mounted forward and aft, with the remaining four guns mounted amidships, two on each side fore and aft of the second funnel. These open sponson mounts were below main deck level and had an outward folding plate that allowed the crew to serve the gun from all sides. With a muzzle velocity of per second, the guns could engage targets out to and to a vertical range of , with a shell weighing . They were supplied with a total of 1,500 shells, for 250 shells per gun.

After entering service, ''Dalmacija'' was employed as a gunnery training ship. In May and June 1929, ''Dalmacija'', the submarines and , the submarine tender and six torpedo boats went on a cruise to Malta, the Greek island of Corfu in the Ionian Sea, and Bizerte in the French protectorate of Tunisia. According to the British naval attaché, the ships and crews made a very good impression while visiting Malta. In 1930, the ship underwent a minor refit and her foremast was modified, including by the addition of supporting struts that converted it into a tripod mast. Throughout the 1930s, the ship went on several training cruises in the Mediterranean Sea, and during this period she served as a flagship on a number of occasions.

World War II

In April 1941, during the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, ''Dalmacija'' remained in Kotor and did not see action. Some forty years old by that time, the ship was kept in port as a harbor defense vessel, since her relatively heavy anti-aircraft armament could be used to defend against air attacks. Following the Yugoslav surrender, the ship was captured by the Italians in Kotor on 25 April. Renamed ''Cattaro'', the ship was placed in service with the ''Regia Marina'' as a gunboat and gunnery training ship, based in Pola. On 31 July 1942, the cruiser was attacked by the British submarine south of the village of Premantura on the Istrian coast, but all of the torpedoes missed.

The ship's fate is somewhat unclear; according to Hildebrand et al., ''Cattaro'' was later transferred to the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia, where she was commissioned as a training ship under the name ''Znaim''. She returned to German service in September 1943 after Italy surrendered to the Allies, which significantly reduced the warships operating in the Adriatic Sea. A German and Croatian crew operated the ship, once again named ''Niobe'', under the German flag. According to Twardowski, however, the ship remained in Italian hands until Germany seized it in September 1943, thereafter turning her over to the Independent State of Croatia as ''Znaim'' before retaking the ship and restoring her original name at some point thereafter. Aidan Dodson concurs that the ship remained in Italian hands until their surrender, and states that she was undergoing boiler repairs at Pola at the time. After falling into German hands, there was some debate as to what her name should be, with consideration given to ''Zenta'' or ''Novara'' in honor of Austro-Hungarian cruisers, but the Germans eventually settled on reverting to her original name. According to Freivogel, the reported names ''Znajm'', ''Zniam'', and ''Znijam'' do not mean anything in Croatian language, and there was probably a confusion with the minelayer or ''Zenta''.

Nevertheless, after leaving Italian service the ship's armament was six AA guns, four 47 mm AA guns, four 20 mm Oerlikon AA guns, and twenty-six 20 mm Breda AA guns, and she was commissioned on 8 November. On the night of 21/22 September, while she was still refitting, two British Motor Torpedo Boats—''MTB 226'' and ''MTB 228''—attacked the ship to the northwest of Zara without success. ''Niobe'' began escorting convoys in the Adriatic, the first taking place on 13 November, in support of Operation ''Herbstgewitter''. This convoy consisted of several transports carrying units from the 71st Infantry Division to the islands of Cres, Krk, and Lussino.

On 19 December, ''Niobe'' ran aground on the island of Silba at around 18:00 as a result of a navigational error. The crew requested tugboats from Pola, but they were unable to pull the ship free. Local Partisans informed the British about the ship's location, and three days later, the British Motor Torpedo Boats ''MTB 276'' and ''MTB 298'' attacked the ship and hit her with two torpedoes, and the tug ''Parenzo'', which had been moored alongside to assist the salvage effort, was hit by a third torpedo and sunk. Nineteen men were killed in the attack. The Germans then abandoned the wreck, apart from a small group tasked with removing or destroying weapons and other equipment. The wreck was then damaged further by the Germans before they abandoned it, and it was later cannibalized for spare parts by the Partisans. The wreck remained on Silba until 1947, when salvage operations began. She was raised and broken up for scrap by 1952.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Niobe
Gazelle-class cruisers
Ships built in Bremen (state)
1899 ships
World War I cruisers of Germany
Cruisers of the Kriegsmarine
World War II cruisers of Germany
World War II shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea
Maritime incidents in December 1943
Cruisers of the Royal Yugoslav Navy
Naval ships of Yugoslavia captured by Italy during World War II
Naval ships of Italy captured by Germany during World War II