52 • Summer 2018 • http://www.shipsmonthly.com
That Europa was built at all
was something of a miracle.
The keel plates were laid down
in 1927, but a disastrous
fire during her build left her
a gutted wreck. Somehow
Blohm and Voss rebuilt from
disaster, with Europa taking
the Blue Ribbon from her
sistership Bremen.
By 1932 the workforce
had shrunk to 2,282, down
from the 10,000 employed
in 1917. When the Nazis
took power in Germany the
shipyard was given a number
of major contracts under
various schemes, including
the ‘Strength through Joy’
and ‘German Work Front’
programmes. In 1933 Blohm
and Voss briefly entered the
aircraft construction business,
but it was the demands of the
Kriegsmarine that soon filled
the shipyard with work.
On 1 July 1936 the first
steel blocks of Bismarck, the
first of two large battleships,
were laid. She was launched
in February 1939 and was
joined by sistership Tirpitz in
1941; they were the largest
battleships ever built by
Germany, and two of the
largest built by any European
power. Bismarck was hunted
down by the combined
strength of the Royal Navy
in May 1941 on her maiden
deployment in the North
Atlantic. She destroyed the
flagship of the British fleet,
the battlecruiser HMS Hood,
before being sunk by gunfire
from the battleships HMS
Rodney and HMS Prince
of Wales, and a volley of
torpedoes from cruisers.
The yard also achieved an
amazing feat in delivering
Type VIIC submarines at an
astounding rate of one boat
a week. The yard was a major
target for Allied bombing raids
throughout the war and was left
a shattered mess by the summer
of 1945 when the conflict
ended. And what remained
then was effectively razed to the
ground by the victorious Allies.The posT-war years
The immediate post-war years
were difficult, and it was not
until 1953 that Blohm and
Voss were allowed to refit
and repair ships. In 1954the Military Security Board
in Koblenz approved the
shipyard’s proposal to build
small coastal, inland and
harbour vessels, as ‘Steinwerder
Industrie AG’. The name
Blohm and Voss had, since
1945, been banned from being
used by order of the British
Governor of Hamburg. He
stated that it was to ‘spare the
world the shock that ships
were being built there again.’
Hadag, a local Hamburgferry operator, placed an order
for two small harbour ferries,
and these were subsequently
followed by three passenger
ships for the Norwegian
firm of Hurtigruten. Slowly,
the yard’s reputation for
excellent workmanship and
professionalism was re-
established, and on 12 June
1955 the name Blohm and
Voss was recreated, the ban on
its use having been lifted.
Also in 1955 Blohm and Blohm and Voss shipyard from the air. Note the two floating docks, Nos.10 and 11, in the River Elbe, as well as the two smaller floating docks, 16 and 6, in front
of the dry dock Helgen. Blohm and Voss have been building ships in the heart of the city of Hamburg since 1877. Today, the shipyard continues not only to build
warships and commercial vessels, but also carries out numerous refits and conversions at its shipyard in Hamburg.
The Brandenburg class frigate Mecklenburg-Vorpommern commissioned into
the German fleet on 6 December 1996. On 9 December 2015 she collided with
the container ship Nordic Bremen in the Kiel Canal. The liner Cap Arcona (yard no.476) was laid down in July 1926 and made
her maiden voyage on 29 October 1927. In May 1945 she was carrying prisoners
from Nazi concentration camps when the RAF sank her, killing about 5,000.
The battleship Bismarck is probably the most famous German battleship of
World War II. With eight 15-inch guns, exceptional radar and long range, the
ship was designed to hunt and destroy enemy convoys.