caroline french battleships world of warships

The German warship the Soviets came to name Petropavlovsk underwent drastic changes between its original design (top) and its final configuration. At the outset, each got most of what he wanted. Secret clauses and side agreements amounted to a temporary limited partnership between the Nazi and Soviet dictators.

The pact, which stunned the diplomatic world on August 23, 1939, was much more than a pledge of mutual nonaggression.

Komet’s mission was an unlikely offshoot of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact-a cynical deal between Hitler and Stalin that triggered the outbreak of World War II. Stalin was coming to free his vessel and clear a path through the ice so the German warship could transit the Russian Northern Passage, skirting the Arctic Circle and avoiding the Royal Navy, to emerge in the Pacific to plunder British and Allied shipping, Captain Eyssen, however, did not lower the concealing deck plates and train Komet’s guns on the approaching icebreaker…because it was secretly an accomplice.

It was to be a commerce raider, designed to attack enemy vessels while disguised as a merchant ship sailing under a neutral false flag. Hinged steel deck plates concealed the ship’s main armament, six 5.9-inch guns. In 1939, the German Navy commandeered the 7,500-ton passenger-cargo ship Ems and transformed it into an auxiliary cruiser, renamed KMS( Kriegsmarine Schiff) Komet. Komet aimed to thwart the Royal Navy’s blockade and strike at vital sea lanes that sustained Britain’s war effort. Although German U-boats ravaged the Atlantic, the British Navy kept Germany’s few major surface warships mostly bottled up in their ports. But the war at sea was a different matter. The Nazi blitzkrieg was storming through western Europe, where the German Wehrmacht seemed unstoppable. The steel-reinforced bow of the 11,000-ton icebreaker Stalin could crush the Komet’s hull like an eggshell. Captain Robert Eyssen watched from the wheelhouse as a large Soviet icebreaker crunched through the icepack toward him. The German vessel Komet lay dead in the water, immobilized by Arctic ice.

The Unexpected Alliance Between Germany and the Soviet Union Helped a Kriegsmarine Raider Wreak Havoc in the South Seas Close

Caroline french battleships world of warships