德拉克講海軍歷史 戰艦指南 205 - 德意志帝國海軍襲擊巡洋艦 埃姆登號

German Navy would see three ships named Emden in its service in the space of two decades near the start of the 20th century. But the first ship, one of two that would be called SMS Emden, would be by far the most famous. This Emden was one of two Dresden-class protected cruisers built in the late 1910s. For technical capabilities and armament, please see the video on the class in general. She entered the fleet in mid-1909 as a replacement for the SMS Pfeil or Arrow, and was named after the town of Emden. Her service in home waters would be pretty brief. A large-scale training mission and an escort run for the Kaiser's yacht was followed by a brief stint of inactivity until April 1910, less than a year after commissioning, when she was assigned to the German East Asia Squadron and headed out to sea. She would never see her homeland again. That fate was, however, somewhat in the future. The first thing was to actually get to her new assignment. The most obvious route would be via the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal across the Indian Ocean and up to Tsingtao. But she was instead told to go and show the flag to various South American countries, first to cultivate German influence in the area and possibly even orders for their shipyards, briefly meeting up with the cruiser SMS Bremen on the way. She now had to gather breath for the long haul across the Pacific. As a relatively small ship of just over 4,000 tons, fully loaded, the prospect of crossing the entire Pacific Ocean on a single coal store was daunting, and to make even partway would require the entire bunker system to be full of high-quality coal. Eventually finding some, she managed to get to that magical place Tahiti, using up almost every single lump of coal aboard. Before recoaling and eventually making it to the rest of the East Asia Squadron at the end of July. The rest of her peacetime existence was spent on a mix of colonial patrols, periodic refits and the occasional shore bombardment when fighting broke out somewhere on the Chinese coast, as it was wont to do at this time. During this period, she would also win the squadron's gunnery prize. But as 1914 descended into war, it was time to get serious. It must be remembered that the various declarations of war came gradually. It wasn't a case of, right, everyone is now at war with everyone. And so the first actions of the East Asia Squadron were actually to begin harvesting Russian merchantmen and turning the best of their finds into armed merchant raiders. However, war with France, shortly followed by war with the British Empire, and then, due to the Anglo-Japanese alliance, the Japanese Empire quickly followed, and suddenly the East Asia Squadron was faced with much bigger battle cruiser-shaped problems. And so Admiral Von Spee elected to take the majority of his forces back across the Pacific to round South America and try and make a break for Germany. Emden's Captain Muller pointed out that this left the force relatively little time on the voyage to attack enemy shipping, and suggested that one ship be sent to the Indian Ocean to do so, which would also serve as a distraction to enemy forces in the area who might otherwise pursue the East Asia Squadron. As Emden was the fastest ship in the force, and thus the least likely to get caught, Von Spee detached the ship to act on its own, taking a collier to help keep it supplied. Early into the mission, Emden was forced to adopt the first of many disguises, as they detected, via radio transmissions, a British armoured cruiser nearby. At almost two and a half times her size, and practically immune to any of Emden's guns, it was not a good idea to antagonise it, and so Muller instead ordered a fake fourth funnel built, and so pretended to be a British light cruiser, at least at a distance, which allowed Emden to merrily sail in whatever direction that the armoured cruiser wasn't. The Allies were aware of Von Spee's squadron leaving, but thanks to Muller's disguise and clever sailing, they had no idea that Emden wasn't with them. And so she headed into the Bay of Bengal, taking eight ships before a ninth turned out to be Italian, which was at the time a neutral country, who took issue with being searched, and promptly told everybody else what had happened as soon as the Emden left, which in turn resulted in all the shipping vanishing, and five cruisers starting a search for the Emden. This search proved ineffective, and Emden was able to blow up oil tanks in Madras harbour, and proceed to take, sink, or damage six more ships, including nabbing a welcome cargo of high-quality coal, before heading off to a British island that hadn't actually yet heard that war was on, in order to repair its engines, clean the hull, and rest the crew. Thus ready for action again, she set out once more, and took or sank another six ships, but lost her own collier to British forces. The armoured cruiser from her initial adventures, HMS Hampshire, showed up again, and Emden was forced to move on to new hunting grounds. This led to the harbour of Penang, ostensibly relatively well protected by a French destroyer, an older French cruiser, and the Russian cruiser Zimshug, which we met previously at the Battle of Tsushima. Using her four-funnel disguise, Emden slid up to within a couple of ship lengths of the moored Russian ship, and opened fire with her main battery, as well as two torpedoes in quick succession. The latter weapons caused a magazine detonation that tore the Russian cruiser apart. The stunned French ships opened fire, but not in time to prevent Emden from escaping into open water, where she would encounter and sink another French destroyer, whilst in the process of seizing a freighter that had been trying to enter the harbour behind her. With the French ships in the harbour working up steam to come after her, Emden vanished into a rain squall, her work complete, as not only had she destroyed two warships with no real damage to herself, but the strike forced significant delays to a number of convoys that were due to pass through the area, as the Allies now sought to significantly beef up the escort forces. Using one of her previous prizes as a replacement collier, Muller decided next to destroy a British radio station on the Cocos Islands. This would put a hole in the British radio net and draw Allied forces to the area, which was the main aim, since Muller, knowing that this would occur, intended to double back into the areas that the warships would have just vacated. Aware of the danger of being reported early, he used Emden's own radio equipment to jam the station, before sending in a shore party to disable the radio, since there was nothing else in sight, and shore bombardment would waste shells. Unfortunately for the Emden, the station had managed to get off a message before the jamming overwhelmed it, and the cruiser HMAS Sydney broke off from the convoy that she was escorting to investigate. Again, a somewhat unintentional after effect of her raid on Penang. Sydney was a town-class light cruiser of the Chatham sub-variant. This is not the towns of WWII, but the earlier WWI type. But still, this was exactly the kind of enemy Emden did not want to face. Sydney was bigger, faster, more heavily armed, and had an armour belt, which was capable of resisting most of Emden's fire at most reasonable ranges, and of course it was steaming hard into the Royal Australian Navy's first ever official surface action, and so its crew was even more highly motivated than was normal. Emden was thus forced to run without being able to get the shore party back aboard, as although Sydney had superior speed, it was hoped that if Emden could get up to full speed fairly quickly, the rate of closure might be slow enough that Sydney might break off and return to the convoy. But Sydney ran her down anyway. Whilst Emden got the first hits in in the inevitable gunnery engagement, soon enough six-inch shells began to chew up the Emden. Two attempts to close to torpedo range were thwarted by even more intense gunfire, and soon guns, steering, and fire control were knocked out, and after two more attempts to get into torpedo range resulted in the loss of almost all remaining armament, and Emden being set on fire, Muller realised the ship was unable to offer any further practical resistance. However, instead of directly surrendering his ship, Muller ran Emden aground on a nearby island in order to give what was left of his crew a fighting chance to survive, with the crew disembarking after disabling what little critical systems were left. Sydney, seeing that her target was done, went after Emden's collier, but when it scuttled itself, she went back to find the beached cruiser. Opening fire again, since the ship's flag was still flying, although the shell stopped coming when somebody aboard Emden realised what was going on, and ran up white flags instead. The surviving crew were taken prisoner, and Sydney headed off happy and victorious. There was one major footnote to the action though, something that probably will merit its own video at some point, as well as a wider telling of Emden's story. The shore party saw what was going on, seized a small schooner, and then made an epic voyage in stages across the Indian Ocean, until they reached the Ottoman Empire, and then headed up through said empire to meet up with the ex-Goban and her crew in the Black Sea. Some thought was given to salvaging the wreck, but battle damage and the action of the sea on the hull whilst it was beached rendered the idea unworkable by the time anyone actually went to look. Instead, a number of artifacts would be removed, and the wreck was left in place for several decades until it was eventually broken up for salvage in the 1950s. That's it for this video. Thanks for watching. If you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review, let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry-doc questions.