The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was the largest German warship to survive WWII. Given to the United States, they decided to use her for atomic weapons tests in the Pacific. This is the incredible story of how this ship survived two atomic explosions!

Mark Felton Productions

Prinz Eugen in Copenhagen – Københavns Frihavn – Copenhagen Freeport

The Admiral Hipper class was a group of five heavy cruisers built by Germany‘s Kriegsmarine beginning in the mid-1930s. The class comprised Admiral Hipper, the lead ship, Blücher, Prinz Eugen, Seydlitz, and Lützow. Only the first three ships of the class saw action with the German Navy during World War II. Work on Seydlitz stopped when she was approximately 95 percent complete; it was decided to convert her into an aircraft carrier, but this was not completed either. Lützow was sold incomplete to the Soviet Union in 1940.

Type	Heavy cruiser
Displacement	Design: 16,170 t (15,910 long tons; 17,820 short tons) Full load: 18,200 long tons (18,500 t)
Length	202.8 m (665 ft 4 in) overall
Beam	21.3 m (69 ft 11 in)
Draft	Full load: 7.2 m (24 ft)
Installed power	132,000 shp (98 MW)
Propulsion	3 × Blohm & Voss steam turbines 3 × propellers
Speed	32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph)
Range	6,800 nmi (12,600 km; 7,800 mi) at 20 kn (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Complement	42 officers1,340 enlisted
Armament	8 × 20.3 cm (8 in) guns12 × 10.5 cm (4.1 in) SK C/33 guns12 × 3.7 cm (1.5 in) SK C/30 guns8 × 2 cm (0.79 in) C/30 guns12 × 53.3 cm (21 in) torpedo tubes
Armor	Belt: 70 to 80 mm (2.8 to 3.1 in) Armor deck: 20 to 50 mm (0.79 to 1.97 in) Turret faces: 105 mm (4.1 in)
Aircraft carried	3 aircraft
Aviation facilities	1 catapult

Read more at Wikipedia

One of Prinz Eugen‘s three-bladed screws on display at the Laboe Naval Memorial.

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Prinz Eugen inadvertently rammed the light cruiser Leipzig amidships north of Hela.

The cause of the collision was heavy fog. The light cruiser was nearly cut in half, and the two ships remained wedged together for fourteen hours. Prinz Eugen was taken to Gotenhafen, where repairs were effected with-in a month.

Who will tell the Führer?

A 14,000-ton extrusion press used for making aircraft parts receives an extreme makeover via hydraulics.

Universal Alloy Corp. (UAC), a business unit of Alu Menziken Aerospace Group, Reinach, Switzerland, and manufacturer aluminum alloys, recently purchased and upgraded the world’s largest indirect extrusion press to expand its aerospace market offerings. Built in Germany in the 1940s, the 122-foot extrusion press originally made aircraft components in World War 2. The press, which now extrudes 16,200 tons, was disassembled, shipped, and reassembled at UAC’s Canton, Ga. facility — where it began production in early 2005 after an extensive revamp effort.

Originally, the 14,000-ton water-hydraulic horizontal three-stage extrusion press was used mainly to extrude magnesium and aluminum aircraft components. One of the stories UAC has heard is that this press made aluminum skins for V-1 rockets, but the company officials don’t know for certain if that ever happened.

After WW2, the press was shipped from Germany to the U.S., as part of a U.S. Air Force heavy press program. The press was acquired by Dow Chemical Corp. and reassembled in Madison, Ill., where it was used to extrude magnesium alloys mainly for aircraft and missiles. Its third owner was Spectrulite Consortium, St. Louis, which used the press to produce aluminum and magnesium extrusions. In 2003, UAC purchased the press rights from Spectrulite with the goal of expanding its aerospace business. In addition to the new press, the UAC facility in Canton operates four extrusion presses ranging from 900 to 2750 tons.

Power & Motion

The Heavy Press Program was motivated by experiences from World War II. Germany held the largest heavy die forging presses during the war, and translated this advantage into high performance jet fighters. The Soviet Union captured the largest German press to survive the war, with a capacity of 33,000 ton, and were suspected to have seized the designs for an even larger 55,000 ton press. The next two largest units were captured by the United States and brought across the Atlantic Ocean, but they were half the size at 16,500 ton. As Cold War fears developed, American strategists worried that this would give the Soviet Air Force a crucial advantage and designed the Heavy Press Program to help win the arms race.

Wikipedia

While in the United States the Boeing B-17 Stratofortress and the B-29 bombers were still assembled by riveting individual shaped sheet metal parts together, Germany made light and strong magnesium and aluminium structural components. To produce these components, the Third Reich engineers built a 33,000-ton hydraulic press and two smaller 16,500-ton machines to produce the first Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters. The latter two machines were requisitioned by the United States, while the first ended up in the hands of the Soviet Union. Fearing that this technological disadvantage would result in a military disadvantage, the US launched the Heavy Press Program with the intention of building the world’s largest forging presses.

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Germanuy are still making the world largest pressing machines!

Grand opening ceremony of the world’s largest, pull-down die forging press supplied by SMS group at Weber Metals in California – SMS group GmbH

On October 23, 2018, OTTO FUCHS Group celebrated the grand opening of its new 60k die forging press at the location of its U.S. subsidiary Weber Metals in Paramount, California. It is the largest single investment in the company’s over 100-year history. Numerous guests from industry, economy and politics attended the opening ceremony. Completely set up by SMS group, the new press, with a force of 540 MN (60,000 short tons), is the worldwide strongest and most advanced hydraulic pull-down die forging press in pit-mounted design.

SMS Group

I was reading about the pressing machine and SMS Group less than 3 weeks ago, and wanted to know more.

See my post About Germany’s Success and check out the comment section, where I have shared even more information.

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