Imperial German Battlecruiser SMS Lützow (1913) 4:1 Scale


 


SMS Lützow was a battlecruiser of the Imperial German Navy during the First World War. She was the second ship of the Derfflinger class, and became famous for her role at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.


I built her elder sister SMS Derfflinger in 4:1 scale a short while ago, and it was always a part of the plan to convert the build to represent her sister ships too – despite being from the same class, all three ships had subtle and not-so-subtle differences.


 


History


The Fourth Naval Law, passed in 1912, authorised three new dreadnoughts. They became the Derfflinger class battlecruisers, a response to the British Lion class. They formed the ‘second generation’ of German battlecruisers, with several improvements over the preceding SMS Seydlitz. Notably they moved all of the main armament onto the centreline and upgraded the main guns to the excellent 30.5 cm SK L/50. The secondary armament was fourteen 15 cm guns in casemates, with an anti-torpedo boat armament of twelve 8.8 cm guns. They could make 26.5 knots on four screws.


SMS Lützow was the ordered at the same time as the lead ship of the class, SMS Derfflinger. The contract went to the Schichau-Werft shipyard in Danzig (modern day Gdańsk, which at the time was part of the German Empire). She was ordered under the contract name “Ersatz Kaiserin Augusta”, which signified that she was intended as a replacement for that particular protected cruiser. She was laid down in May 1912 and launched in November 1913. However her fitting out took much longer than Derfflinger’s and she finally commissioned in August 1915, 11 months later than her elder sister.







Problems struck her almost immediately on sea trials when her port low pressure turbine suffered severe damage. Repairs lasted until January 1916, and following further sea trials it was March 1916 before she was ready to join Franz Hipper’s 1^st Scouting Group. By this point Lützow had already missed most of the battlecruiser actions of the war, including the Battle of Dogger Bank.









Her first major action was the bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Hipper was ill, so the operation fell under the command of Friedrich Bödicker, who commanded from the flagship SMS Seydlitz. When Hipper returned to duty he decided to transfer off Seydlitz and make Lützow his new flagship.


Hipper sailed in Lützow to the Battle of Jutland on the 31^st of May  1916. The flagship led the German battlecruiser line, and in the initial phase of the battle she duelled with her opposite number, Sir David Beatty’s flagship HMS Lion. Lützow was hit by Lion, but suffered only minor damage. In return, one of her shells hit Lion’s midships ‘Q’ turret, killing or wounding all of the men operating it and starting an ammunition fire.


Three British battlecruisers would explode during the battle due to ammunition fires spreading from turrets through open safety hatches and eventually igniting the magazines. That fate came very close to happening to Lion; however the mortally wounded turret commander ordered the magazines to be flooded and so saved his ship.






As the fleets converged, the leading German battleships and the British 5^th Battle Squadron joined the fray. During this spell of fighting, both of Lützow’s wireless transmitters were knocked out. She was reduced to communicating via searchlight.


Beatty’s ships turned around and headed north, aiming to draw the Germans towards the main force of the Grand Fleet under Sir John Jellicoe. The German battlecruisers led the chase, and Hipper diverted to cover the stricken German cruiser SMS Wiesbaden, which had been disabled by a shell to the engine room.


A group of British armoured cruisers had seen the helpless ship and recklessly steamed towards her to finish her off. Hipper held fire at first, thinking the ships were friendly, but before long it became evident that they were hostile and the battlecruisers opened fire. HMS Defence was soon destroyed in a catastrophic explosion. Her sinking is often credited to Lützow, though it could as easily have been one of the other battlecrusiers. HMS Warrior was crippled and might have suffered the same fate, but Hipper’s ships were distracted from finishing her off by the arrival of the British 3^rd Battlecruiser Squadron under Sir Horace Hood.


The leading British and German ships exchanged furious fire. Hood’s flagship HMS Invincible was particularly accurate; she scored 8 hits on Lützow. Two of those exploded in the bow below the waterline and caused considerable damage that soon led to significant flooding. Lützow struck back when the combined fire of the two Derfflinger class ships destroyed HMS Invincible in another catastrophic explosion.







Shortly afterwards the main body of the High Seas Fleet encountered the Grand Fleet. Admiral Scheer quickly ordered his battlecruisers to help cover his withdrawal, but Lützow couldn’t keep up the required speed due to the damage she had sustained. She instead attempted to withdraw under the cover of a smoke screen. Hipper transferred onto a torpedo boat, hoping to transfer to another of his battlecruisers and resume command. Lützow continued to limp away from the battle, suffering four more heavy-calibre hits before she managed to slip away.


During the night the German fleet attempted to evade the British and return to port. Lützow’s flooding was getting progressively worse and she couldn’t keep up. She was left to attempt to make the journey with the support of a handful of torpedo boats, in the hope that she could evade the British in the night.


The flooding in the bow grew progressively worse during the night. It was estimated that by the early hours of the 1st of June she had taken on as much as 8,000 tons of water. At one point the crew tried to alleviate the problem by turning her around and steaming backwards, but it didn’t help. The attempt was abandoned when the bow became so flooded that it started going underwater – and the stern rose high enough that the propellers came into the air. By about 2.20am she was in such danger of capsizing that the order was given to evacuate the crew onto the torpedo boats.


The torpedo boat SMS G38 fired two torpedoes into Lützow to ensure that she sank before they left the scene. She sank about 60 km north-west of Horns Reef.


Today the wreck of Lützow is considered a war grave. During the battle she was hit by 24 heavy calibre shells and suffered 115 men killed and 50 wounded.


 


  


The Build


 
SMS Lützow was 210.4m long, so this 4:1 model is 842 blocks long overall. I’ve represented Lützow as she was at her commissioning August 1915, based on specifications, line drawings and whatever photographs I could find. I’ve also represented her as she was when she steamed to the Battle of Jutland on the 31^st of May 1916 – distinguished by the red aft funnel. The German Navy generally painted their aft funnels a different colour for every operation, and only once they had left port (presumably to prevent spies from seeing which colour was being used for each operation). It served to help the ships identify friendlies. Red was the colour used for Jutland.


 For her Jutland version, in addition to the red funnel I’ve shown her flying a vice-admiral’s flag at the foremast, for Hipper. I’ve also removed the ships’ boats from the davits and stowed them more securely on deck, where they’re less likely to foul the secondary armament.


 So, how does she differ from SMS Derfflinger? What makes this build different?


Here’s a list!

• Derfflinger had two of her secondary 15cm guns removed to make room for anti-roll tanks. By the time Lützow was fitting out, the navy had decided that anti-roll tanks weren’t worth it and so Lützow was completed with all 14 secondary guns.
  
• Derfflinger had four 8.8cm guns mounted in casemates in the forward superstructure. Lützow did not have these guns.
  
• Derfflinger was completed with open bridges. Lützow was built with enclosed bridges; one in front of the conning tower and one at the base of the foremast. I presume this means that she was always intended to be used as a flagship.
  
• Lützow’s forward funnel was thicker than her sister’s, and her aft funnel was taller.
  
• Lützow’s masts were slightly shorter and had a different arrangement of yards and spotting tops – note the ‘x’ shaped yard arrangement. Accordingly she had different lines and rigging as well.
  
• There are an additional pair of ships’ boats on davits.
  
• There are also some fairly minor superstructure differences.
  
• Last but not least – the heraldic crests at the bow are (obviously) different!
  

 


As ever with my builds, there’s no interior.









 The following album contains renders of the completed build: http://imgur.com/a/XHh6O

The following album contains work in progress renders: http://imgur.com/a/H2NxD




Future Updates


This should be it for Lützow – unlike Derfflinger there’s no refit to build since she didn’t survive after Jutland. For the class, I still plan to update Derfflinger to her 1916 refit version and eventually modify her into their third sister, SMS Hindenburg.

Also, please do let me know if there are any mistakes in the download, and I'll fix them. :)


 


Licence  

     



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.