SMS Lützow: The German Battlecruiser That Sank at Jutland

Step back in time and join us on an epic journey as we delve into the fascinating story of the German battlecruiser Lutzow. In this captivating video, we explore the history, and design. Commissioned in August 1915, Lutzow faced initial challenges with her machinery, delaying her service until February 1916. However, her wait was not in vain, as she went on to participate in numerous operations, including the historic shelling of Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth in April 1916. Lutzow's crowning moment came at the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, where she served as Admiral Franz von Hipper's flagship. Despite enduring heavy damage from British battle cruisers and battleships, Lutzow remarkably withstood around 25 hits and managed to escape the battle. Sadly, her wounds proved too severe, and she was ultimately scuttled the following day.
Content:
0:00 Intro
0:30 Background
5:26 Pre-Jutland Career
7:00 Battle of Jutland
15:40 Sinking
18:13 Conclusion
Sources/Other Reading:
www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-...
www.amazon.com/British-Battle...
www.amazon.com/Jutland-1916-C...
www.amazon.com/Jutland-Unfini...
www.amazon.com/German-Battlec...
www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-w...
www.jutland1916.com/
Video Information:
Copyright fair use notice. All media used in this video is used for the purpose of education under the terms of fair use. All footage and images used belong to their copyright holders, when applicable.

[@carstenlaun1026]

She looks like a real Queen at sea!

[@jimmywrangles]

A beautiful ship. The Germans really knew how to build good looking ships.

[@imjinriver641]

Pretty german ships no match for the mighty Royal Navy.

[@WojciechWachniewski-st1zm]

It is actually very difficult to build an UGLY ship. Each, or almost each one of them had, has or shall have her beauty, be it the old Jeanne d'Arc or our Polish B-54 type freighter. To me THEY ALL ARE BEAUTIFUL, some being additionally decorated or honoured with wonderful names, like Dar Pomorza, Batory, Victory, Hood, Scharnhorst, Enterprise, Gorch Fock, Aurora or Yamato. World of ships is the world of beauty. 😊👍

[@phil3114]

@@WojciechWachniewski-st1zm Eh. Just look at most british ships. Not exactly lookers.

[@berndlinnecke5738]

​@@phil3114Das ist eine Sache des guten Geschmacks.Schauen sie sich die Iron Duke oder die Lion an. Dagegen sehen die deutschen Linienschiffe wie Holzbaumodelle aus. Und dass obwohl sie gute Kampfstärke Schiffe waren.

[@1982nsu]

Gotta LOVE these great ships! Wish they could ALL be magically brought back.

[@208transparency4]

They can. Get into scale modeling. ❤❤❤

[@WojciechWachniewski-st1zm]

They can - virtually.

[@andrewemery4272]

I lived on London Road South in Lowestoft. Even today you can clearly see the repaired brickwork where some of the shells landed.

[@discipleoftheEternalone]

@@HereNowOOO no, German battlecruisers on multiple occasions went close to shore and bombarded costal towns. Though I do wonder if any shells from Jutland landed in Denmark

[@ImportantHistory]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to preface this video by saying there might be pictures of Derfflinger or Hindenburg thrown in occasionally. Surprisingly enough, a ship that was in service as short of a time as Lützow it is pretty hard to find readily accessible photos. Edit: Sorry I made a mistake when discussing the armor, I said meters and not millimeters.

[@davidmurphy8190]

The KMS BLUCHER in WW2 lost in the Drobak Sound must be in a similar category.

[@RayyMusik]

@@davidmurphy8190WW2 Blücher was sunk much sooner than WW1 Lützow. Drobak sound was her very first (and last) combat experience.

[@berndlinnecke5738]

​@@davidmurphy8190Nein das war ein schwerer Kreuzer.

[@sftommy01]

more of the crews role during the sinking...than I've heard before....thanks for sharing

[@timandellenmoran1213]

Nice job!

[@craigfazekas3923]

There is a badass 1:700th scale model set on the market that includes LÜTZOW, DERRFLINGER & a P-class Zeppelin. There are upgrade parts with the kit (s) & a 1:35 scale resin figure of Adm. vonScheer. The maker of the model set is Snowman/Takom Models. I hope knowing this inspires the model building contingent among us !! 🚬😎👍

[@lyedavide]

Great video featuring not only the Lutzow, but also some of the action at the Battle of Jutland. The Germans were certainly better gunners than the British. But that alone did not necessarily mean that the British battle cruisers we in any physical way inferior to their German counterparts. It was the Royal Navy's obsession with rapid fire that led to the unsafe handling of munitions that resulted in not only inferior gunnery accuracy but also the loss of three battle cruisers with over 3,000 officers and crew. War is Hell. RIP to all those who died at Jutland.

[@roverM30ds]

They were better gunners? What version of history have you read pal. You should read the books on shell hits the high seas fleet sustained. Their navy mutinied and refused to sail again after 1916. Read up your history pal

[@uberduberdave]

I just blew a small bundle on the 1:700 Takom/Snowman Model - SMS Derfflinger 1916 & SMS Lutzow 1916 & Zeppelin Q Class model kit. it has comprehensive building and marking instructions but not one word about the history of of the ships. Back when I was a young'un, Revell, Monogram and other US kit makers back then would have a few sentences worth of the history behind whatever you were building on their instruction sheet, but out of the Chinese, you get squat. It's nice to find someone, somewhere to tell the story about these vessels.

[@WojciechWachniewski-st1zm]

Appearance may be of not a special importance to warships, but it is always a pleasure to see beaitiful warship, like 'Bismarck', 'Scharnhorst' or 'Yamato'. Beauties among British warships were their destroyers (Tribal!!!) Beautiful are British names of warships. 'Luetzow' came from Danzig, now Gdańsk.

[@RayyMusik]

4:22 Wow! A main belt from 100 meters to 300 meters is *really* impressive! 😁 Btw, “Ersatz xxxx“ was not really a name but a provisional designation until the ship was given an official name.

[@ImportantHistory]

That was big mistake for sure on the armor, and I should have used designated instead of named in the intro. Always appreciate your help with German.

[@carstenlaun1026]

230mm upper belt and 300mm main belt tappered down to 100-150mm. The Derfflinger class was as good protected as battleships from the same timeline. Many people say that the Queen Elizabeth class was the first true fast battleships, some other people say this merits go to the Derfflinger class. Here you can see the armour layout: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derfflinger-class_battlecruiser

[@ImportantHistory]

@@carstenlaun1026 If you'd like an even better depiction of the armor, it can be found in German Battlecruisers of World War One by Gary Staff. I have a link to the book in the description and it paints a great picture!

[@ghh712]

"Ersatz" simply means "replacement". Thus SMS Lutzow was known as Ersatz Kaiserin Augusta, or replacement for SMS Kaiserin Augusta, before she was officially named.

[@RayyMusik]

@@carstenlaun1026Drach says that, although the armor thickness was roughly equivalent, the armor belt of German battlecruisers was shorter than on the battleships.

[@sidsod1616]

300 meters of armour wow no wander she was so hard to sink.

[@RayyMusik]

Thanks

[@ImportantHistory]

Thank you!

[@jarvisfamily3837]

Just a note - the name of Lützow's sister ship is not "dur-FLING-er", it's "DURF-ling-er" - accent on the first syllable - named for Georg von Derfflinger, a Prussian general during the Thirty Years War.

[@waynedavis7245]

I'm shocked that Germany tried to stay within the treaties limitations.

[@Stale_Kracker]

Cant take it away from the germans they definitly could put shells on target. Ww1 and 2

[@xclaassen5463]

Kapitän or Kapitaen not Kapitan, Jade not Dscheyd. But from the rest, i am impressed

[@randyfant2588]

She was not scuttled. She went down by the bow due to progressive flooding, taking a large number of her crew with her.

[@ImportantHistory]

By the definition of scuttling as a deliberate act of sinking your own ship. I’d argue in the end she was. Granted the 25 hits along the way certainly were the main contributing factor. However, with the death blow coming from two torpedoes fired from G38, a German torpedo boat at the orders of captain of Harder of Lutzow. While she did loose a large number of men, 128 to be exact, a large portion of these were from injuries sustained in the battle. Namely when the dressing stations were hit. With several of the men surviving the return trip to Germany only to die in hospitals there.

[@robbie1527]

@@ImportantHistory Hi, and thanks for the excellent film. My grandfather was at the Somme and came back wounded on the first day - luckily enough for him and me ... Along with three machine gun bullets in his left arm, he also brought back a "grabendolch" - a trench knife - which I think would have been made as a souvenir on the Lutzow. It's well made, but crudely stamped letter by letter. Having been in the Royal Navy myself (on the recent HMS Invincible bizarrely enough), I'm pretty sure it's one of the many souvenirs the "stokers" make for extra pocket money I don't know how my grandfather came to own it, and what happened to its unfortunate previous owner, but the likelihood is that it belonged to one of the thousand or so crew who survived - some of whom were then sent to the Somme. It's a small knife with an astonishing history. I've put photos of it at flodden.house/lutzow/1.png and flodden.house/lutzow/2.png Thanks, Robbie

[@gerardlinehan7397]

4.28 millimetres not metres

[@chloehennessey6813]

Wouldn’t you want high pressure steam as far away from crew as possible? Like 800+ psi of steam is extremely dangerous isn’t it? Beatty. How that man… on god I’d have thrown every last one of those officers overboard if I was Jellicoe. Beatty didn’t have to close the range. They had the advantage and could lobbed shells at them with no real danger of getting hit back. FU, Beatty. FU to hell.

[@drharmonica]

Boring. Might as well be reading the stock market report for all the interest this generates..

[@ImportantHistory]

I’m curious. You’ve commented before along similar lines, and I would like to hear what you would do different?

[@drharmonica]

@@ImportantHistory My Good Sir. If I were you and were trying to make an exciting history channel I would take some lessons in public speaking , storytelling and learn from the experts. Listen to "The History Guy" or Dan Carlin} of Mark Felton" or the Dark Seas Channel. These are people who make history interesting and exciting. Not dull and boring like you do. You need to learn better communication and public speaking skills. At the moment you are dry, lifeless, and worst of all Tedious. History is more than statistics. There are dramatic stories to be told and you are not telling them. Listen to the experts I mentioned and try to learn from them. You and your channel will benefit highly.

[@ImportantHistory]

@@drharmonica Well I appreciate the civil comment. I agree my delivery could use work, and if you go back to older videos it certainly has improved. As for the style of content, I am not trying to go for the flashy style that channels like Dark Seas presents where they use footage completely unrelated to the topic at hand. My content isn't for everyone, and that is completely fine.

[@drharmonica]

@@ImportantHistory I quite agree that the Dark Channels videos films are highly inaccurate but accuracy aside his audio delivery is very well done. His films are often taken from the wrong wars but his narration is excellent.

[@joewalker2152]

@@drharmonica Don't make laugh! fcuking experts, my arse. All these channels are for entertainment, not studying for a university degree. If you want experts, then read published authors who have spent years studying official records and archives. Fcuk me sideways.........