To complete the list of Kriegsmarine-requisitioned passenger ships built in the 20's by Blohm + Voss for the Hamburg Süd line, we shouldn't omit the ill famed...
SS Cap Arcona (1927-1945)
tonnage: 27,561 grt
dimensions: 205.9 x 25.8 x 12.8 m
installed power: 8 x steam turbines, 2,959 shp each
propulsion: twin screw propellers
speed: 20 knots
crew complement: 475
passenger capacity: 1,315 (reduced to 850 in 1937)
When she entered service, in October 1927,
Cap Arcona was the the flagship of Hamburg Süd replacing in that role the older
Cap Polonio, and the largest and quickest ship on the South Atlantic route. As a luxury liner, her facilities included a full-size tennis court abaft her third funnel. The ship had modern navigation and communication equipment too. From 1930 she was equipped with submarine signalling and wireless direction finding equipment, and from 1934 she had an echo sounding device and a gyrocompass.
During her peacetime career
Cap Arcona connected regularly her home port of Hamburg with Madeira, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, carrying from November 1927 to August 1939 more than 200,000 first and second class passengers in 91 transatlantic trips. She returned to Hamburg for the last time before the war on 25 August 1939. In 1940 the Kriegsmarine requisitioned her, painted her overall grey, and used her in the Baltic Sea as an accommodation ship in Gotenhafen (formerly Gdynia, Poland).
On 31 January 1945, the Kriegsmarine reactivated her for Operation Hannibal, where she was used to transport 25,795 German soldiers and civilians from East Prussia to safer areas in western Germany. By now these trips were made very dangerous by mines and Soviet submarines, German losses including the two ships
Wilhelm Gustloff and
Steuben. On 30 March 1945, Cap Arcona finished her third and last trip between Gdynia and Copenhagen, carrying 9,000 soldiers and refugees. However, her turbines were completely worn out. They could only be partially repaired and her days of long-distance travel were over. She was decommissioned, returned to her owners Hamburg Süd and ordered out of Copenhagen Harbour to Neustadt Bay.
In May 1945 the ship was requisitioned again as a prison ship; she was heavily laden with about 5,000 prisoners from Nazi concentration camps, when RAF bombers sank her and her accompanying vessels,
Deutschland and
Thielbek anchored in the Bay of Lübeck. In the incident more than 7,000 people lost their lives. This was one of the biggest single-incident maritime losses of life in the Second World War, the largest being the sinking of the aforementioned German evacuation liner
Wilhelm Gustloff, with 9,400 victims estimated.
Shipbucket has ha drawing of
Cap Arcona:
Wikipedia has fairly detailed (probably original) plans of the ship:
Finally, 3DWarehouse has a decent Cap Arcona model by Lucas Gustaffson. Possibly not 100% accurate, but a good starting point anyway and for sure lesser generic than the
Big old style 3 funnels ocean liner by UBOAT234, AOTD_MadMax & VonDos
