Nürnberg was a German
light cruiser of the
Leipzig class built for the
Kriegsmarine. She was named after the city of
Nuremberg and had one
sister ship,
Leipzig.
Nürnberg was laid down in 1934, launched in December of that year, and completed in November 1935. She was armed with a main battery of nine 15 cm (5.9 in) guns in three triple turrets and could steam at a speed of 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph).
Nürnberg was the longest-serving major warship of the Kriegsmarine, and the only one to see active service after the end of
World War II, though not in a German navy.
In the late 1930s,
Nürnberg took part in the
non-intervention patrols during the
Spanish Civil War without major incident. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, she was used to lay defensive minefields off the German coast. She was thereafter used to escort offensive mine-layers in the
North Sea until she was torpedoed by a British
submarine in December 1939. She was thereafter used as a
training ship in the
Baltic Sea for most of the rest of the war, apart from a short deployment to Norway from November 1942 to April 1943. In January 1945, she was assigned to mine-laying duties in the
Skaggerak, but severe shortages of fuel permitted only one such operation.
After the end of the war,
Nürnberg was seized by the Royal Navy and ultimately awarded to the
Soviet Union as
war reparations. In December 1945, a Soviet crew took over the ship, and the following month took her to
Tallinn, where she was renamed
Admiral Makarov. She served in the
Soviet Navy, first in the 8th Fleet, then as a training cruiser based in
Kronstadt. By 1960, she had been broken up for scrap.
(from Wikipedia entry)