Light Cruisers: Pillau Class

[Brian James]

Lead Ship, Light Cruiser SMS Pillau showing the damage incurred from one 12 inch shell from HMS Inflexible during the battle of Jutland...She assisted the badly damaged Battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz reach port on June 2nd after the conclusion of the battle. She also took part in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight, though was not damaged in the engagement. Pillau was assigned to the planned, final operation of the High Seas Fleet in the closing weeks of the war, but a large scale mutiny forced it to be canceled.
After the end of the war, Pillau was ceded to Italy as a war prize in 1920. Renamed Bari, she was commissioned in the Regia Marina in January 1924. She was modified and rebuilt several times over the next two decades. In the early years of WWII, she provided gunfire support to Italian troops in several engagements in the Mediterranean. In 1943, she was slated to become an anti-aircraft defense ship, but while awaiting conversion, she was sunk by USAAF bombers in Livorno in June 1943. The wreck was partially scrapped by the Germans in 1944, and ultimately raised for scrapping in January 1948.