At the beginning of World War II on 1 September 1939, the ship was initially deployed to blockade the Polish coast, but she was quickly transferred to the North Sea to lay defensive minefields.
After her refit was completed, Steinbrinck was transferred to Northern Norway in 1942 where she participated in several minor operations before she was damaged running aground and forced to return to Germany for repairs.
Steinbrinck was ordered home in November to begin a lengthy refit, during which she was badly damaged by Allied bombs, and was unserviceable for the rest of the war.
The Wagner geared steam turbines were designed to produce 70,000 metric horsepower (51,485 kW; 69,042 shp) which would propel the ship at 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph).
[7] Erich Steinbrinck, named after the commander of the torpedo boat SMS V-29 killed during the Battle of Jutland in 1916, was ordered on 19 January 1935 from Blohm & Voss.
She participated in the Spring fleet exercise in the western Mediterranean and made several visits to Spanish and Moroccan ports in April and May 1939.
[10] When World War II began, Erich Steinbrinck was initially deployed in the Baltic to operate against the Polish Navy and to enforce a blockade of Poland,[11] but she was soon transferred to the German Bight where she joined her sister ships in laying defensive minefields.
[11] On the night of 18/19 November, Steinbrinck was commander (Fregattenkapitän) Erich Bey's flagship for an offensive minelaying mission off the British coast when she led her sister ships Friedrich Eckoldt and Hans Lody[13] to the Humber Estuary that claimed seven ships of 38,710 gross register tons (GRT), including the Polish ocean liner MS Piłsudski.
Steinbrinck and her sisters Friedrich Eckoldt and Ihn sortied again on the night of 18 December, but the British had turned off the navigation lights off Orfordness and the German were forced to abandon the attempt because they could not locate themselves precisely enough to lay the minefield in the proper position.
Her work up was cut short to escort the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, as well as the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper participating in Operation Juno, a planned attack on Harstad, Norway, to relieve pressure on the German garrison at Narvik.
[20] The flotilla laid defensive minefields in the North Sea in August and early September before it was transferred to the Atlantic Coast of France in mid-September.
The British opened fire at extreme range and were forced to disengage in the face of long-range torpedo volleys and attacks by Luftwaffe bombers without having hit any of the German ships.
There she was primarily occupied with escorting returning commerce raiders, warships and supply ships through the Bay of Biscay to bases in France.
The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was escorted to Brest in early June after separating from the battleship Bismarck during Operation Rheinübung.
After unloading her troops, she bombarded targets on the island until her fire main broke from the shock of shooting and partially flooded one of her compartments.
While successful, the operation was primarily intended to boost the morale of the ships stationed in the Arctic when fuel shortages limited their activities and the Allies reestablished the bases five weeks later.
On 25 November she was ordered to return to Germany for an overhaul, but accidentally collided with a small Norwegian steamer en route later that night.
[28] After her refit was completed on 18 January 1944, Steinbrinck and her sister Theodor Riedel spent the first half of the year laying minefields at the entrance to the Skaggerak and escorting convoys to and from Norway.
By 1 April 1945, only a single engine was operable and the Kriegsmarine made the decision to strip her crew for combat duties ashore after she was moved to Cuxhaven.