The ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1935 and launched in February 1937; Admiral Hipper entered service shortly before the outbreak of war, in April 1939.

This operation ended without significant success, but in February 1941, Admiral Hipper sortied again, sinking several merchant vessels before eventually returning to Germany via the Denmark Strait.

The ship was then transferred to northern Norway to participate in operations against convoys to the Soviet Union, culminating in the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31 December 1942, in which she sank the destroyer Achates and the minesweeper Bramble, but was in turn damaged and forced to withdraw by the light cruisers HMS Sheffield and Jamaica.

The Admiral Hipper class of heavy cruisers was ordered in the context of German naval rearmament after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 and repudiated the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles.

[9] In November 1939, the ship returned to the Blohm & Voss dockyard for modifications; these included the replacement of the straight stem with a clipper bow and the installation of the funnel cap.

[22][23][24] Upon arriving on the scene, Admiral Hipper was initially misidentified by the British destroyer HMS Glowworm as a friendly vessel, which allowed the German ship to close the distance and fire first.

The British destroyer scored one hit on Admiral Hipper's starboard bow before a rudder malfunction set the ship on a collision course with the German cruiser.

[28] The British destroyer had survived long enough to send a wireless message to Royal Navy headquarters, which allowed the battlecruiser Renown time to move into position to engage Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, though the German battleships used their superior speed to break off contact.

[25] Marschall organized a mission to seize Harstad in Northern Norway in early June 1940; Admiral Hipper, the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the four destroyers Z7 Hermann Schoemann, Z10 Hans Lody, Z15 Erich Steinbrinck and Z20 Karl Galster were tasked with the operation.

[16] In order to cover the return of the damaged Scharnhorst to Germany, Admiral Hipper and Gneisenau left Trondheim on 20 June for a raid towards the Iceland-Faeroes passage, but Gneisenau was torpedoed and damaged by the submarine Clyde and both ships returned to Trondheim the same day[43][44] On 25 July, Admiral Hipper steamed out on a commerce raiding patrol in the area between Spitzbergen and Tromsø; the cruise lasted until 9 August.

[47] The overhaul in Wilhelmshaven was completed on 9 September and with a new commanding officer, Wilhelm Meisel, the cruiser made ready to participate in Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of the United Kingdom.

Admiral Hipper's role would have been a diversionary foray into the North Sea, Operation Herbstreise or "Autumn Journey", with the aim of luring the British Home Fleet away from the intended invasion routes in the English Channel.

The fire forced the crew to shut down the ship's propulsion system until the blaze could be brought under control; this rendered Admiral Hipper motionless for several hours on the open sea.

British reconnaissance failed to locate the ship, and after the fire was extinguished, she returned to Hamburg's Blohm & Voss shipyard, where repairs lasted slightly over a week.

The German cruiser then proceeded towards a position South of Jan Mayen, where she refueled several times from the tanker Adria whilst waiting for convenient bad weather to break through the Denmark Strait into the North Atlantic.

[50][51] At dusk on 24 December, Admiral Hipper, using her DeTe radar, detected Convoy WS 5A[46] some 700 nautical miles (1,300 km; 810 mi) west of Cape Finisterre.

[46] By this time Admiral Hipper was running low on fuel, and so she put into Brest in occupied France on 27 December,[46] escorted by the torpedo boat Jaguar.

The same night a major air raid was mounted with 53 Vickers Wellington, Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and Handley Page Hampden bombers, but due to cloud cover and heavy Flak these were unsuccessful.

The ship was allowed to operate against both lightly escorted convoys and independent sailing vessels, with the hope that her appearance in these waters would draw away British forces guarding the Denmark Strait, thus making it easier for Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to break out into the Atlantic.

Raeder intended to continue to send the Admiral Hipper on North Atlantic raids, and as her operations so far had been dominated by the constant need to refuel, it was decided to increase her fuel capacity from 3050 to 3700 cubic meters.

[82] By then, however, the strategic situation had altered completely: due to British air reconnaissance and developments in radar it was no longer viable to execute raids in the North Atlantic.

[84] There, they joined the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Prinz Eugen, though the latter had been torpedoed by the British submarine Trident on 23 February[85] and returned to Germany for repairs on 16 May.

[91] On 2 July, Admiral Hipper, Tirpitz, the destroyers Z6 Theodor Riedel, Z10 Hans Lody, Z14 Friedrich Ihn and Z20 Karl Galster, and the torpedo boats T7 and T15 left Trondheim for Altafjord, followed on 3 July by the cruisers Lützow and Admiral Scheer and the destroyers Z24, Z27, Z28, Z29, Z30 and Z4 Richard Beitzen coming from Narvik[92][91][86] in order to avoid British reconnaissance, the German fleet did not steer into open waters but remained close to the coast.

In fog Lützow ran aground in the narrow Tjeldsundet, and the destroyers Z6 Theodor Riedel, Z10 Hans Lody and Z20 Karl Galster struck uncharted rocks at Grimsöy in Vestfjorden and all these ships fell out for the operation.

Against this traffic the Germans started Operation Hoffnung on 5 November: Admiral Hipper and the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, composed of Z27, Z30, Z4 Richard Beitzen, and Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt, patrolled for Allied shipping in the Arctic.

[106] Admiral Hipper, again served as Kummetz's flagship; the squadron comprised Lützow and the destroyers Friederich Eckoldt, Richard Beitzen, Theodor Riedel, Z29, Z30, and Z31.

[108] Rear Admiral Robert Burnett's Force R, centered on the cruisers Sheffield and Jamaica, standing by in distant support of the Allied convoy,[106] raced to the scene.

[113] Based on the order issued at the outset of the operation to avoid action with a force equal in strength to his own, poor visibility, and the damage to his flagship, Kummetz decided to abort the attack.

[107] In the aftermath of the failed operation, a furious Hitler proclaimed that the Kriegsmarine's surface forces would be paid off and dismantled, and their guns used to reinforce the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall.

On 3 April, RAF bombers attacked the harbor and hit the Admiral Hipper with one bomb which failed to penetrate the armor deck but caused six deaths amongst the crew.