Under the command of Krancke, during the five-month-long raiding cruise, the pocket battleship
Admiral Scheer sank 13 merchant ships, one armed merchant cruiser
HMS Jervis Bay, and captured three merchant ships representing 115,195
gross register tons (GRT) of Allied and neutral shipping.
During the Allied
Invasion of Normandy Krancke, as Commander-in-Chief of Navy Group Command West headquartered in
Paris, controlled all German naval vessels in France, as well as the various land-based naval units and the naval coastal artillery and anti-aircraft batteries along the French Atlantic coast.
Dates of Rank
Fähnrich zur See – 12 April 1913
Leutnant zur See – 22 March 1915
Oberleutnant zur See – 25 December 1917
Kapitänleutnant – 1 September 1922
Korvettenkapitän – 1 October 1930
Fregattenkapitän – 1 November 1935
Kapitän zur See – 1 April 1937
Konteradmiral – 1 April 1941
Vizeadmiral – 1 April 1942
Admiral – 1 March 1943
Awards
Iron Cross (1914) 2nd Class (May 1915) & 1st Class (27 September 1919)[1]
Dörr, Manfred (1995). Die Ritterkreuzträger der Überwasserstreitkräfte der Kriegsmarine—Band 1: A–K [The Knight's Cross Bearers of the Surface Forces of the Navy—Volume 1: A–K] (in German). Osnabrück, Germany: Biblio Verlag.
ISBN978-3-7648-2453-2.
Scherzer, Veit (2007). Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives [The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939–1945 The Holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 by Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Allied Forces with Germany According to the Documents of the Federal Archives] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag.
ISBN978-3-938845-17-2.