The following month, on 8 April, "Prinz Eugen" and "Lützow" steamed to Swinemünde. On 13 April, 34 Lancaster bombers attacked the two ships while in port. Thick cloud cover forced the British to abort the mission and return two days later. On the second attack, they succeeded in sinking "Lützow" with a single Tallboy bomb hit. "Prinz Eugen" then departed Swinemünde for Copenhagen, arriving on 20 April. Once there, she was decommissioned on 7 May and turned over to Royal Navy control the following day. For his leadership of "Prinz Eugen" in the final year of the war, Reinicke was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 21 April 1945. During her operational career with the "Kriegsmarine", "Prinz Eugen" lost 115 crew members; 79 men were killed in action, 33 were killed in accidents and three died of other causes. Of these 115 crew members, four were officers, seven were cadets or ensigns, two were petty officers, 22 were junior petty officers, 78 were sailors and two were civilians. On 27 May 1945, "Prinz Eugen" and the light cruiser —the only major German naval vessels to survive the war in serviceable condition—were escorted by the British cruisers and to Wilhelmshaven. On 13 December, "Prinz Eugen" was awarded as a war prize to the United States, which sent the ship to Wesermünde. The United States did not particularly want the cruiser, but it did want to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring it. Her US commander, Captain Arthur H. Graubart, recounted later how the British, Soviet and US representatives in the Control Commission all claimed the ship and how in the end the various large prizes were divided in three lots, "Prinz Eugen" being one of them. The three lots were then drawn lottery style from his hat with the British and Soviet representatives drawing the lots for other ships and Graubart being left with the lot for "Prinz Eugen". The cruiser was commissioned into the US Navy as the unclassified miscellaneous vessel USS "Prinz Eugen" with the hull number IX-300. A composite American-German crew consisting of 574 German officers and sailors, supervised by eight American officers and eighty-five enlisted men under the command of Graubart, then took the ship to Boston, departing on 13 January 1946 and arriving on 22 January.