The Tralla was built to be able to offensively mine into Argentinian waters. By the time the Tralla was completed the Argentinian menace had already been cured. Offensive minelaying in Europe was still very much a necessity and the Tralla was sent to Scapa Flow for deployment.
The ships design had a high freeboard and deep lower hull for both enhanced mine capacity and space to provide the largest machinery plant that could be installed. For its role the Tralla needed to be fast. On trials the ship could easily make 36 knots on 140,000shp and with the taps wide open at 110%+ of power the ship would just crawl out to 38 knots. The hull was fully air-conditioned to provide a stable temperature for the mines. Get to hot in the tropics and the explosives in the mines could become unstable. Kaboom. Mishandling of the mines themselves could also lead to catastrophic consequences. When a minelayer and its cargo go up, ships within hundreds of meters also sustain damage. (See French Pluton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cruiser_Pluton) and (Princess Irene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Princess_Irene) , I also know of a mine depot on Hawaii that exploded but can't find a reference to it.
On reaching Scapa Flow, the Tralla was ordered to mine the Inner Leads of southern Norway to interdict German naval and merchant shipping passing through the area. It carried this out and several vessels were sunk until the Germans cleared the mines. Tralla and Abdiel were ordered to lay a minefield off the port of Brest to try and stop the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen from escaping the port. This was carried out but it would be almost six months before those three ships made their break out of Brest and carry out "The Channel Dash" that got them back to Germany, quite possibly that field would have been located and cleared before that event.
For the rest of 1941 and 1942, the Tralla and Abdiel class ships went on the Gibraltar to Malta run with urgent supplies and personnel for the Island. It was on one of these runs, in late 1942, that the Tralla was sunk by a U-boat south of Sardinia.
