Scharnhorst-class

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The heaviest surface warships available to the German Kriegsmarine at the start of the Second World War, the two ships of the Scharnhorst-class were considered battlecruisers by most countries, although the Germans called them battleships. Optimized for commerce raiding, they had 280mm main guns, improved over the design in the KMS Graf Spee. While their official displacement was 26,000 tons, they first went to sea at 35,540 tons, and gained weight in modifications.

Undergunned by most battlecruiser and certainly battleship standards, their main armament was still capable of sinking any single, or possibly multiple, cruisers. They were quite fast and could outrun any current battleship, although they had poor seakeeping qualities and were best for short operations.

KMS Scharnhorst and KMS Gneisenau successfully carried out the Operation Berlin commerce raid in March 1941, ^[1] and subsequently made the Channel Dash through British-dominated waters, returning to Scandinavian ports. Only Scharnhorst was to fight again, sinking in the last pure gunfire action, the Battle of North Cape, against a British force led by the true battleship, HMS Duke of York.

WWI Class[edit]

There was a First World War class of the SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau, 12,985 tons armored cruisers with 8 x 8.2in 40cal (2 x 2, 4 x 1) main guns and commissioned in 1907 and 1908. The core of the German East Asia Squadron under Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee, were on the victorious side in the Battle of Coronel in November 1914, but both were sunk at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December.

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