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The Gneisenau class were two large heavy-gun warships of the World War II German navy, the Kriegsmarine. At the time of their building they were the largest warships and the first capital ships in Germany since the First World War and they marked the beginning of German Naval rearmament.

Naming

They are known as the Gneisenau class since the Gneisenau was the first to be laid down and commissioned but they are also referred to by some as the Scharnhorst class as the Scharnhorst was the one that was launched first. In World War I, the armoured cruiser SMS Scharnhorst had been the lead ship of a class of armoured cruisers.

Design and Classification

The two ships of the class were known as battleships by the Kriegsmarine (German "Schlachtschiff"). By comparison the Royal Navy referred to them as battlecruisers probably because they traded off large caliber guns for their 32 to 33 knot (60 km/h) speed albeit that they still achieved good armour protection, in the tradition of World War I Kaiserliche Marine battlecruisers. Secondary sources working from either of the two primary sources tend to use the same classifications as the original source.

Like the "pocket battleships" of the Deutschland class, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were political compromises, symbols of international power and prestige for the Nazi regime, but not so big as to overly concern international opinion or inflame the British.

The two ships came about as Hitler's Germany moved away from compliance with the Treaty of Versailles which had limited its military strength since the end of the First World War - specifically that no German battleship should be greater than 10,000 tons. Further building of the pocket battleships of the Deutschland class was curtailed and the guns freed up were used to arm the new ships. They were officially declared to be of some 26,000 tons displacement which while greater than the Treaty demanded was less than the 35,000 tons that the major naval powers had limited themselves to under the Washington Naval Treaty. In reality their standard displacement was some 32,000 tons. The Deutschlands had been over the 10,000 limit but only slightly.

The launching ceremonies themselves paid tribute to their forebearers - the widows of the captains of the original Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, that had been lost during the Battle of the Falkland Islands in the First World War, performing the christening.

Characteristics

In outward appearance, they were considered beautiful ships, and they looked very similar to the following Bismarck class battleships, although they only had 3 main gun turrets to the Bismarck's 4. Unlike the Bismarck class where the Bismarck had been sunk before the Tirpitz was ready, both Gneisenau-class vessels saw combat action together for much of their careers. All of the ships were designed for an extended range to allow for commerce raiding.

Main Armament

The two Gneisenau class ships were designed and built with the capacity for 15-inch (380 mm) guns, but to adhere to the Versailles Treaty limit on German warship armament the two ships were equipped with nine 11-inch (280 mm) guns in three triple turrets, two forward and one aft. Although the 11-inch gun design was an improvement on that of the preceding Deutschland class and while the Gneisenau-class also carried more guns, in overall firepower they were inferior to any Royal Navy or French capital ship of the time.

If the intention to upgrade the Gneisenau-class's main armament to six 15-inch (380 mm) guns in three twin turrets had been implemented, they would have been formidable opponents, faster than any British capital ship and nearly as well armored. However, being limited to six heavy calibre guns still made them less potentially powerful since Allied capital ships carried at least six and typically eight or nine.

In 1943, conversion work for 15-inch (380 mm) guns was started on the Gneisenau, which was already in dock at Gotenhafen for repairs. This was abandoned later the same year.

Service

The two ships spent relatively little time at sea during their active careers. Their major operations of the two ships against enemy warships were in the Norwegian campaign in 1940. Thereafter they acted as a constant threat to shipping and did sink a substantial tonnage of merchant vessels. They had the effect, even when in port, of tying down Royal Navy battleships in the convoy support role. They spent a while at Brest on the French Atlantic coast where they were in position to sortie against convoys bringing supplies and materiel from the US to Britain. Here they were exposed to attacks by air, and in the Channel Dash they sped through the English Channel to more protected anchorages in Northern Europe. Once there they were no longer a threat to the Atlantic convoys but they instead posed a deadly challenge to Arctic convoys carrying supplies from Britain to the Soviets through Murmansk.

Gneisenau was badly damaged during a British air raid in Kiel two weeks after Channel Dash and required extensive repairs. Scharnhorst moved further North to partner the Tirpitz, but was sunk after encountering a heavy RN force during an attack on a convoy in the "Battle of North Cape" 26 December 1943. During Gneisenau's repairs, moves were made to rearm the ship with 15-inch guns, but after the sinking of Scharnhorst all work was stopped and Gneisenau sunk as a blockade ship in Gotenhafen (Gdynia) in 1945, at the end of the war.

Further reading

• Royal Naval History: The Second World War 1939-1945
• Gneisenau Class Battleships

Footnotes

1. Mike Bennighof Baden to Bismarck: A Story of Stagnation December 2005

• Battleship classes
• Battlecruiser classes
• Gneisenau class battlecruisers