Scharnhorst and Gneisenau

By Steve Backer

A history of the service careers and advice on making models of “perhaps the most successful of the German battleships of the Second World War” (History of War).

The ShipCraft series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeler through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring color profiles and highly-detailed line drawings and scale planes. The modeling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research reference books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites.

The two German ships which form the subject of this volume were among the first products of rearmament under Hitler. For political reasons they were neither as large nor as well armed as foreign equivalents, but they were very fast, which led them to be described as battlecruisers in some quarters. They enjoyed an adventurous war, both surviving heavy damage, before Scharnhorst was sunk in an epic gun battle off the North Cape, while Gneisenau succumbed to heavy air attack.

“For both vessels, the book gives details of modifications carried out, while a wealth of clear and detailed photographs and line drawings illustrate the ships themselves, as well as items of equipment.” —Ships Monthly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781783830374

Book preview

References

Design

At the end of the First World War Germany was humbled. Gone was the Hohenzollern dynasty to be replaced by the Weimer Republic. The determination of the allies, especially France, to take revenge on Germany proved short-sighted in the extreme, as all this achieved was to make the struggling German republic a breeding ground for seething resentment. The end product was Adolf Hitler. Imperial Germany had been a latecomer as a major naval power and the explosive growth of the Imperial German Navy had been one of the causes of the war. After the Armistice the High Seas Fleet was supposed to be interned in a neutral port pending a peace treaty, but this port turned out to be Scapa Flow, home of the Grand Fleet. While the British Fleet was at sea on manoeuvres most of the once-proud capital ships of the High Seas Fleet scuttled themselves rather endure a more shameful fate. The eventual peace treaty signed at Versailles included clauses restricting the development of any future German navy. As foreseen, all modern German warships were parcelled out among the victors and Germany was only left with a handful of obsolete predreadnought battleships.

Future construction was hamstrung by size constraints. Maximum displacement was set at 6000 tons for cruisers and at 10,000 tons for battleships. The Germans were allowed to replace their old predreadnought battleships on a one-for-one basis as each old battleship reached 20 years of age. Great Britain and France could not foresee Germany producing anything that could be considered a threat on a 10,000-ton displacement, but German naval architects took up this challenge and, by thinking outside of the box, came up with a unique answer. This was not a conventional battleship design but instead combined the armour of a cruiser with six 11in guns. Rated simply as a ‘panzerschiff’ (armoured ship), the first of a three-ship class was the Deutschland. Arguably the most efficient German warship design, it provided a very powerful warship on a cruiser’s displacement. However, the Weimer Republic lied about the displacement from the start, as the final displacement was substantially over 10,000 tons. With extremely efficient diesel engines providing a top speed of 26 knots, the only ships with superior armament and the speed to run down the panzerschiffe were the three British battlecruisers. The diesel power plant produced a huge operational range of 10,000nm, making the ships the perfect commerce raider.

The British and French admiralties were totally confounded by the appearance of the panzerschiffe. Great Britain had no battleship tonnage left under the Washington Treaty for a reply, but France did and built the Strasbourg and Dunkerque as an answer to the panzerschiffe. The last true battlecruiser design, the pair did have the speed, armament and armour to defeat a panzerschiff. Germany had already built or was building three of the type – Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee – and had plans for two more. The revelation of the French Strasbourg design, however, prompted a rethinking and the next two were to be improved panzerschiffe with far greater displacement. Although this design still carried six 11in guns, the armour protection and size greatly increased. With a design displacement of around 20,000 tons and a length of almost 700ft, it would have been impossible to claim that these ships were within the 10,000-ton Versailles limits. At the same time designers and admirals flirted with ways of providing heavier armament than the six 11in guns of their predecessors. One proposal was to provide two quadruple 11in guns along the lines of the mountings in the French battlecruisers; others were to match the 330mm (13in) guns of the French ships, or to mount 350mm (14in) and 380mm (15in) main armament. With any of these choices, a total redesign would be needed, substantially extending the design and construction process.

Gneisenau on 22 August 1938 off Kiel for the celebrations surrounding the launch of the cruiser Prinz Eugen. At this time the ship was carrying out trials with various prototype floatplanes, the aircraft on the catapult being a Heinkel He 114. Note that as completed the ship carried a stump foremast stepped on the main director on the foretop.

The newly completed Scharnhorst in April 1939. At this stage of her career, the ship looked very like her sister, with straight stem, mainmast on the funnel platform and no funnel cap. However, the ship carried her foremast stepped on the rear of the admiral’s platform from commissioning.

Even with this large expansion of the panzerschiff design, this pair would still have been inferior to the new French battlecruisers without the total redesign required for heavier main gun armament. Hitler had been in power since 1933 and had approved the orders for the two improved panzerschiffe. The contract for ‘Panzerschiffe D’ (Ersatz Elsass), later Scharnhorst, was awarded to Marinewerft, Wilhelmshaven on 24 January 1934 as a six 11in gun improved Deutschland. The same was true with ship ‘E’ (Ersatz Hessen), later Gneisenau, ordered from Deutsche Werke, Kiel on 25 January 1934. The keels for both ships were laid down on 14 February 1934 but it was only a few months before work was stopped on these hulls. Further thought had gone into the design and it was finally decided that indeed something more powerful than a ship with six 11in guns was needed to meet the French pair. Hitler had been in negotiations with Great Britain and the result was the Anglo-German naval agreement of 1935 in which Germany was allowed to build up to 35 per cent of the Royal Navy’s tonnage by type. By 1934 the outcome looked promising so on 5 July 1934 work stopped and the keels were scrapped. The contracts were not cancelled; instead a new larger design would be built.

The ships carried nine 11in guns (formally called 28cm, but actually 283mm) SK C34 in triple Drhl C34 turrets that were virtually identical to those mounted in the panzerschiffe. This view shows Scharnhorst’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ turrets (known in German naval parlance as Anton and Bruno – ‘C’ was Caesar). On pre-war German warships the turrets were also given individual names celebrating naval tradition, in this case ‘Graf Spee’ and ‘Gneisenau’, and the cast shields that can be seen beneath the rangefinder housings carried the coats of arms of those officers’ families.

DESIGN CHARACTERISTICS