Gneisenau
Career
Ordered:	January 25 1934
Laid down:	May 6 1935
Launched:	December 8 1936
Commissioned:	May 21 1938
Fate:	Sunk as blockship in Gotenhafen, 23 March 1945
General Characteristics
Displacement:	31,500 tonnes (standard) 38,900 tonnes (full load)
Length:	235 m (772ft) overall 226 m (741.5ft) waterline
Beam:	30 m (98.4ft)
Draft:	9.69 m (31 ft 9 in.) at 37,303 tons
Armament:	Nine 280 mm (11 in) (3x3) Twelve 150 mm (5.9 in) (4x2, 4x1) Fourteen 105 mm (4.1 in) AA (7x2) Sixteen 37 mm AA (8x2) Ten 20 mm AA (later Sixteen) Six 533 mm (21 in) torpedo tubes
Armor:	Main belt: 350 mm (13.78 in)
Aircraft:	3 Arado Ar 196A-3, 1 catapult
Propulsion:	3 Germania geared turbines with single reduction 3 three-bladed propellers, 4.8 m (15 9 inch) diameter 151,893 shp = 33 kts
Range:	8,400 nm at 19 kts
Complement:	1,669 (56 officers, 1613 enlisted)

Gneisenau was a 31,100 ton Gneisenau class battlecruiser^[1] of the German Kriegsmarine. She was the second to carry the name of the Prussian general August von Gneisenau; the first was the World War I armored cruiser SMS Gneisenau, destroyed near the Falkland Islands in 1914.

Gneisenau, originally listed as Panzerschiff ("Armored Ship") E, was planned to be one of the Deutschland class "pocket battleships".

Construction

She was laid down in February 1934, at Deutsche Werke Kiel. Construction was delayed, however. She was then redesigned and re-laid in May 1935. When completed, she displaced just under the Washington Naval Treaty limit of 35,000 tons.

She carried a main armor belt of nearly 350 mm (13.78 in), comparable to modern battleships of the time, and vastly heavier than the World War One British battlecruisers HMS Renown and HMS Repulse and the French battlecruisers Dunkerque and Strasbourg. These ships which would have been considered her equal if she had received the intended 38 cm (15 inch) main battery.

Gneisenau received a main battery of nine 28 cm (11 in) guns: these were already in production whereas the larger weapons had yet to be developed. Although these were smaller than planned, they had a relatively high rate of fire and the ship was designed to allow a fit of 38 cm guns, mounted in twin turrets.

She is considered a handsome ship, and looked as fast as she was. She and her sistership, the Scharnhorst, are generally spoken of as the most successful German design of the period. The main criticism of the design was their relatively low deck height above the water, the "freeboard", which made them "wet" in North Atlantic conditions. This led to alterations in the sheer line and installation of the 'Atlantic Bow' in a winter 1938 refit. She conducted trials in the Atlantic in June, 1939.

High pressure boilers were installed to give a high speed, but there were recurrent problems.

War service

On 4 September 1939, the day after war was declared, she was attacked by Royal Air Force aircraft at Brunsbüttelkoog with no damage. On 8 October, she sailed with the cruiser Köln and 9 destroyers to create a diversion for the Allied forces searching for the Deutschland. In late 1939 she operated with Scharnhorst in the North Atlantic and sank the Armed Merchant Cruiser HMS Rawalpindi, but suffered severe sea damage in a storm.

In 1940 she covered the invasion of Norway and fought with HMS Renown to no conclusion, but suffered damage to her aft turret and radar. On 5 May, she set off a magnetic mine about 21 meters off the port quarter, and suffered shock damage, flooding, and a loss of steering for 18 minutes. The damage was repaired by 21 May at Kiel. In the British withdrawal on 8 June, she and Scharnhorst surprised and sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, a converted battlecruiser, and her two escorts, the destroyers HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent. She was torpedoed in the North Atlantic in June.

After repairs, she joined Scharnhorst in their most successful commerce raiding campaign in March, 1941 (Operation Berlin), Gneisenau sinking 14 ships, Scharnhorst sinking 8, and avoiding the British battleships that escorted the convoys.

The two ships returned to Brest, but British air attacks made the port unsafe. Gneisenau was torpedoed on 6 April 1941 and hit by four bombs on the night of 9-10 April. She was repaired at Brest through December, 1941.

In 1942, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and a covering screen of destroyers and torpedo boats, executed a daring daylight run to Germany (Operation Cerberus, known in Britain as the "Channel Dash"). All three ships escaped damage in the furious air and sea battles that ensued, but Gneisenau struck a mine at the Brunsbüttel Roads and required repairs at Kiel.

Reconstruction

In an air attack on 26-27 February 1942, on the floating dock where she was being repaired, she was struck on the bow. Contrary to normal practice, ammunition had not been unloaded and the resultant fires set off an explosion that destroyed the entire bow section. She was decommissioned at Gotenhafen (Gdynia) and reconstruction was to be done there.

Although some work was done from 1942 through to 1944 to reconstruct her, she was withdrawn from service in July 1943 to allow the replacement of the 28cm battery with twin 38 cm (15 in) turrets. After the sinking of the Scharnhorst, this work was finally abandoned. One of the 38 cm guns intended for the rearmament exists today at the museum of Hanstholm in Denmark. Her guns from turret Anton were removed and sent to Denmark; and turrets Bruno and Caesar and their guns were sent to Norway for coastal defence.

Gneisenau ended as a blockship, sunk in Gotenhafen harbor. She was raised, broken up, and scrapped after the war.

Her aft main turret, "Caesar" was converted to a coastal battery named Austråt Fort in Ørland near Trondheim, Norway and still exists today. In Denmark, at the former "Stevnsfort" near Rødvig, two twin 15 cm turrets from her secondary armament still exist.

Bibliography

• Willliam H. Garzke, Jr., and Robert O. Dulin, Jr., Battleships: Axis and Neutral Battleships in World War II (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1985). Includes the design and operational histories, information on the guns, and other design and statistical information about the ship.
• Siegfried Breyer, Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905-1970 (Doubleday and Company; Garden City, New York, 1973) (originally published in German as Schlachtschiffe und Schlachtkreuzer 1905-1970, J.F. Lehmanns, Verlag, Munchen, 1970). Contains various line drawings of the ship as designed and as built, and the proposed 1942 38cm gun version.
• Robert Gardiner, ed., Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922 - 1946 (Conway Maritime Press, London, 1980)

Notes

1. ^ The battlecruiser classification came from the Royal Navy, the German Kriegsmarine classification was battleship.

See also

• Kriegsmarine
• List of Kriegsmarine ships
• List of naval ships of Germany
• List of World War II ships
• List of ship launches in 1936
• List of ship commissionings in 1938
• List of shipwrecks in 1945

External links

• Maritimequest Gneisenau Photo Gallery
• Detailed technical and operational information