SMS Scharnhorst

SMS Scharnhorst

Scharnhorst steaming at high speed, c. 1907–1908
History
German Empire
Name	Scharnhorst
Namesake	Gerhard von Scharnhorst[1]
Laid down	22 March 1905
Launched	23 March 1906
Commissioned	24 October 1907
Fate	Sunk in action, Battle of the Falkland Islands, 8 December 1914
General characteristics
Class and type	Scharnhorst-class armored cruiser
Displacement	12,985 t (12,780 long tons)
Length	144.6 m (474 ft 5 in)
Beam	21.6 m (70 ft 10 in)
Draft	8.37 m (27 ft 6 in)
Installed power	18 × water-tube boilers 26,000 metric horsepower (19,000 kW)
Propulsion	3 × triple-expansion steam engines 3 × screw propellers
Speed	22.5 knots (42 km/h; 26 mph)
Range	4,800 nmi (8,900 km; 5,500 mi) at 14 kn (26 km/h; 16 mph)
Crew	52 officers 788 enlisted men
Armament	8 × 21 cm (8.3 in) guns 6 × 15 cm (5.9 in) guns 18 × 8.8 cm (3.5 in) guns 4 × 45 cm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armor	Belt: 8 to 15 cm (3.1 to 5.9 in) Turrets: 17 cm (6.7 in) Deck: 3.5 to 6 cm (1.4 to 2.4 in) Casemates: 13 cm (5.1 in)

SMS Scharnhorst^[a] was an armored cruiser of the Imperial German Navy, built at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. She was the lead ship of her class, which included SMS Gneisenau. Scharnhorst and her sister were enlarged versions of the preceding Roon class; they were equipped with a greater number of main guns and were capable of a higher top speed. The ship was named after the Prussian military reformer General Gerhard von Scharnhorst and commissioned into service on 24 October 1907.

Scharnhorst served briefly with the High Seas Fleet in Germany in 1908, though most of this time was spent conducting sea trials. She was assigned to the East Asia Squadron based in Qingdao, China, in 1909. After arriving, she replaced the cruiser Fürst Bismarck as the squadron flagship, a position she would hold for the rest of her career. Over the next five years, she went on several tours of various Asian ports to show the flag for Germany. She frequently carried the squadron commanders to meet Asian heads of state and was present in Japan for the coronation of the Taishō Emperor in 1912.

After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, accompanied by three light cruisers and several colliers, sailed across the Pacific Ocean to the southern coast of South America. On 1 November 1914, Scharnhorst and the rest of the East Asia Squadron encountered and overpowered a British squadron at the Battle of Coronel. The defeat prompted the British Admiralty to dispatch two battlecruisers to hunt down and destroy the German squadron, which they accomplished at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914. The discovery of the wreck was announced in December 2019 by Mensun Bound.

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).