Gneisenau

1. Lead

The German battlecruiser Gneisenau was one of the most active German capital ships of the Second World War, and one of the most unlucky. Commissioned in 1938 as the second ship of the Scharnhorst class, she was fast, at 31 knots, heavily armed with nine 11-inch guns, and designed to raid Allied shipping in the Atlantic — to sink merchant ships, to draw British warships away from the convoys, and to return to port before the Royal Navy could catch her.

In 1941, with her sister Scharnhorst, she sank 22 merchant ships in the Atlantic in Operation Berlin, and in February 1942 she took part in the Channel Dash — the audacious passage of the German battlecruisers through the English Channel, under the guns of the British coast, in broad daylight.

But Gneisenau was damaged by a mine in the Channel Dash, and then, in February 1942, she was crippled by a British bombing raid at Kiel, while in dock for repairs. She never sailed again as a fighting ship: her planned rearmament with 15-inch guns was never completed, and she was scuttled as a blockship at Gdynia in 1945.

Gneisenau‘s story is the story of the German surface fleet in the Second World War: ambitious, technically accomplished, and ultimately futile, because the German Navy could never match the Royal Navy in numbers and because the ships it built were, one by one, hunted down and destroyed. Gneisenau was, for a year, the most successful German raider of the war, and her loss — not to enemy action at sea, but to a bomb in harbour — was a symbol of the German surface fleet’s fate. This article describes Gneisenau‘s background and development, her design, her variants, her operational history, her performance, her operators, her legacy and the wreck that survives.

2. Key Facts

Type	Battlecruiser (Scharnhorst class)
Origin	Germany
Designer	Kriegsmarine; Deutsche Werke, Kiel
Builder	Deutsche Werke, Kiel
Laid down	May 1935
Launched	December 1936
Commissioned	May 1938
Scuttled	March 1945, Gdynia (as a blockship)
Displacement	About 31,000 tons standard; about 38,900 tons full load
Length	771 ft (235.0 m)
Beam	98 ft (30.0 m)
Draught	About 32 ft (9.7 m)
Propulsion	3 steam turbines, 160,000 shp; 3 shafts
Speed	About 31 knots
Range	About 8,900 nautical miles at 17 knots
Crew	About 1,669 (wartime)
Armour	Belt 13.8 in; deck 3.9 in; turrets up to 14.2 in; conning tower 13.8 in
Armament	9 × 11-in guns; 12 × 5.9-in guns; 14 × 4.1-in anti-aircraft guns; 16 × 37 mm and 20 mm anti-aircraft guns; 6 × 21-in torpedo tubes
Aircraft	4 Arado Ar 196 seaplanes; 2 catapults
Most famous action	Operation Berlin, 1941; Channel Dash, February 1942

3. Background and Development

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement

Gneisenau was born of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, which allowed Germany to build a navy up to 35 per cent of the Royal Navy’s strength, and which freed the German Navy from the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles.

The German Navy — the Kriegsmarine, under Admiral Erich Raeder — had, since the 1920s, been building a fleet of pocket battleships, cruisers and destroyers, and the Agreement allowed it to build battleships for the first time since the First World War.

The first battleships it built were the Scharnhorst class: two ships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, designed to be fast, heavily armed, and able to raid Allied shipping in the Atlantic. The class was, in the words of one historian, “a battlecruiser in all but name” — a ship with the speed of a cruiser and the guns of a battleship, built to run from anything it could not outfight and to outfight anything it could not outrun.

A battlecruiser in all but name

The Scharnhorst class was designed to a displacement of about 31,000 tons standard, with nine 11-inch guns in three triple turrets, a speed of 31 knots, and armour thick enough to resist the 8-inch guns of a cruiser and the 11-inch guns of a pocket battleship.

The 11-inch guns were a compromise: the German Navy had wanted 15-inch guns, but the 15-inch turrets were not ready, and the Navy decided to build the ships with 11-inch guns and to rearm them with 15-inch guns later — a decision that was never carried out for Gneisenau, and that was never carried out for Scharnhorst either, because both ships were lost or crippled before the rearmament could be done.

The ships’ names — Scharnhorst after General Gerhard von Scharnhorst, the Prussian military reformer, and Gneisenau after Field Marshal August von Gneisenau, his colleague — were chosen to link the new Navy with the Prussian military tradition, and the ships were, in the Navy’s view, the pride of the new fleet.

Building Gneisenau

Gneisenau was laid down at Deutsche Werke in Kiel in May 1935, launched in December 1936, and commissioned in May 1938. Her sister Scharnhorst was built at the Wilhelmshaven Navy Yard and commissioned in January 1939. The two ships were the largest warships Germany had built since the First World War, and their construction was a statement of intent: Germany was building a navy that could challenge Britain at sea.

The ships’ trials showed that they were fast, well-handled, and heavily armed, but they also showed their weaknesses: their high-pressure steam turbines were unreliable, their bows were wet in heavy seas, and their 11-inch guns, while powerful, were outranged by the 15-inch and 16-inch guns of British battleships.

The Navy accepted those weaknesses, because the ships were not meant to fight battleships — they were meant to raid shipping, and to run from battleships when they met them.

4. Design

Armament: nine 11-inch guns

Gneisenau‘s main armament was nine 11-inch (28 cm) guns, in three triple turrets — two forward and one aft — each firing a 727-pound shell to a range of about 40,000 yards (about 36 kilometres). The guns were the same type carried by the pocket battleship Deutschland class, and they were among the most accurate naval guns in the world: a single broadside of nine shells weighed more than 6,500 pounds, and the shells could penetrate the armour of a cruiser or a merchant ship at any range, and the armour of a battleship at close range.

The secondary armament was twelve 5.9-inch guns, in twin and single turrets, which could fire at surface targets, and fourteen 4.1-inch anti-aircraft guns, supplemented by 37 mm and 20 mm anti-aircraft guns. The ship also carried six 21-inch torpedo tubes, in two triple mounts, and four Arado Ar 196 seaplanes, launched from two catapults, for reconnaissance.

Armour and underwater protection

Gneisenau‘s armour was the heaviest the German Navy had yet put on a warship. The belt was 13.8 inches thick, inclined at a slight angle, and it protected the machinery spaces and magazines from the waterline to the main deck. The deck armour was 3.9 inches thick, the turret faces were up to 14.2 inches thick, and the conning tower was 13.8 inches thick.

Underwater, the ship was protected by a system of longitudinal bulkheads and liquid-loaded compartments, designed to absorb the shock of a torpedo hit and to contain flooding. The system was tested in combat: Gneisenau was hit by a torpedo in 1941 and survived, and she was hit by a mine in 1942 and survived, and her armour and her damage control saved her on both occasions.

The ship’s protection was, in short, the protection of a battleship, on a hull that was faster than any battleship in the Royal Navy.

Machinery, speed and habitability

Gneisenau was powered by three steam turbines, of 160,000 shaft horsepower in total, driving three shafts, and she could make about 31 knots — fast enough to outrun any British battleship and to catch any merchant ship. The turbines were high-pressure, superheated-steam units, and they were unreliable: they broke down frequently, and the ship’s engineers spent much of their time repairing them.

The ship’s range was about 8,900 nautical miles at 17 knots, which gave her the reach to operate in the Atlantic and to return to port without refuelling. Her crew was about 1,669 men in wartime, and they lived in conditions that were cramped but, by German standards, comfortable — with a proper galley, a bakery, a laundry, and a sick bay.

The ship’s fire-control system, with its stereoscopic rangefinders and its analog computers, was among the best in the world, and it allowed Gneisenau to fire accurately at long range, in the tradition of German gunnery.

5. Variants

Ship	Laid down	Commissioned	Fate
Scharnhorst	June 1935	January 1939	Sunk 26 December 1943, Battle of North Cape
Gneisenau	May 1935	May 1938	Scuttled March 1945, Gdynia

Two sisters, two fates

The Scharnhorst class consisted of two ships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, built to the same design and differing only in the details of their fittings and in the campaigns they fought. Scharnhorst fought in the Atlantic, in Norway, and in the Arctic, and she was sunk on 26 December 1943 at the Battle of North Cape, by the British battleship HMS Duke of York and her escorts, with the loss of all but 36 of her 1,968 crew. Gneisenau fought in the Atlantic and in the Channel Dash, and she was crippled by a bomb at Kiel in February 1942 and never sailed again as a fighting ship.

The two ships’ fates were different — one sunk in battle, one destroyed in harbour — but their story is the same: the story of a class that was, for a year, the most successful raider force in the German Navy, and that was, in the end, destroyed by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force together.

The planned 15-inch rearmament

Both ships were designed to be rearmed with 15-inch guns, in three twin turrets, when the turrets became available, and the rearmament was planned for Gneisenau in 1942, after her repairs at Kiel. The plan was to remove the three triple 11-inch turrets and to fit three twin 15-inch turrets, which would have made Gneisenau a true battleship, able to fight British battleships on equal terms.

The plan was never carried out: the bombing raid of February 1942 damaged Gneisenau so badly that the Navy decided to rebuild her completely, with a longer bow, new machinery, and 15-inch guns, but the rebuild was never finished — the work was stopped in 1943, when the Navy decided that the resources were needed elsewhere, and Gneisenau remained in Kiel, disarmed and unfinished, until she was scuttled in 1945.

The 15-inch turrets that had been built for her were used as coastal artillery in Norway and in Denmark.

No post-war career

Neither ship had a post-war career. Scharnhorst was sunk in 1943, and Gneisenau was scuttled in 1945 and scrapped after the war. The class’s story is therefore a story of a ship that fought only one war, and that died in it — a fate shared by almost every German capital ship built before the Second World War. The Scharnhorst class’s design — fast, heavily armed, and heavily protected — influenced the Bismarck class that followed it, which kept the Scharnhorst‘s speed and protection but added 15-inch guns from the start, and which, like the Scharnhorst class, was destroyed by the Royal Navy.

The absence of a post-war career is itself a measure of the German surface fleet’s destruction. By 1945, the Kriegsmarine’s capital ships were all gone — Bismarck sunk in 1941, Scharnhorst sunk in 1943, Tirpitz sunk in 1944, and Gneisenau scuttled in 1945 — and Germany, divided and occupied, built no capital ship again. The Scharnhorst class’s story is therefore a story of a fleet that was built for a war it could not win, and that died in that war, ship by ship.

6. Operational History

The early war: Norway and the Atlantic

Gneisenau‘s war began in the North Sea and in Norway, where she took part in the invasion of Norway in April 1940, covering the landings at Narvik and Trondheim, and where she fought the British battlecruiser HMS Renown in a brief, inconclusive action off the Lofoten Islands.

In June 1940, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her two escorting destroyers off Norway, in an action that shocked the Royal Navy — the only time a battleship has sunk an aircraft carrier by gunfire — and that made the two ships famous in Germany.

The sinking of Glorious was a triumph for the German Navy, but it was also a warning: the two ships had been caught by a carrier, and they had been lucky to escape the British Home Fleet, which was searching for them. Gneisenau was damaged by a torpedo from a British submarine in June 1940, and she had to be repaired at Trondheim and then at Kiel, where she remained until the end of the year.

Operation Berlin

The Atlantic raid of 1941

In January 1941, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst sailed for the Atlantic in Operation Berlin, under Admiral Günther Lütjens, to raid Allied shipping. The operation was the most successful German surface raid of the war: in two months, the two ships sank 22 merchant ships, totalling about 115,000 tons, and they evaded the British Home Fleet, which searched for them in vain. Gneisenau herself sank several ships, and her aircraft spotted convoys for the two ships to attack.

The operation showed that the Scharnhorst class, used as raiders, could do great damage to Allied shipping, and it showed that the Royal Navy, for all its strength, could not protect every convoy and could not catch every raider. The operation ended in March 1941, when the two ships reached Brest, in occupied France, where they remained for the rest of the year, under constant British air attack.

Brest and the bombing

At Brest, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were under constant attack by British bombers, which sought to destroy them in harbour before they could sail again. In April 1941, Gneisenau was hit by a torpedo from a British aircraft, and she was badly damaged, with flooding in her forward compartments, and she had to be repaired in dry dock.

The repairs took months, and the ship was still in Brest when the German high command decided, in early 1942, to bring the two ships home to Germany through the English Channel — the Channel Dash — rather than risk the long voyage around Britain, where the Royal Navy was waiting.

The decision was a gamble, and it was, in the event, a success for the Germans and a humiliation for the British, but it was the beginning of the end for Gneisenau.

The Channel Dash and the bombing of Kiel

On 11–13 February 1942, Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen sailed from Brest through the English Channel, in broad daylight, under the guns of the British coast, and reached Germany — a feat that shocked Britain and that was, in the words of one British historian, “a humiliation for the Royal Navy”. Gneisenau was damaged by a mine in the Channel, which caused flooding and damage to her propellers, and she put into Kiel for repairs.

On the night of 26–27 February 1942, while she was in dry dock at Kiel, Gneisenau was hit by a British bomb, which penetrated her forward turret and set off a fire in the magazine, killing 112 men and crippling the ship.

The damage was so severe that the Navy decided to rebuild her completely, with a longer bow, new machinery, and 15-inch guns — a rebuild that was never finished. Gneisenau never sailed again as a fighting ship.

The end: scuttled at Gdynia

Gneisenau remained at Kiel, disarmed and unfinished, until 1945, when, as the Soviet Army advanced on Germany, the ship was towed to Gdynia, in Poland, and scuttled as a blockship on 23 March 1945, to block the harbour entrance against the advancing Soviets.

The scuttling was the end of the ship’s story: a ship that had been, for a year, the most successful German raider of the war, and that had been crippled by a bomb in harbour, was sunk by her own crew, in a harbour she had never fought in, to block a harbour against an enemy she had never fought.

The wreck was raised and scrapped after the war, and Gneisenau‘s 11-inch guns, which had been removed, were used as coastal artillery in Norway and Denmark. The ship’s sister Scharnhorst had been sunk in 1943, and Gneisenau‘s scuttling in 1945 ended the Scharnhorst class.

7. Performance and Specifications

Specifications in full

The figures in the table below are the standard Gneisenau figures, taken from German naval records and from post-war studies. Displacement, speed and range varied slightly over her career, because wartime refits added anti-aircraft guns and radar, increasing the full-load displacement. The armour figures are the design figures: the belt was 13.8 inches thick, the deck 3.9 inches, and the turret faces up to 14.2 inches.

The 11-inch guns fired a 727-pound shell to a range of about 40,000 yards, and the 5.9-inch guns fired a 100-pound shell to a range of about 25,000 yards. The ship’s speed of 31 knots was fast by the standards of any battleship, and it was the reason the Scharnhorst class could raid shipping and escape the British Home Fleet.

Specification	Gneisenau
Displacement (standard)	About 31,000 tons
Displacement (full load)	About 38,900 tons
Length	771 ft (235.0 m)
Beam	98 ft (30.0 m)
Speed	About 31 knots
Range	About 8,900 nautical miles at 17 knots
Main armament	9 × 11-in guns
Secondary armament	12 × 5.9-in guns
Anti-aircraft guns	14 × 4.1-in; 37 mm and 20 mm
Torpedo tubes	6 × 21-in
Belt armour	13.8 in (350 mm)
Deck armour	3.9 in (100 mm)
Turret armour	Up to 14.2 in (360 mm)
Crew	About 1,669
Ships completed	2 (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau)

Comparison with other battlecruisers

Compared with the British battlecruiser HMS Renown, Gneisenau was larger, better protected, and more heavily armed, with nine 11-inch guns against Renown‘s six 15-inch guns, but she was slower, at 31 knots against Renown‘s 32 knots, and her guns were smaller. Compared with the French battleship Dunkerque, Gneisenau was similar in size and speed, but more heavily protected and with a better secondary armament.

Compared with the American South Dakota class, Gneisenau was faster — 31 knots against 27.5 — but more lightly armed, with nine 11-inch guns against nine 16-inch guns, and less well protected in some respects. In her own time, Gneisenau was the best-balanced battlecruiser in the world, and her balance of speed, armament and protection is the reason she was, for a year, the most successful German raider of the war.

8. Operators

The Kriegsmarine

Gneisenau was built for, and served only in, the German Navy — the Kriegsmarine — which operated her from her commissioning in May 1938 until her scuttling in March 1945. In German hands she served as a fleet battlecruiser, as a raider in the Atlantic, and as a flagship at times, and her crew were German, her officers were German, and her story is a German story: the story of a navy that built a fast, heavily armed ship to raid Allied shipping and then lost it, not to enemy action at sea, but to a bomb in harbour.

The ship’s officers included some of the most famous men in the German Navy — Admiral Günther Lütjens, who flew his flag in her during Operation Berlin, and Captain Otto Fein, who commanded her at the Channel Dash.

No foreign operators

No other navy ever operated Gneisenau, and no ship of her design was ever built by another navy. The class consisted of two ships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and both were lost in the war — Scharnhorst sunk in battle in 1943, Gneisenau scuttled in 1945.

The ship’s story is therefore an entirely German story, from the Anglo-German Naval Agreement that allowed her to be built to the blockship at Gdynia where she was sunk. The name Gneisenau — after Field Marshal August von Gneisenau — has been given to later German ships, including a frigate of the post-war German Navy, but no capital ship has borne the name since, because Germany has built no capital ship since the Second World War.

The absence of foreign operators also reflects the Scharnhorst class’s fate. By 1945, when Gneisenau was scuttled, she was disarmed, unfinished, and crippled, and no navy wanted a ship in that condition. Her sister Scharnhorst lay on the seabed off North Cape, and the class’s story ended with the war that had created it. The name Gneisenau lives on in the German Navy, but no capital ship has borne it since, because Germany has built no capital ship since the Second World War.

9. Legacy and Influence

The most successful German raider

Gneisenau‘s legacy is Operation Berlin, the most successful German surface raid of the war, in which she and Scharnhorst sank 22 merchant ships totalling about 115,000 tons and evaded the British Home Fleet. The operation showed that the Scharnhorst class, used as raiders, could do great damage to Allied shipping, and it showed that the Royal Navy, for all its strength, could not protect every convoy.

The operation also showed the limits of the raider strategy: the two ships could sink merchant ships, but they could not win the war at sea, because the Royal Navy was too large and the German Navy was too small, and because the ships, once they had raided, had to return to port, where they were bombed. Gneisenau‘s loss — to a bomb in harbour, not to enemy action at sea — was a symbol of that limit, and it is the reason the operation is remembered as a triumph and as a warning at the same time.

The human legacy

Gneisenau also left a human legacy. The ship’s crew, about 1,669 men at wartime strength, served in every major operation of the German surface fleet, and their names are remembered on the naval memorials at Laboe and Wilhelmshaven. The 112 men killed in the bombing of Kiel in February 1942 are remembered in particular, because they died not in battle at sea but in harbour, in a ship that was already crippled, and their deaths are a reminder that the war at sea was fought in harbour as well as at sea.

The class’s story is also the story of Scharnhorst and the Battle of North Cape, where all but 36 of her 1,968 crew were lost, and the two ships together are remembered as the German Navy’s most active capital ships of the Second World War. Gneisenau herself is gone, scrapped after the war, but her story — the raider that was crippled by a bomb — is still told in the German Navy as a lesson in the vulnerability of a surface fleet without air cover.

10. Surviving Examples

No ship survives

No part of Gneisenau survives as a ship. She was scuttled at Gdynia on 23 March 1945, raised after the war, and scrapped, and her sister Scharnhorst lies on the seabed off North Cape, where she sank on 26 December 1943.

The scrapping of Gneisenau was a consequence of the war’s end and of the ship’s condition: she was disarmed, unfinished, and crippled, and there was no reason to preserve her. The ship’s 11-inch guns, which had been removed, survive as coastal artillery in Norway and Denmark, and her nameplate and some fittings survive in museums, but there is no Gneisenau to visit.

The loss is regretted by naval historians, because Gneisenau, with her 11-inch guns and her 31-knot speed, would have been an interesting ship to preserve, but the war left Germany with no navy to preserve her in.

Memorials and the wreck of Scharnhorst

Gneisenau is remembered at the naval memorials at Laboe and Wilhelmshaven, where the names of the men who served in her and died in the war are recorded, and in the museums that tell the story of the German Navy in the Second World War.

Her sister Scharnhorst‘s wreck was found in 2000, off North Cape, at a depth of about 300 metres, lying upside down on the seabed, and it is a war grave, protected as such. For anyone who wants to understand the Scharnhorst class, the best introduction is not a ship — because there is none — but the photographs: the silhouette, three turrets, a tower, and a single funnel, is unlike any other battlecruiser, and it tells the story of a class that was, for a year, the most successful raider force in the German Navy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Gneisenau?
Gneisenau was a German battlecruiser of the Second World War, the second ship of the Scharnhorst class, commissioned in 1938, armed with nine 11-inch guns, and capable of 31 knots. She raided Allied shipping in the Atlantic and took part in the Channel Dash.

What was Operation Berlin?
Operation Berlin was the Atlantic raid of January–March 1941, in which Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, under Admiral Günther Lütjens, sank 22 merchant ships totalling about 115,000 tons and evaded the British Home Fleet.

What was the Channel Dash?
The Channel Dash was the passage of Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen from Brest through the English Channel to Germany on 11–13 February 1942, in broad daylight, under the guns of the British coast. Gneisenau was damaged by a mine during the passage.

How was Gneisenau crippled?
On the night of 26–27 February 1942, while Gneisenau was in dry dock at Kiel for repairs, she was hit by a British bomb that penetrated her forward turret and set off a fire in the magazine, killing 112 men. She never sailed again as a fighting ship.

Was Gneisenau ever rearmed with 15-inch guns?
No. Gneisenau was designed to be rearmed with 15-inch guns, and a rebuild with 15-inch guns was planned after the Kiel bombing, but the rebuild was never completed and the ship was scuttled in 1945.

Where is Gneisenau today?
Nowhere as a ship: she was scuttled at Gdynia on 23 March 1945, raised after the war, and scrapped. Her sister Scharnhorst lies on the seabed off North Cape.

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Sources

1. Wikipedia, “German battleship Gneisenau” — specifications, Operation Berlin, Channel Dash, Kiel bombing, scuttling 1945.
2. Gerhard Koop and Klaus-Peter Schmolke, Battleships of the Scharnhorst Class (Greenhill Books, 1998) — design, armament and the 15-inch rearmament plan.
3. Robert O. Dulin and William H. Garzke, Battleships: Axis and Neutral Battleships in World War II (Naval Institute Press, 1985) — service history and losses.
4. Naval History and Heritage Command and Royal Navy histories — Operation Berlin, Channel Dash and North Cape.
5. John Asmussen and others, Scharnhorst: The History — the sinking of Glorious and the Atlantic raid.
6. German Naval Memorial, Laboe — memorials to Gneisenau and Scharnhorst crews.