Scharnhorst class (1936)
 Scharnhorst
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The Scharnhorst- class was the first class of battleships built in Germany after the First World War . It consisted of two ships - the Scharnhorst (commissioned in January 1939) and the Gneisenau (commissioned in May 1938). The two ships were the first to violate Article 181 of the Versailles Treaty . Both ships were used in various naval operations during World War II . Both were damaged several times; the Scharnhorst sank after the sea battle off the North Cape on December 26, 1943.
prehistory
After the planning for the Germany- class armored ships had been completed and their construction had begun, the French responded to this new German type by building the two Dunkerque- class ships .
It was actually planned that the units of the Germany class designated in the German budget as ships “D” and “E” should constructively follow. In order to give the ships greater stability, however, a displacement of the ships of 18,000 to 19,000 tons has already been planned, which corresponds to roughly doubling the size allowed in the Versailles Treaty .
In response to the construction of the Dunkerque class, even larger ships were then planned. In July 1934, (after the keel laying of the Scharnhorst under the old plans) voted Adolf Hitler officially plans for ships with 26,000 tons, which is now including a third turret FROM ROCHE. The construction of the Scharnhorst was stopped and a new keel was laid after the new project. Only afterwards - on June 18, 1935 - was this size legitimized in the German-British naval agreement .
draft
As in the Imperial Navy , the strength of the design lay in its armor and structural stability; in essential respects it was based on the last well-designed large cruisers of the replacement Yorck class of the Imperial Navy. In fact, the official size was again significantly exceeded, so that the ships finally displaced almost 35,000 tons.
The high-performance steam propulsion gave the ships a superior maximum speed; the relatively weak main armament was accepted.
The highly elevated position of the catapult on a structure behind the chimney was unusual . The bow of the ships turned out to be too low and took much water; Therefore, after the commissioning, a raised bow with a spray rail was retrofitted in two modifications .
technology
Weights (construction)
| designation | Weight [t] |
|---|---|
| Hull | 8,000 |
| Armor | 14,000 |
| Main machines | 3,000 |
| Auxiliary machines | 1,000 |
| Artillery armament | 4,800 |
| Aircraft facilities | 50 |
| equipment | 1,100 |
| Type displacement | 31,950 |
| 1/2 fuel, oil, water | 3,500 |
| Construction displacement | 35,500 |
| Fuel, oil, water (full) | 3,000 |
| Ship fully equipped | 38,500 |
drive
Originally it was planned to equip Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with a diesel engine like the armored ships of the Germany class , because it had the advantages of lower consumption and thus greater range and higher performance with the same size. However, powerful diesel engines that could give the ships the required speed of over 30 knots were not yet fully developed and were only in the testing phase at MAN . Therefore (as was later also the case with the Bismarck class ) a high-pressure steam turbine drive was installed.
Although the wet steam system had proven itself in other warships and was state of the art, a new variant was used with the high pressure superheated steam system . With high-pressure superheated steam technology, the steam is over 400 ° C hotter and, due to the pressures used, is higher than 50 atmospheres than with wet steam technology and thus has a higher usable energy content. The machine system was more efficient than conventional steam turbines, which resulted in higher performance with a relatively more compact design and lower fuel consumption.
This technology was not yet fully developed in these dimensions. It had already been used in civilian ships and most of the problems were known; However, these problems could never be finally resolved on the scale of the machinery on board the warships. Only in the course of the war was it possible to get the system under control to some extent. The drive system remained relatively maintenance-intensive and prone to failure and required a lot of highly qualified personnel.
Armament
The caliber of the main armament was left at 28.0 centimeters as in the Germany class so as not to burden further negotiations with England; the caliber length has been increased from 52 to 54.5. The shells were extended by 0.2 caliber lengths; they weighed around 30 kg more than their predecessors. The barbeds of the two ships were designed in such a way that they could accommodate both a 28-centimeter triple tower and a 38-centimeter double tower, so that a later conversion would have been possible.
The guns developed for the Deutschland class had a high muzzle velocity and an extraordinary range due to the increased caliber length . For example, a hit by Scharnhorst against the English aircraft carrier Glorious during the "Juno" operation at a distance of 24 kilometers is considered to be the greatest hit range on a moving ship target in a naval battle of the Second World War. In addition, the technology of the German triple towers enabled a higher rate of fire than with ships from other countries. This partly made up for the disadvantage of the smaller caliber.
A conversion of the heavy artillery of the Scharnhorst class to three 38-centimeter double towers was planned for 1940/41. The 28-centimeter triple towers of the two ships should have been attached to the first three units of the P-class . Due to the political situation, it was already foreseeable in the summer of 1939 that such a conversion would have to be postponed.
Armor
During the construction, great value was placed on good armor protection. The Scharnhorst class did not strictly follow the “all or nothing” concept that was common in many other battleship buildings of the time, but the ship was protected to varying degrees along its entire length.
The core of protection against flat track fire consisted of the armored belt, which was up to 350 millimeters thick in the middle of the ship and was even thicker than that of the subsequent Bismarck class . At the bottom, its thickness decreased to 150 millimeters. To protect against torpedo and sea mines that exploded underwater on the sides of the ship, an expansion space of almost five meters was provided below the armored belt amidships, which was delimited on the inside by a 45-millimeter torpedo bulkhead, to which another expansion space with watertight compartments from similar expansion followed.
The horizontal protection against grenades and bombs striking from above was less strong and consisted of two layers of armored decks - the upper deck with a thickness of up to 50 millimeters and the armored deck with a thickness of up to 95 millimeters. The idea was that impacting bombs and projectiles from the upper deck should be slowed down or exploded and the remaining energy should be absorbed by the armored deck.
The front navigation bridge had 350-millimeter armor on all sides and a 200-millimeter armored roof. The connecting shaft from the command bridge to the control center in the fuselage was armored 220 millimeters.
The main turrets were armored with 360 millimeters on the front and 180 millimeters on the sides and top. They supported themselves on armored barbeds 350 millimeters thick. The twin towers of the middle artillery were protected by 140 millimeters of armor steel on the front and 50 millimeters on the other sides. Their barbeds were shielded with 150 millimeters of armor steel. The individual guns of the middle artillery only had a 25 millimeter thick fragmentation protection.
Scharnhorst-class ships
Scharnhorst
The Scharnhorst was launched in Wilhelmshaven in October 1936. Between November 21 and 27, 1939, she carried out an enterprise with her sister ship in the North Atlantic. After a failed attempt to break through into the Atlantic in 1940, it succeeded in January 1941 in the Atlantic and then in the port of Brest , which had been occupied since June 1940 . After heavy air raids on the port, the return to Germany was ordered through the English Channel . Both battleships succeeded in doing this unharmed ( Enterprise Cerberus ). The Scharnhorst was then stationed in Norway in order to be able to act against allied northern sea convoys from there . When attempting to attack such a convoy, it was captured by a British squadron on December 26, 1943 and sunk in the Barents Sea after a three-hour battle .
Gneisenau
The Gneisenau was launched in December 1936 in Kiel. At the end of November 1939, she sank the British auxiliary cruiser Rawalpindi together with her sister ship . In an attempt to get into the Atlantic, the ship was damaged by heavy seas. In the next - now successful - attempt in 1941, the Gneisenau sank several merchant ships and later reached the French Atlantic port of Brest. When he returned to Germany in February 1942 during the Cerberus company , a sea mine damaged the Gneisenau . At the end of February 1942, the ship was badly damaged in an air raid on Kiel and then cannibalized. In March 1945, when Soviet ground troops approached, it was grounded as a block ship in the port entrance of Gotenhafen .
literature
- Heinrich Bredemeier: battleship Scharnhorst. Heyne Verlag, ISBN 3-453-87095-6 .
- Uwe Grewe: Battleship Scharnhorst - End in the North Sea 1943. Ships-People-Fates, Volume 84/85.
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 , p. 55-58 .
- Alf. R. Jacobsen: The Scharnhorst - sinking and discovery of the legendary battleship. Ullstein Verlag 2004, ISBN 3-550-07594-4 .
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: The battleships of the Scharnhorst class. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 1991, ISBN 3-7637-5892-5 .
- Anthony John Watts: The sinking of the Scharnhorst - fight for the Russian convoys 1943. Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart, ISBN 3-87943-384-4 . (Original: The loss of the Scharnhorst , 1st edition 1970 ( ISBN 0711001413 ))
Web links
- Scharnhorst & Gneisenau (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ Scharnhorst, Gneisenau weights, figures rounded off and averaged between the two ships, B.No. AV 309/39 G.Kdos, Berlin 3rd / 5th May 1939; BA-MA-RM-20-1913 Shipbuilding plan types 1939-40
- ↑ Koop, Schmolke: Battleships of the Scharnhorst Class: Warships of the Kriegsmarine. Naval Institute Press, ISBN 978-1-59114-177-8 , Chapter: Weapons .
- ^ The Loss of HMS Glorious. ( Memento from May 22, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Siegfried Breyer: The Z-Plan - Striving for a world power fleet. P. 29f.
- ↑ a b c SCHLACHTSCHIFF GNEISENAU - technical data bw-hilchenbach.de - private website, accessed on December 13, 2015