Pocket battleship

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Pocket battleship is an English language term for a class of warships built by German Reichsmarine in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. They were classified as Panzerschiff ("armoured ship") in German; they were also known as the Deutschland class named after the first ship of this class to be completed. They were smaller than battleships (the displacement was that of a heavy cruiser), but were armed with guns larger than the heavy cruisers of other nations. The Kriegsmarine reclassified them as heavy cruisers in February 1940. The three ships in the class were launched between 1931 and 1934.

Admiral Scheer in Gibraltar, ca. 1936, with Spanish Civil War neutrality markings (the black, white and red stripes) painted on her forward gun turret

Deutschland (renamed Lützow in November 1939)
Admiral Scheer
Admiral Graf Spee

German capital ships were restricted by the Treaty of Versailles to a displacement of 10,000 tons for "armoured ships" (Panzerships). The idea was to limit Germany to nothing more than coastal defence ships - effectively pre-dreadnought types - which could not challenge the major naval powers of Britain, France and the United States. A number of technical innovations were used by Germany to build a formidable warship within this restricted weight; among them were the large-scale use of welding to join hull components together (as opposed to the then-classic rivets), triple-gun main armament turrets (which had first been used by the Austro-Hungarian Navy in battleships in the Tegetthoff class of 1912), and the use of diesel engines for propulsion. Even so, all members of the class were well over that weight limit (first constructed as 10,600 tons, later enlarged to 12,100 tons), although for political reasons their announced displacement was always misrepresented as the 10,000 tons of the Treaty limit.

The principal feature of the pocket battleship design was that it had guns of large enough calibre -- i.e., 280 mm (11 inches) -- to out-gun any enemy cruiser fast enough to catch them, while being fast enough to outrun any enemy powerful enough to sink them, the sole exception being some British and Japanese battlecruisers which were rebuilt as "fast" battleships. The German naval staff knew this situation would not last, but they hoped for a temporary advantage. The Deutschland class had a speed of 28.5 knots, which was already too slow at the beginning of the Second World War (only eight years after the first ship launched). Its range was about 30,000 km.

The same principle had formed the basis of a generation of ships just prior to World War I known as battlecruisers - though these were of similar size to battleships. In practice fleet commanders forced the battlecruisers to operate along with the better protected dreadnoughts, and they suffered badly when exposed to heavy artillery fire (see Battle of Jutland for details).

The Kriegsmarine, which on the eve of World War II was years away from having a large surface fleet, was careful not to make the same mistake, and during the war they intended to use the Panzerschiff vessels purely as commerce raiders on the high seas. In the early years of the conflict, before the Allies closed the air gap over the North Atlantic, developed better Huff-Duff (radio triangulation equipment) and airborne centimetric radar, and provided escort carrier protection to the merchant ship convoys, the pocket battleships' speed and heavy armament made them very difficult to bring to task, as they could generally avoid any fight they did not like; indeed, they were ordered not to fight enemy ships unless they were greatly stronger than them.

Admiral Graf Spee destroyed nine British merchant ships (totalling 50,089 tons) before being cornered by three British cruisers in December 1939. In the ensuing battle of the River Plate she damaged the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter so severely that it had to break off the action. However, the German ship was also slightly damaged, and after spending several days trapped at Montevideo, she was deliberately scuttled on 17 December 1939, rather than risk a battle with the blockading heavy cruiser HMS Cumberland and the light cruisers HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles and a superior Royal Navy force assumed to be approaching. Her captain, Hans Langsdorff, committed suicide three days later.

Admiral Scheer made several raids into the North Atlantic, on one occasion sinking the armed merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay and several cargo ships after catching convoy HX84.

Deutschland was renamed Lützow to avoid the possibility of a ship bearing the name "Germany" being sunk. These two ships survived until the last weeks of the war.

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Pocket battleship

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