1933 ADMIRAL SCHEER. Together with the Deutschland and the Admiral Graf Spec, the Admiral Scheer made up a class of vessels widely known as pocket battleships, designed to act as long-range commerce raiders.
POCKET BATTLESHIPS
The three Deutschlands were designed to meet the requirements of the Treaty of Versailles a maximum of 10,000 tons displacement and with guns no bigger than 280mm (11 in) it was held that such limits would produce nothing more powerful than a coast defence ship. They turned out to have a very different basic principle they could out-fight anything they couldnt outrun. In 1926, when they were conceived, they represented the true state of the warship-builders art.
THE ADMIRAL SCHEER
Admiral Scheer was laid down at Wilhelmshaven Navy Yard in June, 1931, launched on 1 April 1933 and completed on 12 November 1934 at a cost of 90m Reichsmarks. The original designs featured a bluff, vertical bow, but this made them very wet in a seaway, and Scheer was given the raked Atlantic bow, together with a new conning tower and a funnel cap, in 1940. After a successful first cruise, when she sank 14 merchant ships as well as sinking the auxiliary cruiser HMS Jervis Bay, Scheer had a poor time of it, sortie into the open ocean only once and spending most of the time in the Baltic. She met her end there, in Kiel, on 9 April, 1945, having returned from Pillau with over a thousand refugees and wounded soldiers aboard. She capsized and sank just before midnight after being hit by five bombs dropped by RAF Lancasters, and some of her, at least, remains there to this day, forming the foundations of a quay.
TECHNICAL DATA
Type: Armoured ship/heavy cruiser
Machinery: 2 shafts each with four double-acting MAN diesels giving a total of 52,000bhp
Dimensions (overall): length, 186m (610.25ft); beam, 21.6m (70.8ft)
Displacement: 11,500t standard; 15,200t deep load
Draught: 5.8m (1 9ft) standard; 7.25m (23.8ft) deep load
Complement: 620 (peacetime); 1070 (wartime)
