SMS Scharnhorst
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This article is about the WWI cruiser 'Scharnhorst'; for the WWII battlecruiser of the same name, see German battlecruiser Scharnhorst.
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| Career | Missing image Kaiserliche_Kriegsflagge.png KLM ensign |
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| Ordered: | |
| Laid down: | January 1905 |
| Launched: | |
| Commissioned: | 24 October 1907 |
| Fate: | sunk |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 11,616 tons |
| Length: | |
| Beam: | 71 feet |
| Draft: | 27 feet 6 inches |
| Propulsion: | 3 shaft Triple expansion engines, 26,000 ihp |
| Speed: | 22.5 knots |
| Complement: | |
| Armament: | 8 x 210 mm (8 in) guns, 6 x 150 mm (5.9 in) guns, 18 x 3.45 in (88 mm) 35 cal (18 x 1), 4 x 17.7 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes |
SMS Scharnhorst was an 11,616 ton armoured cruiser of the Imperial German Navy, built at Hamburg, Germany, named after the Prussian reformer general Gerhard von Scharnhorst and commissioned in October 1907.
When the First World War broke out she was Admiral Maximilian von Spee's flagship in the German East Asian Cruiser Squadron. The squadron initially engaged in attacks on enemy commercial and troop transports with great success, and on 1 November 1914 engaged and sank two British cruisers at the Battle of Coronel, off the coast of Chile.
On 8 December 1914 the five cruisers of the squadron attempted to attack Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, unaware of the presence of two British battlecruisers which had arrived only the previous day. In the ensuing Battle of the Falkland Islands, SMS Scharnhorst was lost with her entire crew, together with all of her squadron except the SMS Dresden.
The main armament of SMS Scharnhorst were 8 x 210 mm (8 in) guns and 6 x 150 mm guns (5.9 in).de:Scharnhorst (Schiff) no:SMS Scharnhorst pl:Scharnhorst (krążownik pancerny)