Scharnhorst -S

Made of 3/8 inch thick AR500 Armor Plate Steel 11.5 inch Tall | 12.5inch wide | 6.8 Pounds Use with Small Spring BASE and Plate Rack ONLY

Scharnhorst

SMS Scharnhorst ("His Majesty's Ship Scharnhorst") was one of the most distinguished warships of the First World War Imperial German Navy. She was classified as an armored cruiser and built at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. She was the lead ship of her class, which also included her sister SMS Gneisenau, which held the Kaiser’s top gunnery trophy. Scharnhorst was named after the Prussian military reformer General Gerhard von Scharnhorst and was commissioned 24 October 1907.

Scharnhorst served briefly with the High Seas Fleet in Germany. She was then assigned to the German East Asia Squadron based in Tsingtau, China, in 1909 where she became the squadron flagship. Here she served with distinction over the next five years. With the outbreak of WWI in August 1914, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, accompanied by three light cruisers and several colliers, sailed across the Pacific Ocean under the capable command of Admiral Maximilian Von Spee. The German squadron successfully evaded all Allied naval forces sent to intercept and destroy them. Arriving off the southern coast of South America, on 1 November 1914, Scharnhorst and the rest of the East Asia Squadron encountered and overpowered a British squadron at the Battle of Coronel. This was the first major naval defeat for the British Royal Navy in over a century. Humiliated, this prompted the British to dispatch two superior battlecruisers to hunt down and destroy von Spee's flotilla. The German squadron then circled Cape Horn entering the Atlantic to attack Port Stanley, the main British port in the Falkland Islands. Luckily for the British, their superior battlecruiser squadron arrived just in time. The Battle of the Falkland Islands was fought the entire day of 8 December 1914. Scharnhorst was sunk with Von Spee and all hands after a gallant fight, as was most of the German squadron.

Main Characteristics:

• Laid Down: 22 March 1905, Launched: 23 March 1906, Commissioned: 24 October 1907
• Displacement: 12,985 tons
• Length: 475 feet, Beam: 71 feet, Draft: 28 feet
• Speed: 22.5 knots
• Armament: 8 8” guns, 6 6” guns, 18 3.5’ guns, 4 18” torpedo tubes
• Armor: Belt 15 cm, Turrets 18 cm, Deck 6 cm
• Crew: 52 officers & 788 enlisted