SMS Scharnhorst

1914

Falklands, von Spee avenged six weeks late Location: South Atlantic, off Falkland Islands · Coordinates: 52.43°S 56.75°W · Casualties: ~860 · Survivors: 0 · Depth: 1,610 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Engaged at the Battle of the Falklands on 8 December 1914 by the British battlecruisers HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, which had been dispatched specifically to destroy von Spee's squadron after Coronel. Outranged by the 12-inch guns of the battlecruisers. She refused to strike her colours and was battered below the waterline through the afternoon. · Fate: located 2019 · Mensun Bound · Type: armoured cruiser · Scharnhorst class · Tonnage: 12,985 tons · Crew: 860 · Flag: German Empire · Launched: 1906 Flagship of Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee and victor of the Battle of Coronel on 1 November 1914. Five weeks later at the Battle of the Falklands on 8 December, caught by the British battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible with their superior heavy guns. ~860 dead, no survivors, including von Spee and his two sons. Located by Mensun Bound in 2019 at a depth of 1,610 metres. The Vessel SMS Scharnhorst was the lead ship of her class of armoured cruisers of the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy), commissioned at the AG Weser yard in Bremen on 24 October 1907. She was 144 metres long, 12,985 tons standard displacement, armed with eight 21 cm guns in two twin and four single turrets, with a secondary battery of six 15 cm guns and four 8.8 cm guns. Her design speed was 23.5 knots on three-shaft Parsons turbines. The Scharnhorst class represented the peak of the German armoured-cruiser design tradition, commissioned approximately two years before the emergence of the British battlecruiser class rendered armoured cruisers obsolete. By 1914 her class had been overtaken by newer designs but remained in first-line service in specific theatres where the battlecruiser would have been excessive. Her role in the Pacific theatre from 1910 onwards had been as the flagship of the German East Asia Squadron under Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee. Her commanding officer in 1914 was Kapitän zur See Felix Schultz, 42 years old, a career Imperial German Navy officer who had served in the East Asia Squadron since 1912. The squadron's operational base was at Tsingtao on the Chinese coast, the German leased territory on the Yellow Sea, which the squadron had been permitted to use since 1898. The Disaster Unknown to von Spee, the Royal Navy had dispatched a battlecruiser force under Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee to the South Atlantic in response to the Coronel defeat. Sturdee's force (HMS Invincible, HMS Inflexible, HMS Carnarvon, HMS Kent, HMS Cornwall, HMS Bristol, HMS Glasgow, and the armed merchant cruiser HMS Macedonia) arrived at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, on 7 December 1914 for coaling and replenishment. By coincidence, von Spee's squadron approached the Falklands on 8 December 1914 with the intention of attacking the British wireless station there. The two forces made contact at approximately 07:50 on 8 December 1914. Von Spee, observing the British battlecruisers at Port Stanley and correctly identifying them as modern capital ships, turned his squadron to flee south. Sturdee's battlecruisers, faster than the German armoured cruisers by approximately 5 knots, gave chase. The subsequent Battle of the Falkland Islands was effectively a running engagement between two better-armed and faster British battlecruisers and the slower, less heavily armed German squadron. Scharnhorst was engaged by Invincible and Inflexible from approximately 13:00 on 8 December 1914. The opening British salvos fell short; subsequent salvos found the range. Over approximately three hours of intermittent engagement, Scharnhorst was hit multiple times by 12-inch shells from the two battlecruisers. Her superstructure was progressively demolished; her engine rooms were damaged; her