SMS Gneisenau was an armored cruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), part of the two-ship . Named for the earlier screw corvette of the same name, the ship was laid down in June 1904 at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and commissioned in March 1908. She was armed with a main battery of eight guns, a significant increase in firepower over earlier German armored cruisers, and she had a top speed of . Gneisenau initially served with the German fleet in I Scouting Group, though her service there was limited owing to the British development of the battlecruiser by 1909, which the less powerful armored cruisers could not effectively combat.
Accordingly, Gneisenau was assigned to the German East Asia Squadron, where she joined her sister ship . The two cruisers formed the core of the squadron, which included several light cruisers. Over the next four years, Gneisenau patrolled Germany's colonial possessions in Asia and the Pacific Ocean. She also toured foreign ports to show the flag and monitored events in China during the Xinhai Revolution in 1911. Following the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, the East Asia Squadron, under the command of Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee, crossed the Pacific to the western coast of South America, stopping for Gneisenau and Scharnhorst to attack French Polynesia in the Bombardment of Papeete in September.
After arriving off the coast of Chile, the East Asia Squadron encountered and defeated a British squadron at the Battle of Coronel; during the action, Gneisenau disabled the British armored cruiser , which was then sunk by the German light cruiser . The defeat prompted the British Admiralty to detach two battlecruisers to hunt down and destroy Spee's squadron, which they accomplished at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914. Gneisenau was sunk with heavy loss of life, though 187 of her crew were rescued by the British.
Design
The two Scharnhorst-class cruisers were ordered as part of the naval construction program laid out in the Second Naval Law of 1900, which called for a force of fourteen armored cruisers. The ships marked a significant increase in combat power over their predecessors, the , being more heavily armed and armored. These improvements were made to allow for and Gneisenau to fight in the line of battle should the need arise, a capability requested by the General Department.
Gneisenau was long overall, and had a beam of and a draft of . The ship displaced normally, and at full load. Gneisenaus crew consisted of 38 officers and 726 enlisted men. The ship was powered by three triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a screw propeller, with steam provided by eighteen coal-fired water-tube boilers. The boilers were ducted into four funnels located amidships. Her propulsion system was rated to produce for a top speed of . She had a cruising radius of at a speed of .
Gneisenaus primary armament consisted of eight SK L/40 guns, four in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the main superstructure on the centerline, and the remaining four mounted in single casemates in the hull at main deck level, abreast the funnels. The secondary armament included six SK L/40 guns, also in individual casemates that were placed a deck below the main battery casemates. Defense against torpedo boats was provided by a battery of eighteen SK L/35 guns mounted in casemates. She was also equipped with four submerged torpedo tubes. One was mounted in the bow, one on each broadside, and the fourth was placed in the stern.
The ship was protected by a 15 cm belt of Krupp armor, decreased to forward and aft of the central citadel. She had an armored deck that was thick, with the heavier armor protecting the ship's engine and boiler rooms and ammunition magazines. The centerline gun turrets had thick sides, while the casemate main guns received 15 cm of armor protection. The casemate secondary battery was protected by a strake of armor that was thick.
Service history
Gneisenau was the first member of the class to be ordered, on 8 June 1904; she was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen on 28 December under yard number 144, with the provisional designation "C". A lengthy strike by shipyard workers delayed construction of the vessel, allowing Scharnhorst to be launched first and thus be the lead ship of the class. At Gneisenau's launching ceremony, on 14 June 1906, she was christened Gneisenau, in honor of the earlier screw corvette , by General Alfred von Schlieffen, the Chief of the General Staff. The ship moved to Wilhelmshaven for fitting-out and was commissioned into the fleet on 6 March 1908, before beginning sea trials on 26 March. These lasted until 12 July, when Gneisenau joined I Scouting Group, the reconnaissance squadron of the High Seas Fleet. During this period, Kapitän zur See (KzS—Captain at Sea) Franz von Hipper served as the ship's first commanding officer.
While serving in I Scouting Group, Gneisenau participated in the normal peacetime training routine with the fleet. She took part in a major fleet cruise in the Atlantic Ocean in company with the battleship squadrons of the High Seas Fleet immediately after completing trials. Prince Heinrich had pressed for such a cruise the previous year, arguing that it would prepare the fleet for overseas operations and would break up the monotony of training in German waters. The cruise came at a time that tensions with Britain over the developing Anglo-German naval arms race were high, though no incidents occurred as a result. The fleet departed Kiel on 17 July, passed through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to the North Sea, and continued to the Atlantic. The fleet returned to Germany on 13 August. The autumn maneuvers followed from 27 August to 12 September, after which Hipper was replaced by KzS .
The year 1909 followed a similar pattern, with two more Atlantic cruises, the first in February and March and the second in July and August. The latter voyage included a visit to Spain. Later in the year, Gneisenau and the light cruiser escorted Kaiser Wilhelm II aboard his yacht, Hohenzollern, on a visit to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia off the coast of Finland. Gneisenau won the Kaiser's Schießpreis (Shooting Prize) for excellent shooting among armored cruisers for the 1908–1909 training year. The first half of the following year passed uneventfully for Gneisenau, and in July, she took part in a fleet cruise to Norway. On 8 September, the ship was reassigned to the East Asia Squadron and KzS took command of the ship for the deployment. By that time, the British Royal Navy had begun commissioning their new battlecruisers, which significantly outclassed armored cruisers like Gneisenau, but the German command decided that the ship could still be used to strengthen Germany's colonial cruiser squadron.
East Asia Squadron
On 10 November, Gneisenau departed Wilhelmshaven, bound for Germany's Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory in China. She stopped in Málaga, Spain, while en route, for a ceremony commemorating the men killed when her namesake corvette had been wrecked there on 16 December 1900. She then passed through the Mediterranean Sea, transited the Suez Canal, and while crossing the Indian Ocean, stopped in Colombo, Ceylon. There, she embarked Crown Prince Wilhelm on 11 December, who was on a tour of British India at the time. Gneisenau carried him to Bombay, where he left the ship. After resuming the voyage to East Asia, Gneisenau rendezvoused with the light cruiser and made stops in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Amoy before arriving in Qingdao, the German squadron's home port, on 14 March 1911. There, she rendezvoused with her sister Scharnhorst, the squadron flagship. On 7 April, Gneisenau carried the new ambassador to Japan, , from Taku to Yokohama, where she met Scharnhorst; the squadron commander, Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) , Uslar, and Scharnhorsts captain met with the Emperor Meiji. Gneisenau thereafter went on a tour of Japanese and Siberian waters, but she was sent back to Qingdao during the Agadir Crisis to prepare for a potential conflict.
In September, Krosigk shifted his flag to Gneisenau while Scharnhorst was in dry dock for periodic maintenance. On 10 October, the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing dynasty broke out, which caused a great deal of tension among Europeans in the country, who recalled the attacks on foreigners during the Boxer Uprising of 1900–1901. The rest of the East Asia Squadron was placed on alert to protect German interests and additional troops were sent to protect the German consulate. But the feared attacks on Europeans did not materialize and so the East Asia Squadron was not needed. By late November, Scharnhorst was back in service and Krosigk returned to her. Gneisenau won the Schießpreis again for the 1910–1911 training year.
Gneisenau went into dry dock in Qingdao for annual repairs in the first quarter of 1912. On 13 April, the ships embarked on a month-long cruise to Japanese waters, returning to Qingdao on 13 May. In June, KzS relieved Uslar as Gneisenaus commander. Over the course of 1–4 August, Gneisenau steamed to Pusan, Korea, where she pulled the HAPAG steamship free after it ran aground and escorted it to Nagasaki. At the end of the year, Gneisenau lay at Shanghai. In early December, Krosigk was replaced by KAdm Maximilian von Spee, who took Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on a tour of the southwest Pacific, including stops in Amoy, Singapore, and Batavia. The cruise continued into early 1913, and the two cruisers arrived back in Qingdao on 2 March 1913. Gneisenau won the Schießpreis for the 1912–1913 year.
In April 1913, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst went to Japan so Spee and the ships' commanders could meet with the new emperor, Taishō. The vessels then returned to Qingdao, where they remained for seven weeks. In late June, the two cruisers began a cruise through Germany's colonial possessions in the central Pacific. While in Rabaul on 21 July, Spee received word of further unrest in China, which prompted his return to the Wusong roadstead outside Shanghai by 30 July. Gneisenau thereafter patrolled in the Yellow Sea and visited Port Arthur in October. After the situation calmed, Spee was able to take his ships on a short cruise to Japan, which began on 11 November. Scharnhorst and the rest of the squadron returned to Shanghai on 29 November, before she departed for another trip to Southeast Asia. Stops included Siam, Sumatra, North Borneo, and Manila in the Philippines.
In June 1914, KzS Julius Maerker took command of the ship. Shortly thereafter, Spee embarked on a cruise to German New Guinea; Gneisenau rendezvoused with Scharnhorst in Nagasaki, Japan, where they received a full supply of coal. They then sailed south, arriving in Truk in early July where they restocked their coal supplies. While en route, they received news of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. On 17 July, the East Asia Squadron arrived in Ponape in the Caroline Islands. Here, Spee had access to the German radio network, where he learned of the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia and the Russian mobilization. On 31 July, word came that the German ultimatum, which demanded the demobilization of Russia's armies, was set to expire. Spee ordered his ships be stripped for war. On 2 August, Wilhelm II ordered German mobilization against France and Russia.
World War I