The two ships were laid down in 1935, launched in late 1936, and commissioned into the German fleet by early 1939. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau operated together for much of the early portion of World War II, including sorties into the Atlantic to raid Briti

The Scharnhorst class was the last traditional class of armored cruisers built by the Kaiserliche Marine.The class comprised two ships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.They were larger than the Roon-class cruisers that preceded them; the extra size was used pri

Scharnhorst and Geneisenau served as naval covering forces for the German assaults on the Norwegian towns of Trondheim and Narvik during the February 1940 invasion. In a thinly veiled plea to abort the mission, Bey radioed Narvik: “Use of destroyer weap