Pocket battleship

The pocket battleships (Panzerschiff - "armoured ship" in German, also known as Deutschland class) were a class of warships built by Germany in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact they were not battleships, but big heavy cruisers, armed with guns larger than other nations' cruisers. The three ships in the class were launched between 1931 and 1934.

• Deutschland (renamed Lützow in October 1939)
• Admiral Scheer
• Admiral Graf Spee

German capital ships were restricted by the Treaty of Versailles to a displacement of 10000 tons and 11" guns. The idea was to limit Germany to pre-dreadnought-type ships which couldn't challenge Britain. The principal feature of the pocket battleship design was that it had guns large enough (280mm/11" calibre) to out-gun any enemy ship fast enough to catch them, while being fast enough to outrun an enemy powerful enough to sink it, except for some British and Japanese battlecruisers which were rebuilt as fast battleships. The same basic design philosophy had led to a generation of ships just prior to World War I known as the battlecruiser. In practice the fleet commanders forced the battlecruisers to operate along with the larger dreadnoughts, and they suffered badly (see Battle of Jutland).

The Germans were careful not to make the same mistake, and used the panzerschiff purely as commerce-raiders on the high seas. This would make them very difficult to bring to task, as they could generally avoid any fight they didn't like, and indeed, were ordered not to fight enemy ships unless they were greatly stronger than them. Admiral Graf Spee fought three British cruisers in the Battle of the River Plate 13 December 1939, damaging one so severly it had to break off the action. But the German ship was also damaged badly, and after spending several days in Montevideo she was scuttled 17 December 1939 rather than risk unknown British ships on the voyage home. Admiral Scheer made several raids into the North Atlantic, on one occasion sinking the armed merchant cruiser Jervis Bay and several cargo ships after catching a convoy. Deutschland was renamed Lutzow to avoid the possibility of a ship named after Germany being sunk. These two ships survived until the last weeks of the war.

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