alongside|alt=A large, light gray warship steaming in choppy seas with a small, black warship steaming close by.
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 showing the
Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory|alt=The Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory was located in the natural harbor at Qingdao on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula|upright=1.3 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 When
World War I broke out, the East Asia Squadron consisted of
Scharnhorst,
Gneisenau, and the light cruisers
Emden, , and . At the time,
Nürnberg was returning from the west coast of the United States, where
Leipzig had just replaced her, and
Emden was still in Qingdao. On 6 August 1914,
Scharnhorst,
Gneisenau, the supply ship
Titania, and the Japanese
collier Fukoku Maru were still in Ponape. Spee had issued orders to recall the light cruisers, which had been dispersed on cruises around the Pacific.
Nürnberg joined Spee that day, after which Spee moved his ships to
Pagan Island in the
Northern Mariana Islands, a German possession in the central Pacific. Spee left for Pagan in the night, without
Fukoku Maru, to avoid having the Japanese crew betray his movements. All available colliers, supply ships, and passenger liners were ordered to meet the East Asia Squadron in Pagan and
Emden joined the squadron there on 12 August. The
auxiliary cruiser joined Spee's ships there as well. On 13 August, Commodore
Karl von Müller, captain of the
Emden, persuaded Spee to detach his ship as a commerce raider. The four cruisers, accompanied by
Prinz Eitel Friedrich and several colliers, then departed Pagan on 15 August, bound for Chile. While en route to
Enewetak Atoll in the
Marshall Islands the next morning,
Emden left the formation with one of the colliers. The remaining ships again coaled after their arrival in Enewetak on 20 August. To keep the German high command informed, on 8 September Spee detached
Nürnberg to
Honolulu to send word through neutral countries.
Nürnberg returned with news of the
Allied capture of German Samoa, which had taken place on 29 August.
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau sailed to
Apia to investigate the situation. Spee had hoped to catch a British or Australian warship by surprise, but upon his arrival on 14 September, he found no warships in the harbor. On 22 September,
Scharnhorst and the rest of the East Asia Squadron arrived at the French colony of
Papeete. The Germans attacked the colony, and in the ensuing
battle of Papeete, they sank the French gunboat
Zélée. The ships came under fire from French shore batteries but were undamaged. Fear of mines in the harbor prevented Spee from entering the harbor to seize the coal, which the French had set on fire. By 12 October,
Gneisenau and the rest of the squadron had reached
Easter Island. There they were joined by the light cruisers and
Leipzig, which had sailed from American waters, on 12 and 14 October, respectively.
Leipzig also brought three more colliers with her. After a week in the area, the ships departed for Chile. On the evening of 26 October,
Gneisenau and the rest of the squadron steamed out of
Mas a Fuera, Chile and headed eastward, arriving in
Valparaíso on 30 October. On 1 November, Spee learned from
Prinz Eitel Friedrich that the British light cruiser had been anchored in
Coronel the previous day, so he turned towards the port to try to catch her alone.
Battle of Coronel The British had scant resources to oppose the German squadron off the coast of South America. Rear Admiral
Christopher Cradock commanded the
4th Cruiser Squadron, which consisted of the armored cruisers and ,
Glasgow, and the converted
armed merchant cruiser . The squadron was reinforced by the elderly
pre-dreadnought battleship and the armored cruiser . The latter, however, did not arrive until after the Battle of Coronel.
Canopus was left behind by Cradock, who probably felt her slow speed would prevent him from bringing the German ships to battle. The East Asia Squadron arrived off Coronel on the afternoon of 1 November; to Spee's surprise, he encountered
Good Hope,
Monmouth, and
Otranto in addition to
Glasgow.
Canopus was still some behind, with the British colliers. At 16:17,
Glasgow spotted the German ships. Cradock formed a line of battle with
Good Hope in the lead, followed by
Monmouth,
Glasgow, and
Otranto in the rear. Spee decided to hold off engaging until the sun had set more, at which point the British ships would be silhouetted by the sun, while his own ships would be obscured against the coast behind them. Spee turned his ships on a course nearly parallel to Cradock's ships, slowly closing the range. Cradock realized the uselessness of
Otranto in the line of battle and detached her. Heavy seas made working the casemate guns in both sides' armored cruisers difficult. By 18:07, the distance between the two squadrons had fallen to and at 18:37 Spee ordered his ships to open fire, by which time the range had dropped to . Each ship engaged their opposite in the British line,
Gneisenaus target being
Monmouth.
Gneisenau struck
Monmouth with her third salvo, one shell hitting her forward turret, blowing the roof off, and starting a fire.
Gneisenau fired primarily
armor-piercing shells and scored numerous hits, knocking out many of
Monmouths guns. By 18:50,
Monmouth had been badly damaged by
Gneisenau and she fell out of line;
Gneisenau therefore joined
Scharnhorst in battling
Good Hope. At around that time,
Gneisenau received a hit that struck her rear turret but did not penetrate the armor, instead exploding outside and setting fire to
life jackets stored there, though the crew quickly suppressed the blaze. At the same time,
Nürnberg closed to point-blank range of
Monmouth and poured shells into her. At 19:23,
Good Hopes guns fell silent following two large explosions; the German gunners ceased fire shortly thereafter.
Good Hope disappeared into the darkness. Spee ordered his light cruisers to close with his battered opponents and finish them off with torpedoes, while he took
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau further south to get out of the way.
Glasgow was forced to abandon
Monmouth after 19:20 when the German light cruisers approached, before fleeing south and meeting with
Canopus. A squall prevented the Germans from discovering
Monmouth, but she eventually capsized and sank at 20:18. More than 1,600 men were killed in the sinking of the two armored cruisers, including Cradock. German losses were negligible;
Gneisenau had been hit four times but was not significantly damaged and suffered only two crewmen lightly injured. However, the German ships had expended over 40 percent of their ammunition supply.
Voyage to the Falklands on 3 November after the battle,
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau in the lead and
Nürnberg following. In the middle distance are the Chilean cruisers
Esmeralda,
''O'Higgins and
Blanco Encalada, and the old battleship
Capitán Prat''.|alt=A group of large warships steaming slowly off a city. After the battle, Spee took his ships north to Valparaiso. Since Chile was neutral, only three ships could enter the port at a time; Spee took
Scharnhorst,
Gneisenau, and
Nürnberg in first on the morning of 3 November, leaving
Dresden and
Leipzig with the colliers at Mas a Fuera. In Valparaiso, Spee's ships could take on coal while he conferred with the
Admiralty Staff in Germany to determine the strength of remaining British forces in the region. The ships remained in the port for only 24 hours, in accordance with the neutrality restrictions, and arrived at Mas a Fuera on 6 November, where they took on more coal from captured British and French steamers. On 10 November,
Dresden and
Leipzig were detached for a stop in Valparaiso, and five days later, Spee took the rest of the squadron south to
St. Quentin Bay in the
Gulf of Penas. On 18 November,
Dresden and
Leipzig met Spee while en route and the squadron reached St. Quentin Bay three days later. There, they took on more coal, since the voyage around
Cape Horn would be a long one and it was unclear when they would have another opportunity to coal. Once word of the defeat reached London, the Royal Navy set to organizing a force to hunt down and destroy the East Asia Squadron. To this end, the powerful battlecruisers and were detached from the
Grand Fleet and placed under the command of Vice Admiral
Doveton Sturdee. The two ships left
Devonport on 10 November. En route to the
Falkland Islands, they were joined by the armored cruisers , , and , the light cruisers and
Glasgow, and
Otranto; the force of eight ships reached the Falklands by 7 December, where they immediately coaled. In the meantime, Spee's ships departed St. Quentin Bay on 26 November and rounded Cape Horn on 2 December. They captured the Canadian
barque Drummuir, which had a cargo of of good-quality
Cardiff coal.
Leipzig took the ship under tow and the following day the ships stopped off
Picton Island. The crews transferred the coal from
Drummuir to the squadron's colliers. On the morning of 6 December, Spee held a conference with the ship commanders aboard
Scharnhorst to determine their next course of action. The Germans had received numerous fragmentary and contradictory reports of British reinforcements in the region; Spee and two other captains favored an attack on the Falklands, while three other commanders, including Maerker, argued that it would be better to bypass the islands and attack British shipping off Argentina. Spee's opinion carried the day and the squadron departed for the Falklands at 12:00.
Battle of the Falkland Islands Gneisenau and
Nürnberg were delegated for the attack; they approached the Falklands the following morning, with the intention of destroying the wireless transmitter there. Observers aboard
Gneisenau spotted smoke rising from
Port Stanley, but assumed it was the British burning their coal stocks to prevent the Germans from seizing them. As they closed on the harbor, shells from
Canopus, which had been beached as a guard ship, began to fall around the German ships. Lookouts on the German ships spotted the large
tripod masts of the battlecruisers, though these were initially believed to be from the battlecruiser ; the reports of several enemy warships combined with fire from
Canopus prompted Spee to break off the attack. The Germans took a southeasterly course at after having reformed by 10:45. Spee formed his line with
Gneisenau and
Nürnberg ahead,
Scharnhorst in the center, and
Dresden and
Leipzig astern. The fast battlecruisers quickly got up steam and sailed out of the harbor to pursue the East Asia Squadron. Spee realized his armored cruisers could not escape the much faster battlecruisers and ordered the three light cruisers to attempt to break away while he turned about and allowed the British battlecruisers to engage the outgunned
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau. Meanwhile, Sturdee detached his cruisers to pursue the German light cruisers.
Invincible opened fire at
Scharnhorst while
Inflexible attacked
Gneisenau and Spee ordered his two armored cruisers to similarly engage their opposites. Spee had taken the
lee position; the wind kept his ships swept of smoke, which improved visibility for his gunners. This forced Sturdee into the windward position and its corresponding worse visibility.
Gneisenau quickly scored two hits on her opponent. In response to these hits, Sturdee attempted to widen the distance by turning two points to the north. This would place his ships beyond the effective range of the German guns, but keep his opponents within range of his own. Both sides checked their fire for the time being;
Gneisenau had been hit twice during this stage of the battle, the first shell striking the aft funnel, killing and wounding several men with shell splinters. The second shell damaged some of the ship's
cutters and penetrated into some cabins amidships. Shell fragments from a near miss penetrated into one of the magazines for the 8.8 cm guns, forcing it to be flooded to prevent a fire. Spee countered Sturdee's maneuver by turning rapidly to the south, which significantly widened the range and temporarily raised the possibility of escaping by nightfall. The maneuver forced Sturdee to turn south as well and pursue at high speed. Given the speed advantage and the clear weather, the German hope to escape proved to be short-lived. Nevertheless, the maneuver allowed Spee to turn back north, bringing
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau close enough to engage with their secondary 15 cm guns; their shooting was so effective that it forced the British to haul away a second time. After resuming the battle, the British gunfire became more accurate, and as the British were firing at very long range, the shells approached
plunging fire, which allowed them to penetrate the thin deck armor rather than the thicker belt.
Gneisenau took several hits during this phase, including a pair of underwater hits that began to flood boiler rooms 1 and 3. Sturdee then turned to port in an attempt to take the leeward position, but Spee countered the turn to retain his favorable position; the maneuvering did, however, reverse the order of the ships, so
Gneisenau now engaged
Invincible. During the reversal,
Gneisenau became temporarily obscured by smoke, so the British ships concentrated their fire on
Scharnhorst, which suffered severe damage during this phase of the action. Spee and Maerker exchanged a series of signals to determine the state of each other's vessels; Spee concluded the exchange with a signal noting that Maerker was correct to have opposed the attack on the Falklands. At 15:30,
Gneisenau received a major hit that penetrated to her starboard engine room and disabled that engine, leaving her with just two operational screws. Another hit at 15:45 knocked over her forward funnel, and at 16:00 her number 4 boiler room was disabled. At 16:00, Spee ordered
Gneisenau to attempt to escape while he reversed course and attempted to launch torpedoes at his pursuers. Damage to the ship's engine and boiler rooms had reduced her speed to , however, and so the ship continued to fight on.
Gneisenau nevertheless could not evade British fire, and at around the same time her bridge was hit. Two more hits followed at 16:15, one passing completely through the ship without detonating and the other exploding in the main
dressing station, killing most of the wounded crew there. At 16:17,
Scharnhorst finally capsized to port and sank; the British, their attention now focused on
Gneisenau, made no attempt to rescue the crew. By this time,
Carnarvon joined the fray and contributed her guns to the bombardment. As the range fell to , heavy fire from the surviving German guns forced the British to turn away again, widening the range to . During the final phase of the battle,
Gneisenau ran out of ammunition and resorted to firing inert training rounds; one of these struck
Invincible. Three more shells struck
Gneisenau at around 17:15, two of them underwater on the starboard side and the other on a starboard casemate. The former hits caused serious flooding, but the third had little effect, as the gun crew had already been killed by an earlier hit and the casemate was already on fire. Several more hits followed, and by 17:30,
Gneisenau was a burning wreck; she had a severe list to starboard and smoke poured from the ship, which came to a stop. At 17:35, Maerker ordered the crew to set
scuttling charges and gather on the deck, as the ship was unable to continue fighting. The forward gun turret fired a final shell despite Maerker's instructions, prompting a return shot from
Inflexible that struck the forward dressing station, killing many wounded men there. At 17:42, the scuttling charges detonated and the forward torpedo crew launched a torpedo to clear the tube and hasten the flooding. The ship slowly rolled over and sank, but not before allowing some 270 to 300 of the survivors time to escape. Of these men, many died quickly from exposure in the water. A total of 598 men of her crew were killed in the engagement, though boats from
Invincible and
Inflexible picked up 187 men from
Gneisenau, including her
executive officer,
Korvettenkapitän (Corvette Captain) Hans Pochhammer, the highest ranking German officer to survive and the source of German records of the battle.
Leipzig and
Nürnberg were also sunk. Only
Dresden managed to escape, but she was eventually tracked to the
Juan Fernandez Islands and sunk. The complete destruction of the squadron killed some 2,200 German sailors and officers, including Spee and two of his sons. == Notes ==