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| Scharnhorst -- model by Navis |
The central players in the drama of the 1914 affair were the
sister ships KMS Scharnhorst and KMS Gneisenau. These two warships represented
the heart of the military threat posed by Von Spee’s squadron. The accompanying light cruisers had a role to
play, but they were minor warships and could be countered by similarly minor
combatants that would have negligible affects on the naval balance.
The
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, in contrast, were capital ships, albeit of an
obsolescent type in 1914. They were
armored cruisers – a type of capital ship that had a relatively short heyday as
such major warships go. The first “armored cruiser” were in the 1870s and the very last armored cruiser was the HMS Defense, completed in 1908, so
the total length of time this type was in first-line service was barely four
decades.
Still,
while they didn’t serve very long as first-line units, they did play prominent
roles in the several of the battles that occurred during the pre-dreadnaught
era, notably the Battle of Santiago in the Spanish-American War and the Battle
of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War.
The
main reason why armored cruisers enjoyed their brief time in the sun was the
undeveloped state of naval gunnery during the closing decades of the Nineteenth
Century. Cannon technology grew by leaps and bounds during that era, resulting
in naval artillery that could fire at unheard-of ranges with great accuracy.
During the naval battles of the American Civil War and the Battle of Lissa,
gunnery duels between ships were often still
measurable in hundreds of yards and it was practicable for ships to get
close enough to use ramming tactics. This was despite the fact that the guns,
themselves, could easily hurl projectiles for many miles. The ranges the guns could fire increased even
more over the ensuing decades but the problem of actually hitting the target
remained. Long-range gunnery was inherently challenging, but naval gunnery
added additional complexities as both the target and the firing ship were
constantly changing position. At the Battle of Manila,
Dewey’ fleet managed to achieve only 2-3% hits on the nearly immobile Spanish
squadron. The destructive power of modern artillery was sufficient, however,
that this was enough to annihilate the Spanish squadron.
Under
the gunnery conditions of the late nineteenth century there seemed to be a lot
to be said for volume of fire. The very largest naval guns, like those carried
on battleships, were very destructive, but had such a slow rate of fire that
there was little opportunity a gunner to successfully use the information from
a miss to adjust his fire to get closer
on the next shot. Too much time would pass between shots and the relative positions
of the ships would likely be so different that each shot was basically starting
anew. The higher rate of fire of smaller
guns would not only throw a lot more metal in the vicinity of the target, but
provided some chance for adjusting fire from misses. Because of this, battleships of the ear
commonly carried a mixed armament of some very heavy ship-smashing main guns,
some medium caliber secondary guns and a tertiary battery of quick-firing guns
for defense against light craft.
Armored
cruisers essentially traded the large main battery guns for additional
endurance and speed compared to battleship, but were often armored at similar
levels and carried as their main battery guns equal in size to the secondary
batteries of battleships. As such they
were generally able to stand in the line of battle alongside the battleships,
as they did at Tsushima.
By
1914, however, the situation had dramatically changed, and the armored cruiser
was no longer able to stand in the line of battle. The Dreadnought concept of
an all-big gun battleship and the similar Invincible class battle cruiser had
changed the equation. Improvements in the large guns had increased their rate
of fire and improvements in gunnery techniques were promising improvements in
accuracy that suggested that having a uniform battery of large guns would be
more effective than the mixed armament of earlier ships and that armored
cruisers could no longer safely operate in the main battle line.
Still,
the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were still powerful ships, especially on detached
stations such as the Far East, where dreadnought-type warships were still
uncommon.
The two
German ships were conservative designs, very well-built as was usual for German
naval construction and well-armed. They were identical sister ships, and
therefore worked well together as unit. Their main battery was a total of eight
8.1-inch guns,. Four of the guns were mounted in twin turrets fore and aft, but
the other four were mounted in casements on the side, which meant that the
total broadside was only six heavy guns.
Also in casements were the secondary battery guns, eight 5.9-inch guns,
for total broadside of four.
They
were well-protected with belt armor of 6 inches and a 2-inch armored deck and,
like most German warships, well compartmented.
They
were not especially speedy for armored cruisers, with maximum rated speeds of
around 22 knots. This was enough to outrun any pre-dreadnought battleship but
markedly slower than many British armored cruisers and hopelessly insufficient to
outrun one of the new battle cruisers. This speed deficiency would play a major
role in the outcome of the campaign and was a major consideration a Spee
weighted his options.
A bare
recital of stats is not the sum total of a warship’s effectiveness in any era,
but its especially important to note the more intangible aspects when
evaluating the ship in this campaign.
The
nature of the German East Asia Squadron’s mission, as a detached squadron on a distant foreign
station, had a major impact on its efficiency. All the crew members were
long-service regular navy men, without any of the conscripts that filled out
the rosters of homeland-based vessels. It was an elite posting and the two
ships were widely regarded as efficient and well-led.
This
manifested itself in at least two ways. First, both ships were noted for their
proficiency in gunnery, being recent and multiple-year winners of the German
Navy’s gunnery competition. This had obvious implications in the coming
engagements, as the tow German ships could be counted on to be very dangerous
adversaries.
Less
visibly, but also vital, is that the two ships were evidently very well-served
by their engineering crews. In an era when large ship engineering plants were
still relatively new and often temperamental, the exceptional reliability of
the two ships played a key, if little
noted roles in the campaign. Von Spee confidently set forth on a journey of
extraordinary length and with little available support if something should go
wrong with his systems. In the event both ships performed exceptional feats of
steaming right up until their final moments.
