germany build 3 of them: deutchland later renamed lutzow by hitler's order nov 15 1939 laid feb 5 1929, launched may 19 1931 scuttled may 3-4 1945 admiral scheer laid june 25 1931, launched april 1 1933 sunk april 10 1945 admiral graf spee laid aug 23 1932, launched june 30 1934 scuttled dec 17 1939, after battle of la plata estuary
Their official rating, "armored ships," was taken from the wording of the Versailles Treaty, which in turn took its lead from the official designations of various coast defense ships in Dutch and Scandinavian service at the time. After WWII broke out, the KM switched the rating to "heavy cruiser," which was a much closer fit. Ships D and E were begun as enlarged armored ships (c20,000 tons) until it became clear that the new French Dunkerques could make mincemeat of such things. Some quick design work enlarged the ships beyond 30,000 tons, and they were relaid as battleships; these were the Scharnhorsts. One final project took shape under the Z Plan. The Cruiser P class would have included twelve ships similar to the original D. This was canned around the time when the OPQ design got under way.
Thanks.I had forgotten about the Lutzow.I knew Deutchland had been renamed ,but couldn't remember what the new name was.
I've always found it interesting that they renamed her after the only German battlecruiser to be sunk in the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
More immediately they gave her the name that had just be freed up by the sale of the Hipper-class cruiser Lutzow to the Soviets.
Any truth to the storey that the name was changed just in case she was sunk - bad for morale if a ship nmaed Deutchland was sunk.
Raeder suggested the name change to Hitler to pre-empt the possibility of "Deutschland" being sunk and to confuse British intelligence.
One does wonder if those who decided to name the ship DEUTSCHLAND even considered the possibility that she might be sunk in a war.
Wasn't America sunk a week ago? The Royal Navy has had ten or so Britannias over the years. In fact, Britannia had the misfortune of sinking in WWI. The Japanese had their country sunk twice during WWII. Darn the luck.
Well much of that 26 days would have been spent looking at the damage inflicted by the last weapon hit. (can't be a nice job to have to go aboard a ship you've just tried to sink in case you end up in a "whoops that one did the trick lads! RUN!" situation :-? )
