German surface raiders

German surface raiders (see Map 42). Under the Anglo-German naval agreement of June 1935 the German naval C-in-C, Grand Admiral Raeder, could have built up to a tonnage equalling 35% of British surface warship strength, which could have been achieved by 1940. But because Hitler assured him there would be no war before the mid-1940s, Raeder adopted a longer-term strategy which would have enabled him to out build the British fleet (see Germany, Table11). Consequently, the German Navy, although modern and well equipped, was below the strength permitted by the 1935 agreement when war started.

German surface raiders, 1939–41

Name	Description	Launched	Standard displacement tons	Armament excluding light A-A guns	Aircraft carried	Horsepower 000	Duration of sortie sailing/termination date	Shipping sunk or captured	Operating areas	Speed knots	Endurance nautical miles	Damage incurred in action, ultimate fate
								No.	G.R. tons
Sources: Roskill, S. W., The War at Sea, Vol. 1 (London, 1954) and Ruge, F., Sea War fare (London, 1957).
Deutschland	Pocket	May 1931	12,000	6 x 279 mm	2	57	Aug 1939	2	7,000	N.W. Atlantic	28	21,000	11.4.40 (torpedo),
Renamed	battleship			(11 in)			15 Nov 1939						13.6.41 (torpedo-
Lützow 1940				8 x 150mm		bomber), 3.5.45
				(5.9 in)		(bombs) and blown
				6 x 100 mm		up in Swinemünde
			(4.1 in) HA
				8 T. tubes
Admiral Graf	Pocket	June 1934	12,000	6 x 279 mm	2	57	Aug 1939	9	50,000	S. Atlantic and	28	19,000	13.12.39 (gunfire),
Spee	battleship			8 x 150 mm			17 Dec 1939			Indian Ocean			17.12.39 blown up and
				6 x 100 mm HA		sunk in the River Plate
				8 T. tubes
Admiral	Pocket	April 1933	12,000	6 x 279 mm	2	57	23 Oct 1940	16	99,059	N. Atlantic,	28	19,000	9.4.45 bombed
Scheer	battleship			8 x 150 mm			1 April 1941			S. Atlantic and			and sunk in Kiel
			6 x 100 mm									Indian Oceans
				8 T. tubes
Admiral	Heavy	Feb 1937	12,000	8 x 203 mm	3	132	30 Nov 1940	1	6,078	N.Atlantic	32.5	6,000	8.4.40 damaged when
Hipper	cruiser			(8 in)			27 Dec 1940						rammed by Glowworm,
				12 x 100 mm		31.11.42 (gunfire),
				12 T. tubes		3.5.45 bombed
	and sunk in Kiel
							1 Feb 1941	7	34,000	West of			8.6.40 hit by
							13 Feb 1941			Biscay			torpedo, 24.7.41
	by bomb,
	12.2.42 by two mines,
	26.12.43 sunk by
	guns and torpedoes
	in the Arctic
Scharnhorst	Battle	Dec 1936	31,000	9 x 279 mm	4	165	23 Jan 1941	22	115,622	N. and	31.5	10,000	9.4.40 (gunfire), May
Gneisenau	cruisers	Oct 1936		12 x 150 mm	(each)		22 Mar 1941			Central Atlantic			1940 (mine),
				14 x 100 mm HA		26.6.40 (torpedo),
	6.4.41 (torpedo-
	bomber), 11.4.41
	(bomb), 12.2.42
	(mine), 26/27.2.42
	(bomb), 1.7.42
											paid off
Bismarck	Battleship	April 1939	42,000	8 x 381 mm	4	138	21 May 1941	0	0	N. Atlantic	30	8,100	27.5.41 sunk by
				(15 in)			27 May 1941						guns and torpedo-
				12 x 150 mm		bombers in the Atlantic
				16 x 100 mm HA
Prinz Eugen	Heavy	Aug 1937	14,600	8 x 203 mm	3	132	21 May 1941	0	0	N. Atlantic	32.5	6,000	23.4.41 (mine),
	cruiser			12 x 100 mm			1 June 1941						2.7.41 (bomb),
				12 T. tubes		23.2.42 (torpedo),
	handed over to Allies
	and sunk after
	atomic tests

Because of this disparity, Raeder's policy was to avoid confrontation. Instead he planned to attack British merchant shipping routes, not only with his three pocket battleships, which were designed for just this task, but with his other heavy surface units, too (see Table). By this means he hoped to disperse the Royal Navy's superior strength and, with the help of Dönitz's U-boat fleet and the German auxiliary cruisers, cut the supply lines upon which the British depended to wage war effectively.

The campaign of the German surface raiders suffered an early blow when one of the pocket battleships was tracked down in December 1939 and forced to scuttle herself (see River Plate). But in November 1940 another pocket battleship, Admiral Scheer, successfully attacked an Atlantic convoy (see Jervis Bay), and subsequently sank a number of ships in the North and South Atlantic, and in the Indian Ocean; and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, after being driven off when she attacked a convoy on Christmas Day 1940, sank seven ships in an unescorted convoy during a second sortie in February 1941. Both warships were then able to return to port safely under cover of the raiding operations then being mounted by the two German battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. These had already made several sorties (see Rawalpindi, for example) without sinking any merchant ships, but from 23 January to 22 March 1941 they sank or captured 22 merchantmen totalling 115,622 tons and managed to dislocate completely the British convoy cycle before returning to port. This was the peak of the surface raiders' success. After the battleship Bismarck was sunk in May 1941 while trying to implement Raeder's strategy, Hitler ordered the other surface raiders to be concentrated in Norwegian waters (see CERBERUS) where their purpose was to threaten the Arctic convoys and to guard the coastline against invasion. See also Tirpitz.