Yorck came from the Second Naval Law of 1900, was launched in 1904, and entered service in 1905. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau followed in 1906. Yet the 1912 naval law already assigned their replacements to construction expected to begin in 1916. That short interval shows how rapidly capital-ship standards changed during the naval arms race. A 20.4-knot cruiser with four 210 mm guns, ten 150 mm guns, and fourteen 88 mm guns could give useful service and still appear overtaken by new battlecruiser expectations within roughly a decade. The dates place the Ersatz Yorck programme within institutional replacement planning under rapid technological change, separate from Yorck's combat loss.
Notable Point · 15:00-18:06
A decade from launch to planned replacement
Yorck and the Scharnhorsts show the pace of the prewar naval arms race: recently commissioned armoured cruisers were already assigned much larger battlecruiser successors.