The class did not become battlecruisers merely because its guns were small. The ships had battleship hulls and protection, but Germany was already producing 11-inch turrets for the Deutschland line and Hitler wanted battleships quickly. The Scharnhorst guns were somewhat more powerful than the Deutschland weapons because they incorporated upgrades intended for the next D-class Panzer ships, not because Germany had suddenly created a modern battleship calibre. A fourth triple mount would add useful firepower without removing that underlying calibre disadvantage. Those guns would have been formidable during the First World War, yet by the late 1930s they sat far below British 14-, 15-, and 16-inch capital-ship weapons. The class was a stretched procurement path: a battleship built around available cruiser-scale armament. Its coherent design still spent battleship displacement without obtaining contemporary battleship firepower.
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Scharnhorst used a battleship hull for cruiser-scale guns
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were genuine battleships, but their 11-inch battery reflected the largest gun Germany could build promptly rather than the weapon a modern battleship needed.