Scharnhorst and Gneisenau could make 22 knots and each carried eight 8.3-inch guns. Their armament also included six 5.9-inch guns and eighteen 3.5-inch guns. Six-inch batteries often did much of the fighting in this period because they could fire more rapidly than larger weapons. The 8.3-inch guns still supplied substantial striking power, so the ships combined a heavy battery with faster-firing smaller guns.
Notable Point · 57:54-58:40
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau's mixed gun batteries
The German armoured cruisers combined heavy and smaller batteries, whose different rates of fire explain why gun size alone did not determine fighting power.