Naval Historywith Dr. Alex

Q&A · 18:10-20:17

A smaller navy needs a coherent raiding strategy

A question about how a poorer navy challenges a larger one compares Germany's Deutschland-class commerce raiders with the unrealized 15-inch Scharnhorst refit.

Commerce RaidingDeutschland Class CruisersGerman NavyNaval StrategyScharnhorst Class Battleships
Watch at this timeFull video guide
Question

What could a smaller, poorer navy do against the Royal Navy, and why were German surface raiders not designed more directly for long-range raiding and U-boat support?

Short answer

Germany built commerce-raiding status ships within treaty constraints, but planned refits cannot be credited as wartime capability and the surface-raider strategy was never integrated as coherently as it might have been.

Notes

Ships have to be assessed as they actually fought rather than by upgrades that remained plans. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau therefore carried operational 11-inch batteries for this comparison, instead of the proposed six 15-inch guns. The Deutschland class was permitted under the Versailles replacement rules, but that legal opening did not force Germany to build this particular mixture of commerce raider and status ship. The absence of a more integrated long-range raiding and U-boat support concept is difficult to explain because it would have fitted the strategic problem more coherently.