Name: Gneisenau
Namesake: August von Gneisenau
Ordered: November 1904
Builder: Weserwerft, Bremen
Laid down: December 1904
Launched: 14 June 1906
Commissioned: 6 March 1908
Fate: Sunk in action, First Battle of the Falkland Islands, 8 December 1914
General characteristics
Class and type: Scharnhorst class armored cruiser
Displacement: 12,781 tons
Length: 144.6 meters (474.7 ft) overall
143.8 meters (472 ft) waterline
Beam: 21.6 meters (71 ft)
Draft: 8.4 meters (27 feet 6 inches)
Propulsion: 18 Schulz Thornycroft Boilers
3 shaft Triple expansion engines
27,759 ihp (trials)
Speed: 22.7 knots (42 km/h)
Complement: 764
Armament: 8 × 21 cm (8.2 in) (2 × 2, 4 × 1)
6 × 15 cm (5.9 in) (6 × 1)
18 × 88 mm/35 cal (3.45 in)(18 × 1)
4 × 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Launched on 14 June 1906, together with her sister ship SMS Scharnhorst, they were improvements on the previous Roon class. After commissioning, these 2 ships formed the core of the German East Asia cruiser squadron based at Qingdao (then Romanised as Tsingtao) in China under Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee.
On the outbreak of the First World War, the squadron left Qingdao after Japan entered the war on the Allied side. The ships successfully traversed the Pacific before having encountered and defeated a weaker British force. The British armoured cruisers HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth, under Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock, were sunk at the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile on 1 November 1914.
On 8 December 1914, after passing into the South Atlantic through the Straits of Magellan, the squadron launched an attack on the Falkland Islands in an attempt to get coal for the ship's bunkers. However, they encountered a much more powerful British force, which included the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, which proceeded to destroy the German ships in the first Battle of the Falkland Islands. Gneisenau was lost with most of its crew, although 176 survivors were picked up by the British.
References
Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I (Jane's Publishing, London, 1919)
Robert Gardiner, ed., Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 (Conway Maritime Press, London, 1979)
Falkland Is SG1007