D.K.M. Admiral Scheer Model Ship

Item#: MM9-102

MSRP Price: $1,695. 00

Factory Direct Price: $1,295.00

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D.K.M. Admiral Scheer History:

Admiral Scheer was a Deutschland class heavy cruiser (often termed a pocket battleship) which served with the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany during World War II.

The vessel was named after Admiral Reinhard Scheer. Originally classified as an armored ship (Panzerschiff) in Germany, in February 1940 the Kriegsmarine reclassified the remaining two ships of this class as heavy cruisers. The pocket battleship title was provided by the British. The ship was one of the few that was considered to be male, meaning that its crew referred to the ship as he instead of the usual she.

The ship was launched on April 1, 1933 and christened by Frau Marianne Besserer, daughter of Admiral Reinhard Scheer.

During World War II, Admiral Scheer, under Captain Theodor Krancke, was by far the most successful capital ship commerce raider of the war, with a raid as far as the Indian Ocean. Near the end of the war, he was bombed by the RAF while docked in Kiel, causing him to capsize and sink. After the war his upturned hull was partially scrapped, with what remained being buried under rubble as the dock was filled in to make a "car park".

Spanish Civil War

His first mission began in July 1936 when he was sent to Spain to evacuate German civilians caught up in the Spanish Civil War. He also spied on Soviet ships carrying supplies to the Republicans and protected ships delivering German weapons to Nationalist forces. On 31 May 1937 he bombarded Republican installations at Almería in reprisal for an air attack on his sister ship Deutschland two days earlier. By the end of June 1938 he had completed eight deployments to Spain.

World War II

His wartime career began on 4 September 1939 when RAF Bristol Blenheim bombers attacked him at Wilhelmshaven. He was hit by three bombs, which failed to cause major damage, and flak downed four of the attackers. He underwent an overhaul whilst his sister ships set out on commerce raiding. Deutschland accounted for two ships before returning home, but Admiral Graf Spee sank nine before he was discovered by the Royal Navy, damaged, and then scuttled following the Battle of the River Plate. Although these pocket battleship raids had not been hugely successful, the concept of commerce raiding had been demonstrated. Admiral Scheer was modified during the early months of 1940: his command tower was replaced, and he was reclassified as a heavy cruiser.

Admiral Scheer sailed on 14 October 1940 and his first target was convoy HX-84 from Halifax Nova Scotia, which had been identified by B-Dienst radio intercepts. His seaplane located the convoy on 5 November 1940 and, believing it to be unescorted, the Scheer closed in. However, as the convoy appeared over the horizon, one vessel sailed out to challenge him. The Jervis Bay, commanded by Captain Edward Fegen, was an armed merchant ship and was the only defence for the convoy. Owing to insufficient Allied warship numbers at this early stage in the war, convoys received destroyer escorts only on the last three days of their journey. Jervis Bay was hopelessly outclassed, but the German ship had to deal with him before pursuing the convoy, which had already begun to scatter and make smoke. Admiral Scheer succeeded in sinking five other ships, but his haul would have been far greater, but for the sacrifice of Jervis Bay. The attack led to a change in Admiralty policy: subsequent large convoys were usually escorted by battleships or battlecruisers — which had significant implications for the Royal Navy's other commitments.

The Royal Navy sent out several ships to trap the commerce raider Admiral Scheer, but he slipped away to the south to rendezvous with Nordmark, his replenishment oiler. Over the next two months, he sank several ships, capturing supplies and transferring prisoners to Nordmark, meeting them at Planquadrat Anadalusien, or other ships which he took as prizes. He spent Christmas 1940 at sea in the mid-Atlantic, several hundred miles from Tristan da Cunha, before making a foray into the Indian Ocean in February 1941. He found two more ships, but the second of these managed to send out a distress signal which attracted various British cruisers. He managed to sink a coal ship as he escaped the closing net and slipped back into the Atlantic. Captain Krancke sailed northwards, passed through the Denmark Strait and eventually reached Kiel on 1 April 1941, having steamed over 46,000 nautical miles and sinking 16 merchant ships.

Admiral Scheer did not sortie again until 2 July 1942 when he set off on an abortive attempt to intercept Arctic convoy PQ-17. In August 1942 he sailed into the Arctic Ocean to hunt convoys and establish a German presence in the USSR's Arctic region, known as Unternehmen Wunderland. He bombarded the Soviet meteorological station at Cape Zhelaniya on 25 August, and then sank an armed ice breaker, the Aleksandr Sibiryakov off the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, but failed to find a convoy which was in the area. The icebreaker's crew managed to send word to the station of Novy Dikson. He moved on to shell Novy Dikson harbour and deployed troops there. The garrison, however, had an old field howitzer, which opened fire on the ship, causing minor damage to the equipment on board. Admiral Scheer recalled the troops and did not sink any of the vessels in the harbour, but badly damaged the ships Dezhnev (SKR-19) and Revolutsioner which lay anchored there. He returned to Narvik without finding any allied convoys owing to persistent bad weather and fog in the Kara Sea.

Following Hitler's anger at the alleged failings of the Kriegsmarine, its commander-in-chief, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder was replaced by Admiral Karl Dönitz, and the German surface fleet rarely left port thereafter. In the autumn of 1944 Admiral Scheer provided artillery support to retreating German army units on the Sorve Peninsula in the Baltic Sea. Throughout January and February 1945 he was engaged in further coastal bombardment operations, but his gun barrels were worn out by March and he returned to Kiel. It was here, on the night of 9 April 1945, during a general RAF bombing raid on the dockyard by over 300 aircraft, that he was struck and capsized at his berth. Most of his crew were ashore at the time, but 32 men were killed. The wreck of Admiral Scheer was buried when the inner harbor was filled with debris after the war.