GERMANY’S BIGGEST BATTLESHIP

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 128, 23 February 1939, Page 3

GERMANY’S BIGGEST BATTLESHIP

Now In Commission The 26,000-ton German battleship Seharnhorst, which was launched by Field-Marshal von Blomberg—then Minister of War—on October 3, 1936, was put Into service last month. Named after the famous Prussian War Minister, it is the first German battleship built since the Great War, ami the largest unit in the German Navy, the biggest of the so-called “pocket battleships” being 10,000 tons. The Seharnliorst measures 741 feet at (he water-line, and has a maximum breadth of 98.4 feet. Her heaviest guns are 11-inch, and she carries four aeroplanes with two catapults. She bears the same name as the flagship of Admiral von s]>ee. which was sunk in the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914. At the launching by Field-Marshal von Blomberg the battleship was described as “a result of the Anglo-Ger-man Naval Agreement of 1935, which restored to our Navy the right to arm and establish its ratio to the British Fits'! lit a way appropriate to the needs of both peoples.”