SMS Gneisenau
SMS "Gneisenau" was an armored cruiser of the German navy, part of the two-ship . She was named after August von Gneisenau, a Prussian general of the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was laid down in 1904 at the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and completed in March 1908, at a cost of over 19 million goldmarks. She was armed with a main battery of eight guns, had a top speed of , and displaced at full combat load.
German battleship Gneisenau
On 15 March, the two battleships, with the two tankers in company, encountered a dispersed convoy in the mid-Atlantic. "Gneisenau" captured three tankers and sank a fourth, totaling 20,139 GRT of shipping. The next day, stragglers from a convoy were sighted. "Gneisenau" sank seven ships for 26,693 GRT, while her sister accounted for six vessels for . One of the surviving ships radioed the location of the German battleships, which summoned the powerful British battleships "Rodney" and . "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" used their high speed to escape in a squall, and the intervention by the British battleships convinced Lütjens that the chances of further success were small. He therefore decided to head for Brest in occupied France, which the ships reached on 22 March. She then entered drydock for periodic maintenance.