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 12 January 1942, the German Naval Command, in a conference with Hitler, made the decision to return "Gneisenau", "Scharnhorst", and the heavy cruiser to Germany. The intention was to deploy the vessels to Norway to interdict Allied convoys to the Soviet Union. The so-called "Channel Dash", codenamed Operation "Cerberus", would avoid the increasingly effective Allied radar and patrol aircraft in the Atlantic. Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax was given command of the operation. In early February, minesweepers swept a route through the English Channel, though the British failed to detect the activity.