SMS Gneisenau
"Gneisenau" was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen, Germany in 1904, under construction number 144. She was launched on 14 June 1906, and commissioned into the fleet nearly two years later on 6 March 1908. The ship cost the German government 19,243,000 goldmarks. The ship had been designed for service with the High Seas Fleet, though it was found to be too weak for service with the battle fleet; instead it was deployed overseas, a role in which it performed well.
German battleship Gneisenau
At 04:30 on the 9th, "Gneisenau" located the British battlecruiser "Renown" with her Seetakt radar; the call to battle stations rang out on both "Gneisenau" and "Scharnhorst", though it was that fired first, at 05:05. "Gneisenau" scored two hits on "Renown"; the first failed to explode and the second exploded on her upper deck and damaged the radio equipment. "Gneisenau" and "Scharnhorst" then turned to disengage. Almost simultaneously, two of "Renown"'s 15 in (38 cm) shells struck "Gneisenau". One shell hit the director tower and passed through it without exploding; regardless, it cut several cables and killed one officer and five enlisted men. The second shell disabled the rear turret. This prompted "Gneisenau" to cease firing and increase speed in order to break away from "Renown". Vice Admiral Lütjens feared that the destroyers escorting "Renown" could be used to make torpedo attacks against his unescorted battleships. In the course of the action, "Gneisenau" fired sixty 28 cm and eight 15 cm rounds. During the high-speed escape, both "Gneisenau" and "Scharnhorst" were flooded by significant quantities of water over their bows, which caused problems in both of their forward gun turrets.