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
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.