Customer Reviews

Pocket Battleships of the Deutschland Class

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4 star:		(3)
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This is a must have if you are building a Lutzow/Deutschland Class model and need good picture references. Fairly good text and statistics. The only drawback are the line drawings which are far too small in scale (you need a magnifying glass) to be of any use and the camouflage drawings which are done in black and white and are also of limited use. Otherwise, tons of very useful black and white photos...

The previous review describes perfectly the book, but to be fair to the pocket battleships design, the bombs causing such a massive damage off Ibiza in 1937 were 250 kg. each instead of the 50 kg. stated in the book (I don't know if this is a translation error or the authors got it wrong). The bombers were three Tupolev SB2 Katiuska with Russian crews fighting for the Spanish Republic. They had been informed that the ship lying at anchor in Ibiza harbour was the Spanish rebels heavy cruiser Canarias. Two hits out of three bombs were achieved, although on the wrong ship! The book also doesn't inform that the reprisal bombing of Almeria by the Admiral Scheer caused 20 dead (all of them civilians) in the city of Almeria.

This book would be a five star if it were not for the microscopic size of the drawings, as the previous reviewers have pointed out.

The previous review is quite correct about the ship drawings. Yes, that cost a star right off the bat. However, the rest of the book is quite good and it gives really good insight into the Kreigsmarine.

The book is broken down into a general overview of the Panzerschiffe, then a break down of the operational life of the ships, this is followed by some very good pictures of the ships, and then the book has an overview of the success of the class by itself. Any of these chapters by themselves are quite good and they all contribute to a very good book.

Now, there are two facts I didn't know about the diesel engines in the Pocket battleships. First, just like the American battleships of about the same period, the engines brought in a bad vibration in the ship. Indeed, it was of such a critical nature that Deutschland could not use its gun aiming system at full speed. It must have been terrifying to the Germans. They had brand new battleships and the gunnery systems worked at really no better speeds than the old pre-dreadnoughts in their navies. The Germans overcame this by installing better mountings and making some modifications to the engines. However, this had a catastrophic effect on the German maritime fleet. The Germans decided to give up on the diesel engines and went over to high pressure steam engines. That didn't work. Mann, the manufacturer of the diesel engines, eventually come up with an improved diesel engine that had higher RPMs and less vibration. However, the damage was done. The newer German cruisers would all be steam turbine powered. So, the British were spared the possible problem of having very long ranged diesel powered and fast cruisers attacking their convoys in the 1940 and 1941 time frame. A simple engine design change may have effected the course of WWII. So, the initial engines were unsuccessful and by the time they were fixed the Kreigsmarine didn't capitalize on the design. Admiral Raider didn't not have a very good design and analysis team.

Another problem of the Deutschland class was the secondary weapons. The 150 cm guns were generally useless in a fight. Had the Germans put them in a good double turret weapon system - like that on the light cruiser Leipzig - with a dedicated primary secondary fire control system then the pocket battleships would have been a match for several cruisers.

Last, I was surprised about the vulnerability of the Deutschland class to damage. Graf Spee received a fair amount of damage from the three cruisers at the Battle of the River Plate. Even if she had evaded the three cruisers then her voyage home would have been doubtful. The six and eight inch shells had done a good deal of damage to her. Second, Deutschland was hit by two 55 kg bombs in 1937. She received a massive amount of damage. A typical British or American ship would have received, at worst, some splinter damage.

After reading this book one may come away with the view the Panzerschiffe of the early 1930s was sort of a prototype for the 1940s German Navy. The trouble is the Kreigsmarine learned the wrong lesson. One wonders what a force of diesel engined Hipper cruisers and Scharnhorst light battleships would have done to Britain in 1940 and 1941.

Yes, I liked this book and feel most German WWII maritime readers will learn something about this interesting class of ship.