Talk:List of battlecruisers of Germany

Scharnhorst/Gneisenau

Yeah the O's were planned for WW2... but what about Scharnhorst/Gneisenau then? JurSchagen (talk) 00:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The reason those two ships aren't included is explained in this note in the article. Suffice it to say, the ships were classified as battleships by the German navy, and are more frequently described as such in scholarly sources. Therefore, Wikipedia treats the ships as battleships, not battlecruisers. This has been discussed extensively over a long period of time; the most recent discussion can be found here. Parsecboy (talk) 00:51, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

add reason for the scuttling

A little fleshing out of why the crews scuttled the fleet at Scapa Flow? HammerFilmFan (talk) 12:24, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't want to get into too much detail here in the lead, but how does it look now? Parsecboy (talk) 11:51, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

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The laying down of the Mackensen class

I've noticed what appears to be a descrepency between this list and the article on the Mackensens.

The table states that SMS Mackensen was laid down in 1914, but in the article about the class, in the section pertaining to each ship's construction, says that: "[Mackensen] was laid down on 30 January 1915 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, under construction number 240."

Both seem to cite the same source (Gröner 1990, p. 58). However, has I do not own a copy of the book, I can't say for sure if either articles have it wrong. But for anybody that does, please check because something's not right here. Earle Bartibus Huxley (talk) 15:16, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm away on a holiday at the moment, so I can't check the source - I initially thought it was perhaps a mistaken citation (probably to Hildebrand et al), since Groner typically does not provide specific keel-laying dates, but I went back through the edit history and the date was already there when I expanded the article with Hildebrand. I'll have to double check when I get home. Thanks for bringing this up. Parsecboy (talk) 12:04, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

No Problem.

Hmmm, if Gröner doesn't typically provide keel-laying dates then that makes me wonder if the dates mentioned in the other article are correct. I looked back and noticed that the sentences mentioning date of keel-laying don't have a citation at the end of them; the citation appears a few sentences later. And in the case of PEF and Fürst Bismarck, the citation for them only appears at the end of the paragraph.

I know it's perfectly acceptable for citations to not appear at the end of every sentence, but I think it's worth checking just incase it's incorrect. Earle Bartibus Huxley (talk) 23:31, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I just had a look and the date is not in Groner - now to dig through the edit history and see if I can find where it came from. Parsecboy (talk) 11:29, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

As it turns out, the date was in the article from when it was created back in 2004. But Hildebrand et. al. mention the date, so that much is correct. I'll update the list to reflect it. Parsecboy (talk) 11:35, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

That's good to know. I guess the confusion stemmed from the fact that Mackensen was ordered in 1914. Does Hildebrand et. al. support the keel-laying dates for the other ships in the class? If so, I'll add the dates to the table myself to save you the hassle.

I've checked the other dates for the rest of the ships and they match up just fine. This list doesn't give the precise day for Lützow's keel being laid, but the article about her as well as the one about the Derfflinger class both put it as the 15 May. I did however notice another descrepancy, this time regarding Ersatz Yorck. The table in this list states the date of her keel-laying as June 1916, but the article about the class states it as July 1916. Earle Bartibus Huxley (talk) 22:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Hildebrand has chapters on Mackensen and Graf Spee, but not Prinz Eitel Friedrich or Ersatz Friedrich Carl. Curiously, the section on Mackensen has a few details on the Ersatz Yorcks - the keel-laying date for the first of which is given as July. I'd assume I typo-ed the date when I added it here. I've removed the specific dates from the Mackensen-class article and updated this one accordingly. This list needs some work in general - maybe I ought to get to that sooner rather than later. Parsecboy (talk) 15:21, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Huh, it's strange that PEF and EFC don't get mentioned at all, though I guess they were the most incomplete of the four. Looking back at the revision history, the dates for the latter two ships' keel-laying do appear in the oldest version of the article, so the dates do come from somewhere. It's a shame the person's account has been inactive since 2008, otherwise we could ask them where those dates came from.

Glad you mentioned Ersatz Friedrich Carl because that was another thing I wanted to talk about. The article on the Mackensen class mentions that Fürst Bismarck was the possible name for the fourth ship, however, the table in this list makes it sound like the ship was definately going to be called that. I was thinking we should change it to Ersatz Friedrich Carl with an annotation letting readers know that it was possibly going to be called Fürst Bismarck.

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. It's best to make sure this list is up to snuff, especially as it's a featured list. I do apologise if it feels that I've not contributed enough to improving the list, and that I've just been telling you to do stuff. If you want I can implement the change I mentioned regarding the Fürst Bismarck. Earle Bartibus Huxley (talk) 23:16, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Hildebrand is sort of oddly organized; each ship is covered individually, and usually the chapter on the lead ship has additional details about the class or design history (which is why the one on Mackensen has some details on the Ersatz Yorcks, since they were originally members of the class - I wonder if there was a bit of "right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing" going on, since there is a chapter on Graf Spee, but not on Prinz Eitel Friedrich or Ersatz Friedrich Carl - in other words, I wonder if they left those two out of the Mackensen chapter because they were planning on doing chapters for them, but then they didn't make it into those volumes).

The chapter on SMS Fürst Bismarck (the earlier armored cruiser) notes that "There was no actual replacement for the cruiser, but there was a successor with the same name. This was the Ersatz Friedrich Carl, for which the name Fürst Bismarck was planned." (vol. 3, p. 164).

This was the first list I ever wrote, so in many ways it's still sort of a prototype. And there are also a number of sources that either have been published since I wrote it, or I didn't have access to at the time (Hildebrand most obviously), which applies to most of the battlecruiser articles themselves, actually. SMS Von der Tann is in pretty good shape, but still I still haven't gone through Staff's 2014 book to see what needs to be added. There's never enough time, is there? And no worries at all - I'm the one who has the sources ;) Parsecboy (talk) 10:35, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah, so the fourth ship was indeed going to be named Fürst Bismarck that's good to know.

Hmmm, that does seem unusual. Is there any other instance like that in the book or is it just limited to the latter two Mackensens? Earle Bartibus Huxley (talk) 22:18, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't know for certain, sine I'm still very slowly working my way through the light cruisers (am currently in the middle of rewriting SMS Augsburg), but I imagine the unfinished Cöln-class cruisers are similar. I do know that Sachsen and Württemberg got their own chapters, though. Parsecboy (talk) 09:14, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The only reason I can think of is because Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Fürst Bismarck didn't get that far in to construction (both were estimated to be about two years away from completion) and so there wasn't that much to talk about other than repeating information that was already discussed in the Mackensen and Graf Spee chapters. But even if that was the case I don't think that necessarily prevents their inclusion; I mean they could've merged the two ships into a single chapter. Earle Bartibus Huxley (talk) 22:39, 14 June 2024 (UTC)