GROßE KRUEZER

Laid down in 1912, SMS Derfflinger was a complementary design to the battleship SMS König. Both mounted their main battery in twin turrets on the centerline and both classes were outfitted with a partially oil-fired boiler arrangement. Derfflinger was the first German capital ship to have a flush deck design, while the lack of secondary casements mounts in the hull itself presaged the turn naval design would take in the 1930's.

SMS Derfflinger and her newly commissioned sister-ship, SMS Lützow, were active at Jutland, and between them they are credited with sinking and/or assisting in the sinking of HMS Invincible and HMS Queen Mary. Lützow took over 24 hits, including four 15" shells, but still made it all the way back to the entrance of the Kiel Canal only to find that, with 7,500 tons of water in her she could not get over the sandbar at the entrance to the estuary, so she was abandoned and sunk by an escorting torpedo boat, G38. Derfflinger, with 17 heavy and 4 medium hits plus 3,000 tons of water aboard, limped home while trying not to foul her propellers on the loosened anti-torpedo nets trailing along her side.

Originally fitted with straight pole masts, during repairs following Jutland Derfflinger (and Hindenburg while whe was being built) was fitted with a tripod mast in place of her foremast, and had several 8.8cm guns removed. Also, as a result of the Jutland experience, anti-torpedo nets were removed from all combatants.

Delayed by other construction priorities and built to a modified Derfflinger design, SMS Hindenburg commissioned too late to see Jutland. She was the fastest of the three, coming in at 26.6 knots (combat load), but never saw combat. She holds two distinctions:
1) Last battlecruiser completed for the Imperial German Navy
2) Last ship to sink during the Grand Scuttle at Scapa Flow.

Derfflinger and Hindenburg survived the war to be interned at Scapa Flow, where they both were scuttled on June 21, 1919. Though they were the last battlecruisers completed by the German navy, they were not the last built - that claim belongs to the Mackensen class.