Pocket battleship

Pocket battleship is the British Royal Navy description for a class of warships built by German Reichsmarine in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. They were classified as Panzerschiff ("armoured ship") in German; they were also known as the Deutschland class named after the first ship of this class to be completed. They were smaller than battleships (the displacement was that of a heavy cruiser), but were armed with guns larger than the heavy cruisers of other nations. In fact, the Kriegsmarine reclassified them as heavy cruisers in February 1940. The three ships in the class were launched between 1931 and 1934.

Further reading

• Siegfried Breyer, Gerhard Koop, (translated Edward Force), The German Navy At War 1939–1945: Volume 1 - The Battleships (Schiffer, West Chester, 1989)
• Bernard Ireland, Tony Gibbons, Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century (HarperCollins, New York, 1996) pp. 42-43