Scharnhorst was laid down at the Kriegsmarinewerft dockyard in Wilhelmshaven on June 15, 1935, and launched on October 3, 1936. Completed in January 1939, she was classified alternately as a battleship and a battlecruiser -- a distinction that reflected the compromises in her design. Her main battery consisted of nine 28-centimeter guns in three triple turrets, lighter than the 38-centimeter guns originally planned but never installed. What she lacked in firepower she compensated for in speed, capable of over 31 knots, making her one of the fastest capital ships afloat. Paired with her sister ship Gneisenau, Scharnhorst formed a fast, aggressive striking force that could outrun what it could not outfight, and outfight most of what it could not outrun.

Scharnhorst's war began in November 1939, when she sank the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi in a brief, violent engagement. The following spring, during Operation Weserubung -- the invasion of Norway -- Scharnhorst and Gneisenau engaged the British battlecruiser Renown and later sank the aircraft carrier Glorious along with her escort destroyers Acasta and Ardent. In that fight, Scharnhorst achieved one of the longest-range naval gunfire hits in history. Operation Berlin in early 1941 sent the pair raiding into the Atlantic, where they sank or captured 22 merchant vessels totaling over 115,000 tons. But by early 1942, both ships were bottled up in Brest, France, under relentless British bombing. The solution was audacious: Operation Cerberus, the Channel Dash of February 1942, in which Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen steamed straight up the English Channel in daylight, reaching German ports despite frantic British air and naval attacks. It was a tactical triumph and a strategic humiliation for Britain.

By early 1943, Scharnhorst had been transferred to northern Norway, where her presence alone threatened the Allied convoys carrying supplies to the Soviet Union. On Christmas Day 1943, she sailed from Altenfjord under Rear Admiral Bey's command to intercept Convoy JW 55B. What Bey did not know was that the British had anticipated the sortie. Vice Admiral Bruce Fraser had positioned his battleship Duke of York and supporting forces precisely to trap Scharnhorst between the convoy's cruiser escort and his own heavy guns. Stormy weather grounded all Luftwaffe reconnaissance, and Bey, unable to locate the convoy, made the fateful decision to detach his five destroyers to widen the search. Scharnhorst was now alone. On the morning of December 26, Burnett's cruisers found her first, and an 8-inch shell destroyed her forward radar, leaving the battleship effectively blind in the Arctic darkness.

Scharnhorst's speed kept her alive through the morning and into the afternoon, but at 16:48, star shells from Belfast illuminated the German ship for Duke of York's gunners. The first salvo hit, disabling Scharnhorst's forward turrets. For the next three hours, she fought while running south, trading fire with Duke of York, cruisers Belfast and Norfolk, and a ring of destroyers. At 17:24, Bey signaled Germany: "Am surrounded by heavy units." At 18:20, a shell from Duke of York pierced her lower armor deck and destroyed a boiler room. Her speed collapsed. At 18:25, Bey sent his final message: "We will fight on until the last shell is fired." Torpedo attacks from destroyers Savage, Saumarez, Scorpion, and the Norwegian Stord sealed her fate. Scharnhorst capsized and sank at 19:45. Admiral Fraser, in tribute to his adversary, told his officers that evening: "I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today."