Built and commissioned in the early 1930s, the Admiral Scheer was the second of three Deutschland class "Pocket Battleships built for the German Navy in the later years of the Weimar Republic. Armed with 6 11inch cannons in 2 triple turrets, the Deutschland class was designed to "outgun everything it can catch, and outrun everything it can't kill". This philosophy resulted in the ships being neither heavy cruisers (with their guns and armor outsizing even the largest heavy cruisers of the time) nor battlecruisers (being far too small). This gave the world the rather interesting trio of ships that served Germany for over a decade before the end of the war.

  Before WW2, Admiral Scheer participated in the non-intervention patrols around Spain, alongside her sisterships, Admiral Graf Spee and Deutschland (later renamed Lutzow). Although officially neutral, the Admiral Scheer often escorted Nationalist cargo ships, while searching and recording Republican ones. This would result in the bombing of the ship by Republican aircraft off the coast of Ibiza, and resulted in the first use of the 11inch cannons against targets in combat conditions; as Admiral Scheer mounted a reprisal bombardment of Almeria in response.

  At the outbreak of WW2, Admiral Scheer was tasked with commerce raiding in the North Atlantic, with great success, sinking over 117,000 tonnes of shipping to become the most successful axis commerce raider of the war. After this sortie, Scheer spent the remainder of the war in Norway and the Baltic, with little success until it was sunk by RAF Bombers in Kiel in 1945. While she was mostly scrapped, some remains of the ship exist underneath a quay in the port city.

  Admiral Scheer has been built to represent the superstructure modification that the ship received prior to commerce raiding in 1940. The superstructure was lightened, AA guns added, and colored the turrets red for identification by Luftwaffe aircraft. Enjoy!