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O Class battlecruiser / Schlachtkreuzer O

The O Class battlecruisers was a group of three of the Kreuzer P Class panzerschiff modified to receive a 38cm main battery instead of the 28cm guns of their half-sisterships. As a development of the Kreuzer P class ships, they were intended as a replacement for the famous Admiral Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer and Lützow. The ships were part of the Plan Z fleet.

Those ships were planned with the idea of commerce raiding. The main task for this kind of battlecruisers was to engage enemy convoys and destroy transports and cargo ships. Therefore, they got a mixed propulsion system, with diesel engines for long range medium speed cruises and additional turbines for high speed combat action. In contrast to the heavily protected H-Class battleships, these battlecruisers had the armor protection of only a cruiser. So it is very doubtful that one of these ships would have been able to attack a good protected allied convoy.

The design studies for the three battlecruisers of the O-class (Schlachtkreuzer O, Schlachtkreuzer P, Schlachtkreuzer Q ) were started simultaneous with those of the new Panzerschiff design (Kreuzer P) in 1937. In 1939 it was decided to replace three of the Deutschland class with the same number of these new battlecruisers. Construction orders were given to Deutsche Werke, Kiel, the Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven and the Germaniawerft in Kiel in the same year, but none of the ships were laid down.