Battle of the Falkland Islands

Armoured cruiser SMS Scharnhorst suffers heavy damage during the Battle of the Falkland Islands.

History:
After winning the Battle of Coronel near Chile and sinking two British armored cruisers, the German East Asia Squadron under command of Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee was commanded to return back to Germany. Spee led his squadron of two armoured cruisers: SMS Scharnhorst (his flagship) and SMS Gneisenau and three light cruisers: SMS Nürnberg, SMS Leipzig and SMS Dresden through the Cape Horn to the Atlantic Ocean. Once there he planned to raid the Falkland Islands before continuing to the north.

But in the Falklands he faced a newly arrived British squadron of 2 battle cruisers, 3 armoured cruisers and 2 light cruisers and one grounded pre-dreadnough battleship. Realizing that his squadron was outnumbered and baddly outgunned Spee commanded his ships turn and tried to flee to the open seas.
Unfortunately for him British were soon able to pursuit and at 13:00 the battle cruisers have catched up and were within firing distance. Realizing that he could not hope to outrun the faster British ships, Spee decided to engage them with his armoured cruisers alone, and so give his light cruisers a chance to escape. Battle raged for hours but by 16:04 Scharnhorst was baddly damaged, her funnels flattened, fires all over the ship and ship listing heavily. She sank at 16:17. Gneisenau continued to fire and evade until 17:15 which time her ammunition had gone and her crew allowed her to sink, going down at 18:02. Spee had buyed time for his light cruisers but eventually both Nürnberg and Leipzig were catched up. Nürnberg rolled over and sank at 19:27 and Leipzig at 21:23. Only SMS Dresden was able to escape.

1,871 german sailors were killed including Admiral Spee and both of his sons who served in his squadron.