In following some of the world’s famous navies I will navies that impacted with realm of naval warfare.

DKM is short of Deutsche KriegsMarine, or Germany War Navy. After World War I the German navy was heavily restricted. They could no longer produce U-boats and their surface ships construction was restricted. The navy was restricted to no more than 15,000 men and a total of 36 ships. Of which none could be larger than 10,000 tons. That is roughly the size of an Arleigh Burke class DDG today.

Even with these restrictions in 1931 construction of the pocket battleship Deutschland began. This ship had a gross tonnage of over 12000 tons. Shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933 naval planner in Germany began to design and build larger capital ships and U-boats.

The DKM is known for its use of U-boats in warfare. Germany has limited access to the Atlantic. Its large ships would have to take a long journey around the British home islands and down the Denmark Straight to reach the open seas of the Atlantic. But once there in the wide open sea they could prove hard to track.

Terms like Wolf Pac, Pocket battleship, and milch cow come from the DKM. So over the next few days we shall look at a few of those.