H-class battleship

The H class was a series of battleship designs prepared for the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany under Plan Z in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The first variant, the H-39, called for six ships that were essentially enlarged Bismarck-class battleships with 40.6 centimetre guns and diesel propulsion, and later variants grew to eight 42 centimetre guns, then 48 centimetre guns and finally 50.8 centimetre guns. Two keels were laid in 1939, the first at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg and the second, for the ship called J, at the Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau yard in Bremen on 1 September 1939. The outbreak of war stopped the work, the steel stayed on the slipways until November 1941 when it was ordered scrapped, and no ship of any variant was ever completed.