SS Scharnhorst (1934)

Scharnhorst was a Norddeutscher Lloyd ocean liner built by Deschimag at Bremen, launched on 14 December 1934 and completed in 1935. She was the first large passenger liner built in Germany under the Third Reich and one of three sisters on the express Far Eastern service from Bremen to Yokohama and Shanghai, alongside Gneisenau, also built by Deschimag, and Potsdam, built by Blohm and Voss. She used turbo-electric transmission, with steam from high-pressure, high-temperature boilers that the navy wanted to try out before fitting them in new warships. Caught in Japan when war broke out in 1939, she was sold to the Japanese government in 1942 and converted into the escort carrier Shinyo, which the American submarine USS Spadefish sank in the Yellow Sea on 17 November 1944.