Due to the weight increases during her building, she turned out to be a poor sea-boat and she was rebuilt between June and August 1939. This was when she got her beautiful 'Atlantic bow'. Although this did improve her seaworthiness, she remained a poor sabot and the problem was later aggravated as more flak and torpedo tubes were added to her. During the first years of the war Scharnhorst and her sister Gneisenau were very active, making several sorties and going to the shipyards to repair battle-damage in between. During one they had a brief inconclusive encounter with HMS Renown. In this battle the effectiveness of their fire was hampered by their poor seagoing qualities. In a later sortie they sunk HMS Glorious and her escorting destroyers HMS Ardent and HMS Accost. Their most successful raid, 'Operation Berlin', took place between February 4th and March 22nd during which they sunk twenty-one Allied vessels. British battleships were sighted on several occasions, but the Germans avoided battle and used their superior speed to slip away. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau then spent the next eleven months in Brest and La Pallice during which they were repeatedly hit by British bombers.
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