took part in the Battle of the Barents Sea in December 1942, a failed attempt to destroy a convoy. Both ships were damaged in the course of their deployment to Norway and eventually returned to Germany for repairs. They ended their careers bombarding advancing Soviet forces on the Eastern Front; both ships were destroyed by British bombers in the final weeks of the war. Lützow was raised and sunk as a target by the Soviet Navy, and Admiral Scheer was partially broken up in situ, with the remainder of the hulk buried beneath rubble. Development Following Germany's defeat in World War I, the size of the German Navy, renamed the Reichsmarine, was limited by the Treaty of Versailles. The Navy was permitted a force of six pre-dreadnought battleships and six light cruisers; the ships could not be replaced until they were twenty years old. To replace the battleships, new vessels were to displace at most ; Germany's potential rivals were at this time limited to building vessels of by the Washington Naval Treaty and subsequent agreements. The gun caliber of any new ship was not regulated by the Treaty itself, though the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control (NIACC) created by the Treaty did have authority to regulate the armament of all new warships. The Allies assumed that with these limitations, only coastal defense ships similar to those operated by the Scandinavian navies could be built. The Reichsmarines oldest battleship, , was laid down in 1902 and could therefore be replaced legally in 1922. Design studies were considered starting in 1920, with two basic options: the Navy could build a heavily armored, slow, and small warship similar to a monitor, or a large, fast, and lightly armored vessel similar to a cruiser. Actual design work on the new type of armored ship began in 1923, but the German economy collapsed in 1924, forcing a temporary halt to the work. Admiral Hans Zenker, the commander in chief of the Reichsmarine, pushed hard for the navy to resume design work, and in 1925 three new proposals were drafted. In addition to two sketches prepared in 1923, this totaled five different designs. Of the first two designs, "I/10" was a cruiser armed with eight guns while "II/10" was a , heavily armored ship armed with four guns. The three designs prepared in 1925—"II/30", "IV/30", and "V/30"—were armed with six guns with varying levels of