The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sailed from Germany, operated across the North Atlantic, sank or captured 22 Allied merchant vessels, and finished their mission by docking in occupied France.

Its main goal was for the battleships to overwhelm the escort of one of the convoys transporting supplies to the United Kingdom and then sink large numbers of merchant ships.

It was the last victory achieved by German warships against merchant shipping in the North Atlantic, with the sortie made by the battleship Bismarck in May 1941 ending in defeat.

He believed that the Imperial German Navy's decision to not use its battleships aggressively during World War I was a mistake, and wanted to avoid repeating this perceived error.

[3][4] The Royal Navy anticipated Germany's intentions, and adopted plans of its own to institute convoys to protect merchant shipping and deploy cruisers to detect attempts by German warships to break out into the Atlantic Ocean.

[5] These included initiating cruiser patrols of the waters between Greenland and Scotland through which German raiders would have to pass to enter the Atlantic following the outbreak of war.

[6] The Home Fleet, the main British battle force in the North Atlantic, was responsible for locating and intercepting German warships in the area.

[13] Both battleships, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and two destroyers, sortied to attack convoys travelling between the Shetland Islands and Norway on 18 February 1940.

They formed the most powerful element of the battle group under Vice Admiral Günther Lütjens that served as a covering force to protect the rest of the German invasion fleet from counter-attacks by the Royal Navy.

The plans for the operation also called for Admiral Hipper to sortie from Brest and attack the convoy routes between Gibraltar, Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom.

[43] The main body of the Home Fleet departed its base at Scapa Flow at midnight on 25 January bound for a position 120 miles (190 km) south of Iceland.

He decided to proceed directly to the south of Iceland though after receiving a weather forecast which predicted snow storms in that area; these conditions would hide the battleships from the British.

[49] After refuelling from Adria in the Arctic Ocean well to the north-east of Jan Mayen island, Lütjens attempted to enter the Atlantic through the Denmark Strait north of Iceland.

[47][54] Before being instructed to break off, Scharnhorst's commanding officer, Captain Kurt-Caesar Hoffmann, brought his ship within 12 miles (19 km) of the convoy in an attempt to draw Ramillies away so that Gneisenau could make a separate attack on the merchant vessels.

[56] On the morning of 9 February Navy Group West informed Lütjens that intercepted British radio messages indicated that his ships had been sighted the previous day.

Shortly after dawn on 22 February Gneisenau found herself cornered between three merchant ships sailing west from a recently dispersed convoy 500 miles (800 km) east of Newfoundland.

Accordingly, he decided to transfer his operations to the eastern Atlantic and attack the SL convoys that travelled between Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom.

Tovey put to sea on Nelson which, accompanied by the cruiser HMS Nigeria and two destroyers, took up a position south of Iceland to intercept any raiders that were attempting to return to Germany.

[79] The German Naval Staff directed him to then return his ships to Brest in France so they could prepare to join a raid into the Atlantic that the battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen were scheduled to make in April.

[67] At 5:30 pm on 20 March a reconnaissance aircraft flying from Ark Royal spotted the German battleships sailing north-east approximately 600 miles (970 km) to the north-west of Cape Finisterre in Spain.

Reconnaissance aircraft operating from Ark Royal searched for the battleships during the night of 20/21 March and the next morning, but were unable to find them again due to bad weather.

[87][88] The crew of a Coastal Command Lockheed Hudson detected the German battleships by radar when they were within 200 miles (320 km) of the French coast on the evening of 21 March.

[91][92] The German Naval Staff and Raeder believed that the success of Operation Berlin and the other raids conducted by surface vessels during 1940 and early 1941 demonstrated that further such attacks remained viable.

[95] A key lesson was the need to strengthen patrols of the seas to the north and south of Iceland to detect German raiders as they attempted to enter the Atlantic.

[67] Scharnhorst required repairs to her boilers which rendered her unable to participate in Operation Rheinübung, the raid into the Atlantic undertaken by Bismarck and Prinz Eugen during May.

[103] After the repairs to her boilers were completed, Scharnhorst was transferred to La Pallice on 21 July as it was further from the British bomber bases and believed to be at less risk of air attacks.

[104] In line with a decision made by Hitler in September 1941 to concentrate the Kriegsmarine's surface warships in Norway, the Scharnhorst-class battleships were ordered to return to Germany via the English Channel.

[109] Writing in 1954, Stephen Roskill the British official historian stated that Operation Berlin "had been skilfully planned, well co-ordinated with the movements of other raiders and successfully sustained by the supply ships sent out for that purpose" and that the Germans were right to be pleased with the results.

[110] The British naval historian Richard Woodman judged in 2004 that Operation Berlin did not have significant strategic implications as Lütjens was unable to cripple Allied shipping in the North Atlantic and attacked only one eastbound HX convoy.

He concluded that the strategy of sending surface raiders into the Atlantic was faulty as the resources required to build and crew these ships would have produced better results if they had been allocated to the submarine force.