Sir,—It is easy to see how Pat Poland (HI 32.5, Sept./Oct. 2024, ‘When Cork’s lord mayor incurred the wrath of Nazi Germany’) mistook SMS Schleswig Holstein (and thus her sister, Schlesien,pictured on p. 41) for a pocket battleship. She belonged to the Deutschland class of pre-dreadnought battleships launched before the First World War. The Deutschland was scrapped in 1920–2. The so-called ‘pocket battleships’ were constructed in the late 1920s and early ’30s to conform with Versailles Treaty limitations and included the Admiral Graf Spee and the Admiral Scheer.—Yours etc.,
RODNEY BRUNT
Duncannon, Co. Wexford