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Considering the setting in which the fight took place, precision in gauging the position of the sinking is no surprise. The British never saw the ship go down anyway. The "mystery" is more a hook for marketing than any great anomaly.
If there's a mystery about Scharnhorst, it's why anyone would build such a lousy battleship.

Scharnhorst had pretty good internal subdivision and good speed (when her machinery was working). The ballistics of her guns were okay. But apart from that, there's little to compliment.
In terms of mobility, she was handicapped by that temperamental machinery, by her poor performance as a seaboat, and by her mediocre range.
In terms of offense, her main guns were truly anemic by battleship standards, and they did not necessarily work at any given moment, either for reasons of her poor seakeeping or because her main-charge canisters could cause jams if dented. (I don't know any other German ship that had this problem, not even the 11.1in-armed Deutschlands.) The fire control was WAY overdesigned, so snarled in complexity that they had to yank 20 kilometers of wiring out of the ship to get the system to work.
Defensively, the armor scheme was a mess. The armor deck was far too thin, and it didn't even have the benefit of an upper belt as in Bismarck. The inability of the designers to squeeze the boilers into the allotted space meant that they had to include a little "hump" in the armor deck, a lovely little shell trap that led directly to Scharnhorst's loss. Her torpedo defense system was primitive (only the Germans failed to progress beyond their WWI system), and faulty joints made it even worse.
Serious flaws marred every aspect of the design. She sure was pretty, though.

Distortion? Hm, let's look at who is distorting the facts.
"Really funny, why to rate S's guns by Battleship standards, when she was a Battlecruiser?" Fortunately, you now have the opportunity to learn something, if you want. Scharnhorst was a battleship. Don't agree? Argue with the Germans, not with me. They're the ones who officially rated her as a battleship.
"Interesting way to comment on the fact that Scharhorst was the most heavily armored Battlecruiser of WW2 (save the Hood)." Since we now know that Scharnhorst was a battleship, this comment now emerges as splendid comic relief.
"It's quite clear that Tiornu failed to understand German design philosophy behind their protective scheme, which was built around a layered design, like many modern ships of the time, ie. the Italian Vittorio Veneto BBs." Go ahead, BI, list those "many" modern ships. Apart from the German ships, the Vittorio Venetos were the only ones to make extensive use of anything that could be mistaken for an incremental system; and in their case, the Italians still made sure to get a 162mm deck into the scheme. What was Scharnhorst's deck thickness--105mm? Am I being unfair with my comparison to a full-sized battleship? All right, the closest competition would be the Dunkerque which, though she was 4000 tons smaller than Scharnhorst, had 115mm on the thinnest portion of her armored deck. Over her machinery Scharnhorst had 80mm, just like the French 10,000-ton cruiser Algerie. And the German armor deck could be hit directly after passing through nothing more substantial than the outer hull plating. That's your system of layers, BI.
"Funny, this mediocre range apperantly did one of the most successful anti-merchantman sortie of naval history." Scharnhorst had a range similar to that of a US cruiser. Cruisers were, after all, the traditional commerce raiders. So once again, we have a 31,000-ton ship that rivals the capabilities of a 10,000-ton ship. Very impressive.
"And this overdesigned, completely snarled and bad in every respect fire control enabled the Scharnhorst to score the longest hit ever scored in naval battles from a range of around 25 000 yards, against British carrier Glorious." I know reading comprehension isn't one of your strongsuits, so I'll repeat the fact that the Germans yanked 20km of cabling out of the ship in order to fix the FC system. They didn't leave her crippled. Who said the fire control was in every way bad? You did.
"Tiornu's way to comment on that she was the FASTEST when built..." Didn't I just say she had good speed? Why complain about that? The only battleship that could match her was probably Dunkerque, that is, the only other modern battleship design in service by the war's start.
"I think the thing that led to the Scharnhorst loss was more like it was sorrounded by a squadron of British ships...." Yes, I think we can agree that she probably would not have sunk if she had not been in a fight. The fact is that she would have escaped if not for the loss of speed caused by the hit to her boilers. Do you dispute this? Do you dispute that the boiler hump was a flaw? Do you dispute that it's a bad idea to wager your 31,000-ton battleship on the virtues of a vertical plate just 80mm thick? Scharnhorst was struck by about thirteen heavy shells, at least three of which penetrated into her vitals. Given the range at which the battle took place, this was about as bad a performance as an armor scheme could give. Scharnhorst was the only modern BB design on earth that would have had its armor deck defeated at the range where she suffered her boiler hit.
"That primitive torpedo defense system swallowed more than ten British torpedoes before the ship went down. Even most Battleships went down after taking 2-3 torps." Five torpedo hits are confirmed on Schanhorst. The maximum serious claims would be eleven. The probable number is about eight. What does that prove? That overkill is a joy to the soul? USS Hornet "swallowed" sixteen torpedoes before she went down, but does anyone think that provides a useful gauge to her torpedo resistance? Check the Germans' own assessment of Scharnhorst's bulkhead joinery. Look at the extreme flooding the Scharnhorsts suffered after individual hits.
"I think the only serious flaws we have here is in your heavily biased, decidedly anti-KM standpoint, which you want to support by distorting the facts." Distortion. Every single comment you made was laced with deceit. Were you purposely lying, or do you simply not know what you're talking about? A little of both, right?

Since Scharnhorst was a battleship, how can we judge her as anything else? As for the world's suckiest ships, yes, Alaska certainly deserves a place. If she'd had some resistance to torpedoes, she might not have been so bad; but she didn't, so she was.
Scharnhorst and Warspite are in a tie for the longest hit.

That's why I prize your presence so highly, BI. I watch you spatter yourself against a brick wall, then get up and tell the wall it got the worst of it.
So what you're saying now is that you are right about Scharnhorst's status and the folks who built her are wrong. The fact that Scharnhorst was designed specifically to counter an enemy battleship, Dunkerque, is perfect indication that Scharnhorst was a battlecruiser, right? Check the ship's design history. Raeder lobbied for such a ship, and a Dunkerque-dueler was officially okayed on 20 July 1934. Do you have any documentation showing that post-Jutland jitters caused an elimination of the BC ranking in the German Navy? I'd hate to think it was just some fantasy that came sloughing out from her brainpan.
It's occurred to me that maybe you could have your mom help you read my posts. That way you could avoid your confusion over what I said about Scharnhorst's deck protection. I wrote most explicitly that Scharnhorst's armor deck could be hit by shells that had previously hit nothing more substantial than the outer hull plating. The splitting of deck protection between two decks allows both decks to act against bombs, though at reduced efficicency; but when it comes to defeating shells, the upper layer fails to cover all trajectories, and it can actually endanger the lower deck. It will deflect shells downward and make the lower deck more likely to be hit. Once deflected downward, the shell has a more advantageous angle for defeating the lower deck. I'd refer you to ADM1/9226 which shows the official RN trials with split decks, but I'm sure I've already done that.
Dunkerque's range was about 12,000nm at 20 knots. Kongo had 10,000nm at 18 knots. Scharnhorst was nothing special.
But are you sure you want to talk about range? Remember what happened last time you got started?

Dougermouse, don't mind me and BI. All that back-and-forth is recreational.
If you subject Scharnhorst to the distinctions between BB and BC, you come up with the fact that she was a small, fast battleship. By the end of WWI, the distinguishing features of a BC were well established: fast and big, lightly armed, lightly armored. With Hood, we see a move to synthesize capital ship qualities into what became known as the fast battleship, which is exactly what Scharnhorst was. Her alleged BC qualities are tied to her small size rather than the skewing of design priorities, and keep in mind that small size is antithetical to the definition of a battlecruiser. Without accepting the French all-forward compromise, all the capital ship designs of this weight class and vintage carried guns in the 11-12in range. Scharnhorst was substandard in weaponry but not freakishly weak. The only other feature that might make Scharnhorst seem like a battlecruiser is her speed which, as I already pointed out, was about the same as the speed of the only other fast battleship completed by 1938. By 1940, we have several more 30-knot battleships--Bismarck, Vittorio Veneto, Richelieu. And when we look at Scharnhorst, we see she is armored on a battleship scale (a belt thicker than Bismarck's despite the size difference).
So there's nothing to tie Scharnhorst to the BC label. If you want to see what the Germans had in mind for a 31,000-ton battlecruiser--and no, the Germans were not scared off the term "battlecruiser" by Jutland--check out the "O" class, which indeed shows the design priorities associated with the BC: lots of speed and little armor.

Well, Japan had the non plus ultra with Yamato. It's hard to argue with 64,000 tons.
The Americans probably spent more $$$ per ton than anyone else. Iowa was exceeded in size only by Yamato, she came only after two previous treaty classes gave the designers some good practice, and she entered service pretty late in the game. I tend to rate her as the best BB design to see service.
For reasons I can't explain, France produced two superb BB designs. Considering how unimpressive previous French BB generations had been, this turn-around seems especially admirable.
The British suffered from their own over-conservatism and the failure to pursue modern propulsion and electric systems. They at least had the British tradition of quality armor.
The Italians had some innovative ideas. With regard to armor, they were ahead of the curve; with torpedo defenses, they went wildly off track. For my tastes, their ships were too Mediterranean-specific, but hey, they were Italian after all.