SMS was one of the s, the first four dreadnoughts built for the Imperial German Navy. was laid down at AG Weser in Bremen on 12 August 1907, launched nearly a year later on 1 July 1908, and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 16 November 1909. The ship was equipped with a main battery of twelve guns in six twin turrets in an unusual hexagonal arrangement.
The ship served with her sister ships for the majority of World War I, seeing extensive service in the North Sea, where she took part in several fleet sorties. These culminated in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, where was heavily engaged in night-fighting against British light forces. led the German line for much of the evening and into the following day, until the fleet reached Wilhelmshaven. On another fleet advance in August 1916, the ship was damaged by a torpedo from a British submarine.
also conducted several deployments to the Baltic Sea against the Imperial Russian Navy. The first of these was during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, where supported a German naval assault on the gulf. was sent back to the Baltic in 1918 to support the White Finns in the Finnish Civil War. The ship remained in Germany while the majority of the fleet was interned in Scapa Flow after the end of the war. In 1919, following the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow, was ceded to the Allies as a replacement for the ships that had been sunk. She was then sent to ship-breakers in England, and broken up for scrap by 1924.
Design
Design work on the class began in late 1903 in the context of the Anglo-German naval arms race; at the time, battleships of foreign navies had begun to carry increasingly heavy secondary batteries, including Italian and American ships with guns and British ships with guns, outclassing the previous German battleships of the with their secondaries. German designers initially considered ships equipped with secondary guns, but erroneous reports in early 1904 that the British s would be equipped with a secondary battery of as many as ten guns prompted them to consider an even more powerful ship armed with an all-big-gun armament consisting of eight guns. This initial version was approved in March 1905, but further developments were incorporated over the course of the year, in part due to lessons learned during the on-going Russo-Japanese War. By January 1906, the design was refined into a larger vessel with twelve of the guns, by which time Britain had begun work on the all-big-gun battleship .
Characteristics
was long, wide, and had a draft of . She displaced with a standard load, and fully laden. She had a flush deck and a ram bow, a common feature for warships of the period. had a fairly small superstructure, consisting primarily of forward and aft conning towers. She was fitted with a pair of pole masts for signaling and observation purposes. The ship had a crew of 40 officers and 968 enlisted men.
The ship design retained 3-shaft triple expansion engines instead of the more advanced turbine engines. Steam was provided to the engines by twelve coal-fired water-tube boilers, with the addition in 1915 of supplementary oil firing. The boilers were vented through two funnels. Her propulsion system was rated at and provided a top speed of . She had a cruising radius of at a speed of .
carried a main battery of twelve SK L/45 guns in six gun turrets arranged in an unusual hexagonal configuration. One was placed forward, another toward the stern, and the remaining four were placed on the wings, two per broadside. Her secondary armament consisted of twelve SK L/45 guns, mounted in casemates located amidships. Close-range defense against torpedo boats was provided by a tertiary battery of sixteen SK L/45 guns, which were also mounted in casemates. The ship was also armed with six submerged torpedo tubes. One tube was mounted in the bow, another in the stern, and two on each broadside, on either end of the torpedo bulkhead.
The ship's hull was protected by heavy armor plate consisting of Krupp cemented steel. The belt armor along the sides of the hull was thick in the central portion, tapering down to at the bow. The belt was reinforced by an armored deck that angled downward at the sides to connect to the bottom edge of the belt. The deck was on the flat portion, while the sloped sides increased in thickness to . s main battery turrets had 28 cm of Krupp steel on their faces. Her forward conning tower had of armor plate on the sides, while the aft tower received only on the sides.
Service history
The German Imperial Navy () ordered under the provisional name as a replacement for , the lead ship of the elderly s. The Reichstag secretly approved and provided funds for and at the end of March 1906, but construction on was delayed while arms and armor were procured. She was laid down on 12 August 1907 at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen. As with her sister , construction proceeded swiftly and secretly; detachments of soldiers guarded both the shipyard and the major contractors who supplied building materials, such as Krupp. The ship was launched on 1 July 1908, and Eberhard von der Recke von der Horst, the (supreme president) of the ship's namesake province, gave a speech at the ceremony. Westfalen then underwent an initial fitting-out, and then in mid-September 1909 was transferred to Kiel by a crew composed of dockyard workers for a final fitting-out. However, the water level in the Weser River was low at this time of year, so six pontoons had to be attached to the ship to reduce her draft. Even so, it took two attempts before the ship cleared the river. The ship could not have been completed at AG Weser, as even at normal water levels, the ship would not have been able to clear the river at her completed displacement.
On 16 October 1909, before she was commissioned into the fleet, along with her sister participated in a ceremony for the opening of the new third entrance in the Wilhelmshaven Naval Dockyard. Westfalen at that time still had her dockyard crew, and had still not completed fitting out. Exactly one month later, was commissioned for sea trials, which were interrupted only by fleet training exercises in February 1910. The ship's first commander was (KzS—Captain at Sea) Friedrich Gädeke. At the completion of the trials on 3 May, was added to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, replacing the old battleship . Two days later, she became the squadron flagship, replacing the pre-dreadnought battleship . At that time, the squadron was commanded by (Rear Admiral) Hugo von Pohl. In May, the fleet conducted training maneuvers in the Kattegat. These were in accordance with Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff's strategy, which envisioned drawing the Royal Navy into the narrow waters there. The annual summer cruise was to Norway, and was followed by fleet training, during which another fleet review was held in Danzig on 29 August. KzS Paul Behncke replaced Gädeke after the review in September. A training cruise into the Baltic followed at the end of the year.
In March 1911, the fleet conducted exercises in the Skagerrak and Kattegat. and the rest of the fleet received British and American naval squadrons at Kiel in June and July. The year's autumn maneuvers were confined to the Baltic and the Kattegat. Another fleet review was held afterward, during the exercises for a visiting Austro-Hungarian delegation that included Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Admiral Rudolf Montecuccoli. In October, KzS Wilhelm Starke relieved Behncke as the ship's captain. KzS Hugo Kraft took command of the ship in April 1912. On 29 April, the new battleship joined I Squadron, replacing Westfalen as the squadron flagship, which then served as the flagship for the deputy commander of the squadron. In mid-1912, due to the Agadir Crisis, the summer cruise was confined to the Baltic, to avoid exposing the fleet during the period of heightened tension with Britain and France. A training cruise in the Baltic took place late in the year. The training program for 1913 proceeded in much the same pattern as in previous years. In October, KzS Johannes Redlich replaced Kraft as the ship's captain. The navy had intended to transfer the ship to II Battle Squadron in late 1914 to modernize that unit, but this plan was discarded after the outbreak of World War I in July.
World War I participated in most of the fleet advances into the North Sea throughout the war. The first operation was conducted primarily by Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers; the ships bombarded the English coastal towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby on 15–16 December 1914. A German battlefleet of 12 dreadnoughts, including , her three sisters and eight pre-dreadnoughts sailed in support of the battlecruisers. On the evening of 15 December, they came to within of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. However, skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced the German fleet commander, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, that the entire Grand Fleet was deployed before him. Under orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II, Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned the battlefleet back towards Germany.
next took part in the fleet advance on 24 January 1915 to support I Scouting Group after it was ambushed by the British 1st and 2nd Battlecruiser Squadrons during the Battle of Dogger Bank, though she again saw no action, as the battle had ended before the High Seas Fleet arrived late in the afternoon. Following the loss of the armored cruiser at the Battle of Dogger Bank, the Kaiser removed Ingenohl from his post on 2 February. Now-Admiral Pohl replaced him as commander of the fleet. In late March, went into drydock for periodic maintenance. Pohl conducted a series of fleet advances in 1915 in which took part. On 21–22 April, the High Seas Fleet advanced towards the Dogger Bank, though again failed to meet any British forces. The fleet next went to sea on 29–30 May, advancing as far as Schiermonnikoog before being forced to turn back by inclement weather. On 10 August, the fleet steamed to the north of Helgoland to cover the return of the auxiliary cruiser .
Battle of the Gulf of Riga
In August 1915, the German fleet attempted to clear the Russian-held Gulf of Riga in order to assist the German army, which was planning an assault on Riga itself. To do so, the German planners intended to drive off or destroy the Russian naval forces in the Gulf, which included the pre-dreadnought battleship and a number of smaller gunboats and destroyers. The German battlefleet was accompanied by several mine-warfare vessels, tasked first with clearing Russian minefields and then laying a series of their own minefields in the northern entrance to the Gulf to prevent Russian naval reinforcements from reaching the area. The assembled German fleet included and her three sister ships, the four s, the battlecruisers , , and , and several pre-dreadnoughts. The force operated under the command of Hipper, who had by now been promoted to vice admiral. The eight battleships were to provide cover for the forces engaging the Russian flotilla. The first attempt on 8 August was broken off, as it took too long to clear the Russian minefields.