SMS , the lead ship of her class, was a dreadnought battleship of the German Imperial Navy. s design represented an incremental improvement over the preceding , including an increase in the caliber of the main guns, from 28 cm (11 in) to . Her keel was laid down on 11 November 1908 at the Howaldtswerke shipyards in Kiel. was launched on 25 September 1909 and was commissioned on 23 August 1911.
Like most battleships of the High Seas Fleet, saw limited action against Britain's Royal Navy during World War I. The ship participated in several fruitless sweeps into the North Sea as the covering force for the battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group. She saw some limited duty in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy, including serving as part of a support force during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915. was present at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, though she was located in the center of the German line of battle and not as heavily engaged as the - and ships in the lead. was ceded to Great Britain at the end of the war and broken up for scrap in the early 1920s. Her coat of arms is preserved in the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr in Dresden.
Design
Many senior officers in the German (Imperial Navy) acknowledged that the s, armed with guns, were inferior to their British counterparts that carried guns. They sought to incorporate guns of the latter caliber in the next battleship design, though the significant increase in cost from the pre-dreadnought s to the dreadnought class precluded another major qualitative increase until the 1908 budget year, two years after the first s were ordered. The design staff experimented with a variety of gun turret arrangements, including superfiring layouts like the American , but they ultimately settled on the same hexagonal arrangement of the s.
Characteristics
The ship was long, had a beam of and a draft of , and displaced at full load. had a flush deck and minimal superstructure that consisted primarily of a large, armored conning tower forward and a smaller, secondary conning position further aft. The ship was fitted with a pair of pole masts, which held spotting tops and positions for searchlights. She had a crew of 42 officers and 1,071 enlisted men.
She was powered by three triple-expansion steam engines, which produced a top speed of . Steam was provided by fifteen water-tube boilers, which were vented through three closely spaced funnels placed amidships. stored up to of coal, which allowed her to steam for at a speed of . After 1915 the boilers were modified to burn oil; the ship could carry up to of fuel oil.
was armed with a main battery of twelve SK L/50 guns in six twin gun turrets, with one turret fore, one aft, and two on each flank of the ship. The ship's secondary battery consisted of fourteen SK L/45 guns, all of which were mounted in casemates in the side of the upper deck. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried fourteen SK L/45 guns. After 1914, two of the 8.8 cm guns were removed and replaced by 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns. was also armed with six submerged torpedo tubes; one was in the bow, one in the stern, and two on each broadside.
Her main armored belt was thick in the central citadel, and was composed of Krupp cemented armor (KCA). Her main battery gun turrets were protected by the same thickness of KCA on the sides and faces, as well as the barbettes that supported the turrets. s deck was thick.
Service history
was ordered by the German Imperial Navy () under the provisional name , as a replacement for the old coastal defense ship . The contract for the ship was awarded to Howaldtswerke in Kiel under construction number 500. Work began on 24 December 1908 with the laying of her keel, and the ship was launched less than a year later, on 25 September 1909. Ernst Günther II, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, gave a speech at the launching ceremony, and his wife, Princess Dorothea, christened the ship , named for the offshore islands seen as vital to the defense of the Kiel Canal. Fitting out, including completion of the superstructure and the installation of armament, lasted until August 1911. Builder's trials began early that month, and were completed satisfactorily by 23 August, when was commissioned into active service to begin sea trials on 23 August 1911, just under three years from when work commenced. Her first commander was (KzS—Captain at Sea) Friedrich Gädeke, though the following month, he was replaced by KzS Gottfried von Dalwigk zu Lichtenfels. The ship's activation was initially kept secret to avoid increasing tensions over the on-going Agadir Crisis. Trials were concluded on 19 December, and the following day, she arrived in Wilhelmshaven, where she joined I Battle Squadron, replacing the pre-dreadnought .
On 9 February 1912, s crew beat the German record for loading coal, taking 1,100 tons of coal on board in two hours; the record was previously held by the crew of the -class battleship . Kaiser Wilhelm II congratulated the crew through a Cabinet order. In March, fleet training maneuvers were conducted in the North Sea, followed by a cruise along the German Baltic Sea coast. A routine voyage to Norwegian waters was cancelled that year due to political tensions in Europe, which remained high even after the conclusion of the Agadir crisis. Another round of exercises in the North Sea, Skagerrak, and Kattegat took place in November. The next year followed a similar training pattern, though a summer cruise to Norway was instituted. On 23 May 1913, was present for the dedication of a memorial stone to German sailors who had died in the area in recent years, including men from the torpedo boats and , the salvage ship , and the Zeppelin L1. In September, KzS Ulrich Lübbert took command of the ship.
On 10 July 1914, left the Jade Estuary to take part in the annual summer training cruise to Norway. The fleet, along with several German U-boats, assembled at Skagen on 12 July to practice torpedo boat attacks, individual ship maneuvers, and searchlight techniques. The fleet arrived at the Fjord of Songe by 18 July, but had to wait until after midnight for a harbor pilot to guide her into the confined waters of the fjord. joined , the light cruiser , and the Kaiser's yacht in Balholm. That same day, took on 1250 tons of coal from a Norwegian collier. The following morning was joined by her sister , and the two ships sailed back to Germany, arriving on the morning of 22 July. On the evening of 1 August, the captain announced to the crew that the Kaiser had ordered the navy to prepare for hostilities with the Russian Navy.
World War I
1914 At the start of World War I, was assigned to I Division, I Battle Squadron. was stationed off the heavily fortified island of Wangerooge on 9 August. Minefields and picket lines of cruisers, torpedo boats, and submarines were also emplaced there to defend Wilhelmshaven. s engines were kept running for the entirety of her deployment, so that she would be ready to respond at a moment's notice. Four days later, on 13 August, returned to Wilhelmshaven to refuel. The following day, naval reservists began arriving to fill out the wartime complements for the German battleships.
The first major naval action in the North Sea, the Battle of Helgoland Bight, took place on 28 August 1914. was again stationed off Wangerooge. Despite her proximity to the battle, was not sent to aid the beleaguered German cruisers, as she could not be risked in an unsupported attack against possibly superior British forces. Instead, the ship was ordered to drop anchor and await relief by . By 04:30, received the order to join and sail out of the harbor. At 05:00, the two battleships met the battered cruisers and . By 07:30, the ships had returned to port for the night. Three days later, on 31 August, was put into drydock for maintenance. On the afternoon of 7 September, and the rest of the High Seas Fleet conducted a training cruise to the main island of Helgoland. and the rest of the High Seas Fleet sortied to support the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group during their raid on Yarmouth on 2–3 November, though the battleships did not take direct part in the operation.
The first major operation of the war in which took part was the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on 15–16 December 1914. The raid was conducted by the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group; and the other dreadnoughts of the High Seas Fleet steamed in distant support of Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers. Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander of the High Seas Fleet, decided to take up station in the middle of the North Sea, about 130 miles east of Scarborough. The Royal Navy, which had recently received the German code books recovered from the beached cruiser , was aware that an operation was taking place, but was not sure where the Germans would strike. Therefore, the Admiralty ordered David Beatty's 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, the six battleships of the 2nd Battle Squadron, and several cruisers and destroyers to intercept the German battlecruisers.
Instead, on the morning of 16 December, Beatty's task force nearly ran headlong into the entire High Seas Fleet. At 06:20, Beatty's destroyer screen came into contact with the German torpedo boat . This began a confused, 2-hour battle between the British destroyers and the German cruiser and destroyer screen, often at very close range. At the time of the first encounter, the -class battleships were less than away from the six British dreadnoughts; this was nearly within firing range, but in the darkness, neither British nor German admirals were aware of the composition of their opponents' fleets. Ingenohl, aware of the Kaiser's order not to risk the battle fleet without his express approval, concluded that his forces were engaging the screen of the entire Grand Fleet, and so, 10 minutes after the first contact, he ordered a turn to the southeast. Continued attacks delayed the turn, but by 06:42, it had been carried out. For about 40 minutes, the two fleets were steaming on a parallel course. At 07:20, Ingenohl ordered a further turn to port, which put his ships on a course for the safety of German bases.
1915–1916
On 17 January 1915, Ingenohl ordered to go back to the docks for more maintenance, but she did not enter the drydock until three days later, owing to difficulties getting through the canal locks. By the middle of the month, left dock; her berth was then filled by the armored cruiser . While the ship was in the shipyard, the Germans had been defeated at the Battle of Dogger Bank, which saw the sinking of the large armored cruiser . The Kaiser removed Ingenohl from his post on 2 February and Admiral Hugo von Pohl replaced him as commander of the fleet.
On 10 February, and the rest of I Squadron sailed out of Wilhelmshaven towards Cuxhaven, but heavy fog impeded movement for two days. The ships then anchored off Brunsbüttel before proceeding through the Kiel Canal to Kiel. The crews conducted gunnery training with the main and secondary guns and torpedo firing practice on 1 March. The following night the crews conducted night-fighting training. On 10 March the squadron again passed through the locks to return to Wilhelmshaven. Fog again slowed progress, and the ships did not reach port until 15 March. The High Seas Fleet carried out a sweep into the North Sea on 29–30 March, which failed to locate any enemy warships. Further such fleet operations were performed on 17–18 and 21–22 April and 17–18 and 29–30 May, all of which similarly ended without contact with British naval forces.