SMS was one of four s, the first dreadnoughts built for the German Imperial Navy (). mounted twelve main guns in six twin turrets in an unusual hexagonal arrangement. The navy built and her sister ships in response to the revolutionary British , which had been launched in 1906. was laid down in June 1907, launched the following year in October, and commissioned in April 1910.
s extensive service with the High Seas Fleet during World War I included several fleet advances into the North Sea, some in support of raids against the English coast conducted by the German battlecruisers of I Scouting Group. These sorties culminated in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, in which was heavily engaged by British destroyers in close-range night fighting.
The ship also saw duty in the Baltic Sea, as part of the support force for the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in 1915. She returned to the Baltic as the core of an expeditionary force to aid the White Finns in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, but ran aground shortly after arriving in the area. Significant portions of her armor and all her main guns had to be removed before she could be refloated. The damage done by the grounding was deemed too severe to justify repairs and was decommissioned to be used as a barracks ship for the remainder of the war. In 1919, following the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow, was ceded to the Allies who, in turn, sold the vessel to ship-breakers in the Netherlands. The ship was broken up for scrap metal starting in 1920. Her bell is on display at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden.
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
The ship was long, wide, and had a draft of . She displaced with a normal 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.
She retained 3-shaft triple expansion engines instead of more advanced turbine engines. Steam for the engines was provided by twelve coal-fired water-tube boilers, which 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 both ends of the torpedo bulkheads.
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
was ordered under the provisional name , as a replacement for the old . She was laid down on 1 June 1907 at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin. As with her sister , construction proceeded under absolute secrecy; detachments of soldiers guarded the shipyard itself, as well as contractors such as Krupp that supplied building materials. The ship was launched on 26 September 1908; at the launching ceremony the ship was christened by Queen Elisabeth of Romania and Clemens Freiherr von Schorlemer-Lieser gave a speech. Fitting-out work was completed by the end of February 1910. A dockyard crew was used for limited sea trials, which lasted from 23 February to 4 March 1910 off Swinemünde. She was then taken to Kiel, where she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 30 April 1910. Under the command of (KzS) Albert Hopman, Rheinland conducted official sea trials in the Baltic Sea.
At the conclusion of trials on 30 August 1910, was taken to Wilhelmshaven, where a significant portion of the crew was transferred to the new battlecruiser . For the next month, Hopman was temporarily replaced, though he returned in September. Following the autumn fleet maneuvers in September, the crew was replenished with crewmembers from the old pre-dreadnought battleship , which was decommissioned at the same time. was then assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet. In October, the fleet went on the annual winter cruise, followed by fleet exercises in November. 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 September, KzS Richard Engel replaced Hopman.
The next year followed a similar pattern until mid-1912, when the summer cruise was confined to the Baltic due to the Agadir Crisis; the naval command sought to avoid exposing the fleet during the period of heightened tension with Britain and France. The September exercises were conducted off Helgoland in the North Sea. The training schedule returned to normal for 1913 and 1914, and the summer cruises again went to Norway. For the 1914 cruise, the fleet departed for Norwegian waters on 14 July, some two weeks after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The probability of war cut the cruise short; and the rest of the fleet were back in Wilhelmshaven by 29 July.
World War I
participated in nearly all of the fleet advances throughout the war. The first such operation was conducted primarily by the battlecruisers; the ships bombarded Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby on 15–16 December 1914. During the operation, the German battle fleet of some 12 dreadnoughts and 8 pre-dreadnoughts, which was serving as distant support for the battlecruisers, came to within of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. However, skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens convinced the German commander, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, that he was confronted with the entire Grand Fleet. He broke off the engagement and turned for home.
next took part in the fleet advance on 24 January 1915 to support I Scouting Group after it had been 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. Admiral Hugo von Pohl replaced him as commander of the fleet. Pohl conducted a series of fleet advances in 1915 in which took part; in the first one on 29–30 March, the fleet steamed out to the north of Terschelling and return without incident. Another followed on 17–18 April, where the fleet covered a mining operation by II Scouting Group. Three days later, on 21–22 April, the High Seas Fleet advanced towards the Dogger Bank, though again failed to meet any British forces. During the operation, the high-pressure cylinder of s starboard engine failed. Repair work lasted until 23 May. 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 . That month, Heinrich Rohardt was given command of .
Battle of the Gulf of Riga
In August 1915, the German fleet attempted to clear the Russian-held Gulf of Riga in order to facilitate the capture of Riga by the German army. 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 gunboats and destroyers. The German naval force would also lay a series of minefields in the northern entrance to the Gulf to prevent Russian naval reinforcements from reentering the area. The assembled German fleet included and her three sister ships, the four s, and the battlecruisers , , and . The force operated under the command of Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper. The eight battleships were to provide cover for the forces engaging the Russian flotilla. The first attempt on 8 August was unsuccessful, as it had taken too long to clear the Russian minefields to allow the minelayer to lay a minefield of her own.
On 16 August 1915, a second attempt was made to enter the Gulf: and , four light cruisers, and 31 torpedo boats managed to breach the Russian defenses. On the first day of the assault, the German minesweeper was sunk, as was the destroyer . The following day, and engaged in an artillery duel with , resulting in three hits on the Russian ship that forced her to retreat. By 19 August, the Russian minefields had been cleared and the flotilla entered the Gulf. However, reports of Allied submarines in the area prompted the Germans to call off the operation the following day. Admiral Hipper later remarked that "To keep valuable ships for a considerable time in a limited area in which enemy submarines were increasingly active, with the corresponding risk of damage and loss, was to indulge in a gamble out of all proportion to the advantage to be derived from the occupation of the Gulf before the capture of Riga from the land side."
Return to the North Sea