SMS was the last armored cruiser built for the German (Imperial Navy) beginning in 1907. She was designed in response to the latest British armored cruisers, but the British had already begun work on the s, which marked a significant increase in firepower over earlier armored cruisers. was armed with a main battery of twelve guns, compared to the eight guns of the British ships. entered service after the Invincibles were commissioned, and as a result, was obsolescent at the start of her career.
was built at the Kaiserliche Werft shipyard in Kiel between 1907 and 1909, and commissioned on 1 October 1909. The ship initially served in the I Scouting Group for most of her career after entering service in 1910, but in late 1911 was transferred to serve as a gunnery training ship, where she remained until the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. She then returned to I Scouting Group, operating primarily in the North Sea against British forces. She took part in the operation to bombard Yarmouth and the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in November and December 1914, respectively.
At the Battle of Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915, was slowed significantly after being hit by gunfire from the British battlecruiser squadron under the command of Vice Admiral David Beatty. Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper, the commander of the German squadron, decided to abandon to the pursuing enemy ships in order to save his more valuable battlecruisers. Under heavy fire from the British ships, she was sunk, and British destroyers began recovering the survivors. However, the destroyers withdrew when a German zeppelin began bombing them, mistaking the sinking for a British battlecruiser. The number of casualties is unknown, with figures ranging from 747 to around 1,000. was the only warship lost during the engagement.
Background
The Second Naval Law in Germany, passed in 1900, planned for a total of fourteen armored cruisers—referred to as (large cruisers). These vessels were designed for several tasks: to engage the reconnaissance forces of rival navies, as well as fight in the line of battle. They were also needed to serve in the German colonial empire to protect economic interests abroad. The German armored cruiser program had begun in the late 1890s with , and included a number of iterative designs including and the , , and es. Each new design incorporated incremental improvements over the last, such as increased speed, additional or more powerful guns, and more effective armor plating. In general, the German armored cruisers received less armor protection than their opposite numbers in the British fleet. As a result, they compared unfavorably with their British contemporaries.
Throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, development of the armored cruiser in foreign navies followed a similar pattern. And each development spurred further competition from rival powers, such as that between Argentina and Chile between 1895 and 1902, and perennial competition between the major European navies. Beginning in the early 1900s, Admiral Jackie Fisher, then the First Sea Lord of the British Royal Navy, concluded that future construction should not include battleships or armored cruiser, but a new capital ship that combined the best properties of both types. This new vessel, which would come to be known as the battlecruiser, would carry the same large-caliber armament of the battleship but would have the same high speed of the armored cruiser.
German naval construction in the period was governed by the Naval Law, which had been originally passed in 1898 and amended once in 1900. Under its terms, vessels as old as the converted ironclads and the two ships, which had been rebuilt into armored cruisers in the 1890s. According to the time-table laid out in the law, these old ships would not be due to be replaced until 1910. A second amendment, passed in 1906, provided for an increase to twenty large cruisers, which meant that construction would begin on the first vessel immediately.
Design
Development of the next German armored cruiser, which was to follow the class, began in early 1905; at that time, the Germans were not aware of Fisher's thinking on future developments of the type. The latest class of British armored cruisers, the , were known to be armed with guns, and it was believed that later classes would carry six or eight of these guns. The German design staff produced a pair of designs in response, "A" and "B", which were in most respects improved -class cruisers. "A" adopted the same armament of eight guns, while "B" opted for a main battery of twelve 21 cm guns in six twin gun turrets, four of which were wing turrets. Both variants had significantly improved armor protection compared to , including a 20% increase to the belt thickness.
Because the new cruiser would be ordered under the provisional name "E", both versions were renamed "E1" and "E2", respectively, as they were developed further. Additional boilers were added to increase speed, using as many as five funnels to vent the boilers. The cost of "E2" prompted a third variant, which eliminated the wing turrets in favor of casemate mountings for three guns per side (but leaving the fore and aft turrets). Another variant, "E5", carried a main armament of eight 21 cm guns, retaining the fore and aft turrets, with the remainder in single-gun wing turrets. In May, "E6" kept "E5"'s layout, but replaced the ten-gun secondary battery for eight guns. Two further versions, "E7" and "E8", were broadly similar, but "E7" was slightly smaller, and "E8" reverted to the 15 cm secondary battery.
Consideration was given to a larger SK L/45 gun for the main battery, but it was found to be too large and expensive, so all further work kept the 21 cm main armament. In September, "E9" was introduced, which was significantly larger than previous ships. It would have carried twelve 21 cm guns as in the "E2" design. "E10" and "E11" quickly followed the same month, the changes mostly related to the number of secondary guns and the spacing of the main battery turrets on the basis of experience gained during the Russo-Japanese War that had recently ended. At the end of the month, proposal "E15" had settled on the characteristics that would be incorporated into the ship that was built. Further experimentation was carried out between September 1905 and March 1906, which produced a series of designs from "E17" to "E23", but they were deemed to be too expensive. In the meantime, "E15" was refined further into the definitive proposal "E16B", which was half of a knot faster than "E15" and trunked the four funnels of the earlier design into two larger funnels.
The authorized funds for the new ship, which was to be named after the earlier screw corvette of the same name, on 26 May 1906, along with the first two s, in accordance with the 1906 amendment to the Naval Law. Though the ship would be much larger and more powerful than previous armored cruisers, retained that designation in an attempt to conceal its more powerful nature. Kaiser Wilhelm II signed the construction order on 21 June, though work would not begin until early 1907. By that time, Fisher's battlecruisers, the first of which were the , were nearing launching, and the details of their armament became known. It was too late to alter the design (in part because it would have entailed significant cost increases over the funds already authorized), and so construction proceeded as planned. Though the German ship's 21 cm armament was clearly outclassed by the eight guns of the Invincibles in terms of power, the guns had similar maximum effective ranges, and had better armor protection. According to the historian Aidan Dodson, was "...overall a far better balanced design" compared to Invincible.
General characteristics
was long at the waterline and long overall. The ship had a beam of , and with the anti-torpedo nets mounted along the sides of the ship, the beam increased to . had a draft of forward, but slightly less aft, at . The ship displaced at her designed weight, and up to at full load. Her hull was constructed with both transverse and longitudinal steel frames and she had thirteen watertight compartments and a double bottom that ran for approximately 65 percent of the length of the hull. The ship had a raised forecastle deck that extended for the first third of the length of the hull, where it stepped down to main deck level. Her superstructure consisted of a large conning tower forward with a bridge atop, and a smaller conning position further aft. She was fitted with a pair of light pole masts for signaling and observation purposes.
Documents from the German naval archives generally indicate satisfaction with 's minor pitch and gentle motion at sea. However, she suffered from severe roll, and with the rudder hard over, she heeled over up to 10 degrees from the vertical and lost up to 55 percent of her speed. s metacentric height was . The ship had a standard crew of 41 officers and 812 enlisted men, with an additional 14 officers and 62 sailors when she served as a squadron flagship. She carried a number of smaller vessels, including two picket boats, three barges, two launches, two yawls, and one dinghy.
Propulsion
was equipped with three vertical, 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines. Each engine drove a screw propeller, the center screw being in diameter, while the outer two screws were slightly larger, at in diameter. The ship had a single rudder with which to steer. The three engines were segregated in individual engine rooms. Steam was provided by eighteen coal-fired, marine-type water-tube boilers, which were also divided into five boiler rooms. The boilers were vented through a pair of large funnels, one directly aft of the foremast and the other directly amidships. Electrical power for the ship was supplied by six turbo-generators that provided up to 1,000 kilowatts, rated at 225 volts.
The ship had a designed maximum speed of from . During her initial speed trials, she achieved from ; this was the highest power ever achieved by a reciprocating engine warship. The ship was designed to carry of coal, though voids in the hull could be used to expand the fuel supply to up to of coal. This provided a cruising radius of at a cruising speed of . When she increased speed to , her range fell to .
Armament
was equipped with twelve SK L/45 quick-firing guns in six twin turrets, one pair fore and one pair aft, and two pairs in wing turrets on either side of the superstructure. The guns were supplied with a total of 1,020 shells, or 85 rounds per gun. Each shell weighed , and was fired using a propellant charge that provided a muzzle velocity of . The propellant was stored in brass cartridges, unlike the silk bags used in many other navies, so the turrets were more resistant to ammunition fires. The guns could be depressed to −5° and elevated to 30°, providing a maximum range of . Their rate of fire was 6 rounds per minute per gun.
The ship had a secondary battery of eight quick-firing guns mounted in casemates, four centered amidships on either side of the vessel. These guns could engage targets out to . They were supplied with 1320 rounds, for 165 shells per gun. The shells were , and were loaded with a RPC/12 propellant charge in a brass cartridge. The guns fired at a muzzle velocity of per second, at a rate of seven rounds per minute.