SMS was the first dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial German Navy. was laid down on 22 July 1907 at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven, and launched less than a year later on 7 March 1908, approximately 25 months after Dreadnought. She was the lead ship of her class of four battleships, which included , , and .
saw service in the North Sea at the beginning of World War I, in II Division of I Battle Squadron of the German High Seas Fleet. In August 1915, she entered the Baltic Sea and participated in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, where she engaged the Russian battleship . Following her return to the North Sea, and her sister ships took part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. During the battle, collided with the British destroyer . suffered a total of 11 killed and 16 injured during the engagement.
After World War I, the bulk of the High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow. As they were the oldest German dreadnoughts, the -class ships were for the time permitted to remain in German ports. After the German fleet was scuttled, and her three sisters were surrendered to the victorious Allied powers as replacements for the sunken ships. was ceded to Japan in April 1920. With no use for the ship, Japan sold her to a British wrecking firm, which then scrapped her in Dordrecht, Netherlands.
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 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.
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, 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 either ends 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
was ordered under the provisional name , as a replacement for the old . She was laid down on 22 July 1907 at the in Wilhelmshaven, under construction number 30. Construction work proceeded under absolute secrecy; detachments of soldiers were tasked with guarding the shipyard itself, as well as contractors that supplied building materials, such as Krupp. The ship was launched on 7 March 1908; she was christened by Princess Hilda of Nassau, and the ceremony was attended by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Prince Henry of the Netherlands, representing his wife's House of Orange-Nassau.
Fitting-out work was delayed significantly when a dockyard worker accidentally removed a blanking plate from a large pipe, which allowed a significant amount of water to flood the ship. The ship did not have its watertight bulkheads installed, so the water spread throughout the ship and caused it to list to port and sink to the bottom of the dock. had also not had her bilge pumps installed yet, which delayed repairs. The ship had to be pumped dry and cleaned out, which proved to be a laborious task. The ship was completed by the end of September 1909. She was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 1 October 1909, and sea trials commenced immediately. Her first commander was (KzS—Captain at Sea) Christian Schütz.
On 16 October 1909, and her sister participated in a ceremony for the opening of the new third entrance in the Wilhelmshaven Naval Dockyard. They took part in the annual maneuvers of the High Seas Fleet in February 1910 while still on trials. finished her testing and evaluation on 3 May and joined I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, replacing the old pre-dreadnought battleship . Over the next four years, the ship participated in the regular series of squadron and fleet maneuvers and training cruises. Immediately after entering service in May, Nassau and the rest of the fleet conducted training maneuvers in the Kattegat. These were in accordance with 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. In September, KzS Gisberth Jasper relieved Schütz as the ship's captain. 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. won the Kaiser's (Shooting Prize) for excellent shooting in the 1911 training year. 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. KzS Ludolf von Uslar took command of the ship in October. won the for a second time in 1912. 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.
On 14 July 1914, the annual summer cruise to Norway began. The threat of war caused Kaiser Wilhelm II to cancel the cruise after two weeks, and by the end of July the fleet was back in port. War between Austria-Hungary and Serbia broke out on the 28th, and in the span of a week all of the major European powers had joined the conflict.
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 —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. Skirmishes in the darkness between the rival destroyer screens convinced the German fleet commander, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, that the entire Grand Fleet was deployed before him. Under orders from the Kaiser to not risk the fleet, 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 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. 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, KzS Max Köthner replaced Uslar as s captain.
Battle of the Gulf of Riga
In August 1915, the German fleet attempted to clear the Gulf of Riga 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 area, 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 being able to enter the area. The fleet that assembled for the assault included Nassau and her three sister ships, the four s, and the battlecruisers , , and . The force would operate under the command of now-Vice Admiral 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 T 46 was sunk, as was the destroyer V 99. 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. Reports of Allied submarines in the area prompted the Germans to call off of the operation the following day. and remained in the Gulf until 21 August, and while there assisted in the destruction of the gunboats and . Admiral Hipper later remarked that,