SMS was the fourth of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the , built for the German (Imperial Navy). She was laid down in April 1902, was launched in October 1903, and was commissioned in July 1905. Named for the state of Prussia, the ship was armed with a battery of four guns and had a top speed of . Like all pre-dreadnoughts built at the turn of the century, was quickly made obsolete by the launching of the revolutionary in 1906; as a result, she saw only limited service with the German fleet.
s peacetime career centered on squadron and fleet exercises and training cruises to foreign ports. The ship served as the flagship of II Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career. During World War I, she served as a guard ship in the German Bight and later in the Danish Straits. She participated in a fleet sortie in December 1914 in support of the Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby during which the German fleet briefly clashed with a detachment of the British Grand Fleet. had been temporarily assigned to guard ship duties in the Baltic in May 1916, and so missed the Battle of Jutland. Due to her age, she did not rejoin the fleet, and instead continued to serve as a guard ship until 1917, when she became a tender for U-boats based in Wilhelmshaven.
After the war, was retained by the re-formed and converted into a depot ship for F-type minesweepers. She was stricken from the naval register in April 1929 and sold to ship breakers in 1931. A section of her hull was retained as a target; it was bombed and sunk in 1945 by Allied bombers at the end of World War II, and was scrapped in 1954.
Design
With the passage of the Second Naval Law under the direction of (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Alfred von Tirpitz in 1900, funding was allocated for a new class of battleships, to succeed the ships authorized under the 1898 Naval Law. By this time, Krupp, the supplier of naval artillery to the (Imperial Navy) had developed quick-firing, guns; the largest guns that had previously incorporated the technology were the guns mounted on the s. The Design Department of the (Imperial Navy Office) adopted these guns for the new battleships, along with an increase from to for the secondary battery, owing to the increased threat from torpedo boats as torpedoes became more effective.
Though the class marked a significant improvement over earlier German battleships, its design fell victim to the rapid pace of technological development in the early 1900s. The British battleship —armed with ten 12-inch (30.5 cm) guns—was commissioned in December 1906, less than a year and a half after entered service. Dreadnoughts revolutionary design rendered every capital ship of the German navy obsolete, including .
was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced as designed and at full load. Her crew consisted of 35 officers and 708 enlisted men. The ship was powered by three 3-cylinder vertical triple expansion engines that drove three screws. Steam was provided by eight naval and six cylindrical boilers, all of which burned coal. s powerplant was rated at , which generated a top speed of . She could steam at a cruising speed of .
s armament consisted of a main battery of four 28 cm (11 in) SK L/40 guns in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the central superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of fourteen 17 cm (6.7 inch) SK L/40 guns and eighteen 8.8 cm (3.45 in) SK L/35 quick-firing guns. The armament suite was rounded out with six torpedo tubes, all mounted submerged in the hull. One tube was in the bow, two were on each broadside, and the final tube was in the stern. was protected with Krupp armor. Her armored belt was thick, the heavier armor in the central citadel that protected her magazines and propulsion machinery spaces, and the thinner plating at either end of the hull. Her deck was thick. The main battery turrets had 250 mm of armor plating.
Service history Construction through 1907 was laid down in April 1902 at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin under construction number 256. The fourth unit of her class, she had been ordered under the contract name "K" as a new unit for the fleet. was launched on 30 October 1903, with a speech given by Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow and the christening performed by Empress Augusta Victoria. The ship was commissioned into the fleet on 12 July 1905. Sea trials lasted until September, when she formally joined II Squadron, where she replaced the battleship as the squadron flagship. VAdm Max von Fischel was the squadron commander at the time.
The German fleet was occupied with extensive training exercises during the early 1900s. The ships were occupied with individual, division and squadron exercises throughout April 1906, the only interruption being in February, when carried Kaiser Wilhelm II to Copenhagen in company with the light cruiser and the torpedo boats and . Wilhelm II attended the burial of the Danish King Christian IX, who had died the previous month. Starting on 13 May, major fleet exercises took place in the North Sea and lasted until 8 June with a cruise around the Skagen into the Baltic. During Kiel Week on 21 June, received a gift from the provinces of West Prussia and East Prussia, in the form of a Prussian war flag. The fleet began its usual summer cruise to Norway in mid-July, and the fleet was present for the birthday of Norwegian King Haakon VII on 3 August. The German ships departed the following day for Helgoland, to join exercises being conducted there.
The fleet was back in Kiel by 15 August, where preparations for the autumn maneuvers began. On 22–24 August, the fleet took part in landing exercises in Eckernförde Bay outside Kiel. The maneuvers were paused from 31 August to 3 September when the fleet hosted vessels from Denmark and Sweden, along with a Russian squadron from 3 to 9 September in Kiel. The maneuvers resumed on 8 September and lasted five more days. The ship participated in the uneventful winter cruise into the Kattegat and Skagerrak from 8 to 16 December. The first quarter of 1907 followed the previous pattern and, on 16 February, the Active Battle Fleet was re-designated the High Seas Fleet. From the end of May to early June the fleet went on its summer cruise in the North Sea, returning to the Baltic via the Kattegat. This was followed by the regular cruise to Norway from 12 July to 10 August, after which the fleet conducted the annual autumn maneuvers, which lasted from 26 August to 6 September. The exercises included landing exercises in northern Schleswig with IX Corps. On 1 October 1907, (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Ludwig von Schröder came aboard , taking command of the squadron, as Fischel had become the chief of the (Naval Station of the North Sea). The winter training cruise went into the Kattegat from 22 to 30 November.
1908–1914
The fleet conducted training exercises in the Baltic in February 1908. Prince Heinrich, then the commander of the High Seas Fleet, had pressed for such a cruise the previous year, arguing that it would prepare the fleet for overseas operations and would break up the monotony of training in German waters, though tensions with Britain over the developing Anglo-German naval arms race were high. The fleet departed Kiel on 17 July, passed through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to the North Sea, and continued to the Atlantic. During the cruise, visited Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. The fleet returned to Germany on 13 August. The autumn maneuvers followed from 27 August to 12 September. Later that year, the fleet toured coastal German cities as part of an effort to increase public support for naval expenditures.
In early 1909, and the battleships and were sent to break paths in the sea ice off the coast of Holstein for merchant shipping. Another cruise into the Atlantic was conducted from 7 July to 1 August, during which stopped in Ferrol, Spain. On the way back to Germany, the High Seas Fleet was received by the British Royal Navy in Spithead. Later that year, Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff became the fleet commander. Holtzendorff's tenure as fleet commander was marked by strategic experimentation, owing to the increased threat the latest underwater weapons posed and the fact that the new s were too wide to pass through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. Accordingly, the fleet was transferred from the Baltic Sea port of Kiel to the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven on 1 April 1910.
In May 1910, 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. After the conclusion of the maneuvers, Schröder was promoted to chief of the (Naval Station of the Baltic Sea), his place aboard being taken by VAdm Friedrich von Ingenohl. A training cruise into the Baltic followed at the end of the year. In March 1911, the fleet held exercises in the Skagerrak and Kattegat, and the year's autumn maneuvers were confined to the Baltic and the Kattegat. Another fleet review was held during the exercises for a visiting Austro-Hungarian delegation that included Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Admiral Rudolf Montecuccoli.
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. On 30 January 1913, Holtzendorff was relieved as the fleet commander, owing in large part due to Wilhelm II's displeasure with his strategic vision; Ingenohl took Holtzendorff's place, and KAdm Reinhard Scheer in turn replaced Ingenohl as II Squadron commander on 4 February. In late August, the squadron steamed through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal at the start of the autumn maneuvers to reach the island of Helgoland; the voyage through the canal was notable, because the canal had been closed for over a year while it was enlarged to allow the passage of larger dreadnought battleships. went into dry dock in November for periodic maintenance, and as a result, missed training exercises conducted that month.
participated in ceremonies at Sonderburg on 2 May to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Dybbøl of the Second Schleswig War; she was joined by her sister ships and , the battleship , and the armored cruiser . The ship was present during the fleet cruise to Norway in July 1914, which was cut short by the July Crisis following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand the month before and subsequent rise in international tensions. On 25 July the ship's crew was made aware of Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia; left Norway to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet the following day. had been slated to be decommissioned at the end of the year, her place as the squadron flagship to be taken by the dreadnought . was to then replace in the Reserve Division of the Baltic Sea, but the outbreak of World War I cancelled those plans.
World War I
After the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German command deployed II Squadron in the German Bight to defend Germany's coast from a major attack from the Royal Navy that the Germans presumed was imminent. and her squadron mates were stationed in the mouth of the Elbe to support the vessels on patrol duty in the Bight. Once it became clear that the British would not attack the High Seas Fleet, the Germans began a series of operations designed to lure out a portion of the numerically superior British Grand Fleet and destroy it. By achieving a rough equality of forces, the German navy could then force a decisive battle in the southern portion of the North Sea.