SMS was a light cruiser of the built by the German (Imperial Navy). She had one sister ship, ; the ships were very similar to the previous s. The ship was laid down in 1913, launched in March 1915, and completed by August 1915. Armed with eight 15 cm SK L/45 guns, had a top speed of and displaced at full load.
saw extensive action with the High Seas Fleet during World War I. She served primarily in the North Sea, and participated in the Bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft and the battles of Jutland and Second Heligoland. At Jutland, she was lightly damaged by a British cruiser and her crew suffered minor casualties. At the end of the war, she was interned with the bulk of the German fleet in Scapa Flow. When the fleet was scuttled in June 1919, was one of the few ships that were not successfully sunk. She was ceded to the US Navy as a war prize and ultimately expended as a bomb target in tests conducted by the US Navy and Army Air Force in July 1921.
Design
The -class cruisers were a development of the preceding s, but the budgetary constraints imposed by the need to pass the 1912 Naval Law no longer applied. This freed the design staff to adopt the new gun for the new ship's main battery, which the German fleet had sought for some time. The decision to move to the larger gun was in large part driven by reports that the latest British cruiser, , would carry a complete waterline armor belt.
was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced at full load. The ship had a fairly small superstructure that consisted primarily of a conning tower forward. She was fitted with a pair of pole masts, the fore just aft of the conning tower and the mainmast further aft. Her hull had a long forecastle that extended for the first third of the ship, stepping down to main deck level just aft of the conning tower, before reducing a deck further at the mainmast for a short quarterdeck. had a crew of 17 officers and 457 enlisted men.
Her propulsion system consisted of two sets of Marine steam turbines driving two screw propellers. Steam was provided by ten coal-fired Marine-type water-tube boilers and two oil-fired double-ended boilers, which were vented through three funnels. The ship's engines were rated to produce , which gave the ship a top speed of . carried of coal, and an additional of oil that gave her a range of at .
The ship was armed with a main battery of eight SK L/45 guns in single pedestal mounts. Two were placed side by side forward on the forecastle, four were located amidships, two on either side, and two were placed in a superfiring pair aft. The guns could engage targets out to . They were supplied with 1,024 rounds of ammunition, for 128 shells per gun. The ship's antiaircraft armament initially consisted of four L/55 guns, though these were replaced with a pair of SK L/45 anti-aircraft guns. She was also equipped with four torpedo tubes with eight torpedoes. Two were submerged in the hull on the broadside and two were mounted on the deck amidships. She could also carry 120 mines.
The ship was protected by a waterline armor belt that was thick amidships. Protection for the ship's internals was reinforced with a curved armor deck that was 60 mm thick; the deck sloped downward at the sides and connected to the bottom edge of the belt armor. The conning tower had thick sides.
Service history was ordered on 19 May 1913 under the contract name " ", and was laid down at the shipyard in Kiel on 1 December 1913. Work on the ship was delayed by the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, and she was launched on 20 March 1915, after which fitting-out work commenced. She was commissioned into active service to begin sea trials on 20 August 1915, which lasted until 12 October. She then joined II Scouting Group, part of the reconnaissance force of the High Seas Fleet. The unit was commanded by (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Friedrich Boedicker. then conducted individual training to prepare her crew for combat operations, and then she joined the rest of the group for unit training from 22 November to 3 December. The ships of II Scouting Group moved to the North Sea on 4 December, and then embarked on a sweep through the Skagerrak and Kattegat from 16 to 18 December to search for enemy merchant shipping.
1916 The winter months passed uneventfully, and in March 1916, began the normal wartime operations for II Scouting Group: patrols in the southern North Sea to defend the German coast and sweeps for British warships. During one such sweep on 21–22 April, was attacked by a British submarine off the Vyl lightship, though its torpedo missed. The first operation in which saw action was the Bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft on 24 April 1916. was assigned to the reconnaissance screen for the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group, temporarily under Boedicker's command. During the raid, attacked and sank a British armed patrol boat off the English coast. The Germans then spotted the approach of the British Harwich Force, a squadron of three light cruisers and eighteen destroyers, approaching from the south at 04:50. Boedicker initially ordered his battlecruisers to continue with the bombardment, while and the other five light cruisers concentrated to engage the Harwich Force. At around 05:30, the British and German light forces clashed, firing mostly at long range. The battlecruisers arrived on the scene at 05:47, prompting the British squadron to retreat at high speed. A light cruiser and destroyer were damaged before Boedicker broke off the engagement after receiving reports of submarines in the area.
Battle of Jutland
On 24 May, Boedicker temporarily transferred his flag to , and he remained aboard during the fleet operation that began on 31 May and resulted in the Battle of Jutland. II Scouting Group was again screening for the I Scouting Group battlecruisers, again commanded by (Vice Admiral) Franz von Hipper. steamed in the leading position of the wedge-shaped formation at the head of the German line of battle at the start of the action. was engaged in the first action of the battle, when the cruiser screens of the German and British battlecruiser squadrons encountered each other. , , and briefly fired on the British light cruisers at 16:17 until the British ships turned away. Half an hour later, the fast battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron had reached the scene and opened fire on and the other German cruisers, though the ships quickly fled under a smokescreen and were not hit.
Shortly before 18:00, the British destroyers and attempted to attack the German battlecruisers. Heavy fire from and forced the British ships to break off the attack. At around 18:30, and the rest of II Scouting Group encountered the cruiser ; they opened fire and scored several hits on the ship. Rear Admiral Horace Hood's three battlecruisers intervened, however, and scored a hit on that disabled the ship. About an hour later, Canterbury scored four hits on in quick succession: two hits in the area of s mainmast and a pair of hits. One of the 4-inch shells hit forward, well above the waterline, and the second exploded in the water near the stern and damaged both screws.
and spotted the cruiser and several destroyers shortly before 23:00. They each fired a torpedo at the British cruiser before turning back toward the German line without using their searchlights or guns to avoid drawing the British toward the German battleships. Almost two hours later, encountered a pair of British destroyers and fired on them briefly until they retreated at full speed. By 04:00 on 1 June, the German fleet had evaded the British fleet and reached Horns Reef. had three men killed and eighteen wounded in the course of the engagement, but the ship itself was not seriously damaged in the fighting. She had fired 379 rounds of 15 cm ammunition and a pair of 8.8 cm shells, and launched a single torpedo.
Subsequent operations
On 2 June, Boedicker transferred back to his previous flagship, the cruiser . Two days later, was docked in Kiel for a planned shipyard period that included modifications to her main battery and the installation of a larger charthouse suitable for an admiral's staff. This work lasted until 7 July; two days later, she returned to the North Sea and rejoined her unit. II Scouting Group carried out unit training in the Baltic from 5 to 14 August, before returning to the North Sea. On 16 August, (Commodore) Andreas Michelsen, the Leader of Torpedo-boats, transferred his flag to , for a major fleet raid on the British coast on 18–19 August. The raid resulted in the action of 19 August 1916, an inconclusive clash that left several ships on both sides damaged or sunk by submarines, but no direct fleet encounter.
next sortied on 23 September, leading II and V Torpedo-boat Flotillas on a sweep to the south of the Dogger Bank that concluded the following day without having located any British warships. Michelsen thereafter transferred his flag to . On 25–26 September, joined the cruiser for a patrol in the direction of the Maas Lightvessel. The ship participated in another major fleet operation on 18–20 October. The operation led to a brief action on 19 October, during which a British submarine torpedoed the cruiser . The failure of the operation (coupled with the action of 19 August) convinced the German naval command to abandon its aggressive fleet strategy. In early November, the U-boat U-20 ran aground on the western coast of Denmark. On 4 November, elements of the High Seas Fleet, including , sortied to rescue the boat's crew. The ships returned to port the following day.
1917 The ship's activities through the first half of 1917 were largely restricted to local defensive patrols in the German Bight, and she saw no action during this period. These operations were interrupted by training exercises in the Baltic from 22 February to 4 March and from 20 May to 28 May. was then dry-docked at the (Imperial Shipard) in Wilhelmshaven for periodic maintenance that lasted from 29 May to 18 June. and the cruiser were on patrol as the covering force for a group of minesweepers in the North Sea on 16 August, when the minesweepers came under attack from British light forces. s captain, who commanded the covering force, failed to come to the minesweepers' aid, which led to his replacement. Another period of training exercises in the Baltic followed from 3 to 22 September.
The ship participated in Operation Albion in October 1917, the amphibious assault on the islands in the Gulf of Riga after the German Army captured the city during the Battle of Riga the month before. In addition, the German fleet sought to eliminate the Russian naval forces in the Gulf of Riga that still threatened German forces in the city. Planning for the operation had begun in September, immediately following the conquest of Riga by the German The (the Navy High Command) planned the operation to seize the Baltic island of Ösel, and specifically the Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe Peninsula. The naval component consisted of the dreadnought battleships III and IV Battle Squadrons, nine light cruisers, three torpedo boat flotillas, and dozens of mine warfare ships; the entire force numbered some 300 ships, supported by over 100 aircraft and six zeppelins. The invasion force amounted to approximately 24,600 officers and enlisted men. By that time, II Scouting Group had come under the command of KAdm Ludwig von Reuter.