SMS was the last armored cruiser built by the German Empire. She was designed to match what German intelligence incorrectly believed to be the specifications of the British s. was larger than preceding armored cruisers and carried more heavy guns, but was unable to match the size and armament of the battlecruisers which replaced armored cruisers in the British Royal Navy and German Imperial Navy (). The ship was named after the Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher, the commander of Prussian forces at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
was built at the Kaiserliche Werft shipyard in Kiel between 1907 and 1909, and commissioned on 1 October 1909. The ship served in the I Scouting Group for most of her career, including the early portion of World War I. She took part in the operation to bombard Yarmouth and the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in 1914.
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.
Design
German armored cruisers—referred to as (large cruisers)—were designed for several tasks. The ships were designed to engage the reconnaissance forces of rival navies, as well as fight in the line of battle. The earliest armored cruiser——was rushed through production specifically to be deployed to China to assist in the suppression of the Boxer Uprising in 1900. Subsequent armored cruisers—with the exception of the two ships—served with the fleet in the reconnaissance force.
On 26 May 1906, the authorized funds for , along with the first two s. 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. The ship was ordered under the provisional name "E". Her design was influenced by the need to match the armored cruisers which Britain was known to be building at the time. The Germans expected these new British ships to be armed with six or eight guns. In response, the German navy approved a design with twelve guns in six twin turrets. This was significantly more firepower than that of the class, which carried only eight 21 cm guns.
One week after the final decision was made to authorize construction of , the German naval attache obtained the actual details of the new British ships, called the . In fact, HMS Invincible carried eight guns of the same type mounted on battleships. It was soon recognized that these ships were a new type of warship, which eventually came to be classified as the battlecruiser. When the details of the Invincible class came to light, it was too late to redesign , and there were no funds for a redesign, so work proceeded as scheduled. was therefore arguably obsolete even before her construction started, and was rapidly surpassed by the German Navy's battlecruisers, the first of which () was ordered in 1907. Despite this, was typically deployed with the German battlecruiser squadron.
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.
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.
