SMS was the first of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the built for the German (Imperial Navy). She was laid down in October 1901, launched in December 1902, and commissioned in October 1904. She was named after the Duchy of Brunswick (). The ship was armed with a battery of four guns and had a top speed of . Like all other pre-dreadnoughts built at the turn of the century, was quickly made obsolete by the launching of the revolutionary in 1906; as a result, her career as a front-line battleship was cut short.
The ship served in II Squadron of the German fleet after entering service. During this period, she was occupied with extensive annual training, as well as making good-will visits to foreign countries. She also served as a flagship for most of her pre-war career. Surpassed by new dreadnought battleships, was decommissioned in 1913, but reactivated a year later following the outbreak of World War I. She was assigned to IV Battle Squadron, which operated in both the North Sea, protecting the German coast, and the Baltic Sea, where it opposed the Russian Baltic Fleet. saw action during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915, when she engaged the Russian battleship .
By late 1915, crew shortages and the threat from British submarines forced the to withdraw older battleships like , and she spent the rest of the war first as a headquarters ship, then as a training ship, and finally as a barracks ship. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, she was retained after the end of the war and modernized in 1921–22. served in the reformed , operating as the flagship of naval forces assigned to the North Sea. She made several cruises abroad, including a voyage into the Atlantic in 1924. The ship was decommissioned again in January 1926 and was stricken from the Navy Directory in March 1931, hulked, and subsequently broken up for scrap.
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. 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, with 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.
