SMS ("His Majesty's Ship ") was a German light cruiser belonging to the , built during the First World War. served in the German (Imperial Navy) until the end of the war, at which point she was ceded to France. The ship was named after the previous , which had been destroyed at the Battle of Cocos earlier in the war. She mounted an Iron Cross on her stem-head in honor of the earlier . The new cruiser was laid down in 1914 at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen, launched in February 1916, and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet in December 1916. Armed with eight 15 cm SK L/45 guns, the ship had a top speed of .
After her commissioning, she was assigned to serve as a flotilla leader for torpedo boats. She participated in only one major action, Operation Albion, in October 1917. There, she shelled Russian gun batteries and troop positions and engaged Russian destroyers and gunboats. The ship also led a successful, albeit minor, operation against British shipping in the North Sea in December 1917. After the end of the war, she was interned with the rest of the German fleet in Scapa Flow. On 21 June 1919, the interned fleet scuttled itself, though was run aground by British ships before she could sink completely. Ceded to France in the Treaty of Versailles, she was too badly damaged by the attempted scuttling and beaching to see service with the French Navy, so was instead used as a target after 1922, and broken up for scrap in 1926.
Design
was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced normally and up to at full load. Her propulsion system consisted of two sets of steam turbines powered by ten coal-fired and two oil-fired Marine-type water-tube boilers. These provided a top speed of and a range of at . The ship had a crew of 17 officers and 458 enlisted men.
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 arranged in a superfiring pair aft. They were supplied with 1,040 rounds of ammunition, for 130 shells per gun. also carried two SK L/45 anti-aircraft guns mounted on the centerline astern of the funnels. She was also equipped with a pair of torpedo tubes with eight torpedoes in deck-mounted swivel launchers amidships. She also carried 200 mines. The ship was protected by a waterline armored belt that was thick amidships. The conning tower had thick sides, and the deck was covered with 60 mm thick armor plate.
Service history
was ordered under the contract name "Ersatz " and was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen in 1914. She was launched on 1 February 1916, after which fitting-out work commenced. She was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 16 December 1916. In October 1917, was serving as the flagship of Commodore Paul Heinrich, the commander of torpedo-boats assigned to Operation Albion. For the initial assault on 12 October, was tasked with bombarding a Russian gun emplacement at Pamerort; Heinrich was given command of the landings there. At 06:08, opened fire on the gun battery. Her first two salvos fell short, but the third hit and disabled the telephone wires and speaking tubes, which rendered central control of the Russian guns impossible. By 07:00, the Russian guns were silenced and German troops began to go ashore unopposed. Two and a half hours later, a pair of Russian destroyers attempted to intervene, but engaged them and drove them off.
The next morning, a group of eight Russian destroyers made an attack on the German fleet. moved forward at around 07:45 to support the German screen, and at 07:56, she opened fire on the three leading destroyers at a range of . s salvos straddled the destroyers several times, raining shell splinters down on the Russians. They suffered no casualties, but the wireless equipment for the destroyer was disabled. At 09:30, another pair of destroyers briefly engaged . The weather had by then become poor, but the Germans had erected a signal station at Pamerort to assist in directing her fire. At around 12:20, the Russian gunboat arrived with a pair of destroyers; she was intended to use her long-range guns to drive off . She arrived at 13:00 and briefly engaged . Neither ship was hit, though straddled the gunboat several times before retreated.