SMS was one of four s, the first dreadnoughts built for the German Imperial Navy (). mounted twelve main guns in six twin turrets in an unusual hexagonal arrangement. The navy built and her sister ships in response to the revolutionary British , which had been launched in 1906. was laid down in June 1907, launched the following year in October, and commissioned in April 1910.
s extensive service with the High Seas Fleet during World War I included several fleet advances into the North Sea, some in support of raids against the English coast conducted by the German battlecruisers of I Scouting Group. These sorties culminated in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, in which was heavily engaged by British destroyers in close-range night fighting.
The ship also saw duty in the Baltic Sea, as part of the support force for the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in 1915. She returned to the Baltic as the core of an expeditionary force to aid the White Finns in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, but ran aground shortly after arriving in the area. Significant portions of her armor and all her main guns had to be removed before she could be refloated. The damage done by the grounding was deemed too severe to justify repairs and was decommissioned to be used as a barracks ship for the remainder of the war. In 1919, following the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow, was ceded to the Allies who, in turn, sold the vessel to ship-breakers in the Netherlands. The ship was eventually broken up for scrap metal starting in 1920. Her bell is on display at the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr in Dresden.
Description
Design work on the class began in late 1903 in the context of the Anglo-German naval arms race; at the time, battleships of foreign navies had begun to carry increasingly heavy secondary batteries, including Italian and American ships with guns and British ships with guns, outclassing the previous German battleships of the with their secondaries. German designers initially considered ships equipped with secondary guns, but erroneous reports in early 1904 that the British s would be equipped with a secondary battery of guns prompted them to consider an even more powerful ship armed with an all-big-gun armament consisting of eight guns. Over the next two years, the design was refined into a larger vessel with twelve of the guns, by which time Britain had launched the all-big-gun battleship .
The ship was long, wide, and had a draft of . She displaced with a normal load, and fully laden. She retained 3-shaft triple expansion engines instead of more advanced turbine engines. Steam for the engines was provided by twelve coal-fired water-tube boilers. This type of machinery was chosen at the request of both Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and the Navy's construction department; the latter stated in 1905 that the "use of turbines in heavy warships does not recommend itself." This decision was based solely on cost: at the time, Parsons held a monopoly on steam turbines and required a 1 million gold mark royalty fee for every turbine engine. German firms were not ready to begin production of turbines on a large scale until 1910.
carried a main battery of twelve SK L/45 guns in an unusual hexagonal configuration. Her secondary armament consisted of twelve SK L/45 guns and sixteen SK L/45 guns, all of which were mounted in casemates. The ship was also armed with six submerged torpedo tubes. One tube was mounted in the bow, another in the stern, and two on each broadside, on both ends of the torpedo bulkheads. The ship's belt armor was thick in the central citadel, and the armored deck was thick. The main battery turrets had thick sides, and the conning tower was protected with of armor plating.
Commanding officers
was initially commanded by (KzS) Albert Hopman, from her commissioning until August 1910. He was temporarily replaced by Wilhelm Bunnemann when the ship's crew was reduced to commission the battlecruiser in September 1910. Hopman returned to the ship later that month, and held command through September 1911. KzS Richard Engel replaced Hopman in 1911 and commanded the ship until August 1915. That month, he left the ship and KzS Heinrich Rohardt was given command of . He served for over a year, until December 1916, when he was replaced by Theodor von Gorrissen. Gorrissen's command lasted until September 1918; he was replaced by KzS Ernst Toussaint, who held command of the ship for less than a month. Friedrich Berger was the ship's last commander, serving from September 1918 until the ship's decommissioning on 4 October.