SMS Braunschweig

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SMS Braunschweig
History
Germany
NameBraunschweig
NamesakeBraunschweig
BuilderGermaniawerft, Kiel
Laid down24 October 1901
Launched20 December 1902
Commissioned15 October 1904
Stricken31 March 1931
FateScrapped after 31 March 1931
General characteristics
Class and typeBraunschweig-class pre-dreadnought battleship
Displacement
Length127.70 m (419 ft)
Beam22.20 m (72 ft 10 in)
Draft8.10 m (26 ft 7 in)
Installed power
Propulsion
  • 3 ×
    triple-expansion steam engines
  • 3 × screw propellers
Speed18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Range5,200 nmi (9,600 km; 6,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement
  • 35 officers
  • 708 enlisted men
Armament
Armor
  • Belt: 110 to 250 mm (4.3 to 9.8 in)
  • Turrets: 250 mm (9.8 in)
  • Deck: 40 mm (1.6 in)

SMS Braunschweig

launched in December 1902, and commissioned in October 1904. She was named after the Duchy of Brunswick (German: Braunschweig). The ship was armed with a battery of four 28 cm (11 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Like all other pre-dreadnoughts built at the turn of the century, Braunschweig was quickly made obsolete by the launching of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought
in 1906; as a result, her career as a front-line battleship was cut short.

The ship served in

dreadnought battleships, Braunschweig 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. Braunschweig saw action during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915, when she engaged the Russian battleship Slava
.

By late 1915, crew shortages and the threat from British submarines forced the Kaiserliche Marine to withdraw older battleships like Braunschweig, and she spent the rest of the war first as a

hulked, and subsequently broken up for scrap
.

Design

Main article: Braunschweig-class battleship
Plan and profile drawing of the Braunschweig class

With the passage of the

Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office) adopted these guns for the new battleships, along with an increase from 15 cm (5.9 in) to 17 cm (6.7 in) for the secondary battery, owing to the increased threat from torpedo boats as torpedoes became more effective.[2][3]

Though the Braunschweig 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 HMS Dreadnought—armed with ten 12-inch (30.5 cm) guns—was commissioned in December 1906.[4] Dreadnought's revolutionary design rendered every capital ship of the German navy obsolete, including Braunschweig.[5]

Braunschweig was 127.7 m (419 ft)

triple-expansion engines that drove three screws. Steam was provided by eight naval and six cylindrical boilers, all of which burned coal. Braunschweig's powerplant was rated at 16,000 indicated horsepower (12,000 kW), which generated a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). She could steam 5,200 nautical miles (9,600 km; 6,000 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).[6]

Braunschweig's armament consisted of a

armored belt was 110 to 250 millimeters (4.3 to 9.8 in) 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 40 mm (1.6 in) thick. The main battery turrets had 250 mm of armor plating.[11]

Service history

Braunschweig at her launching on 20 December 1902

Construction to 1914

Braunschweig was laid down on 24 October 1901 at the

coastal defense ship Odin, though she did not formally join the unit until after trials concluded in late December. Upon joining the squadron, she replaced the battleship Wörth as the flagship of Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Alfred Breusing, the squadron's deputy commander.[12]

Haakon VII
's boat alongside on 28 November 1905

For the next several years, Braunschweig and the rest of the fleet were occupied with the peacetime training regimen that consisted of squadron and fleet training in April and May, a major fleet cruise in June and July, followed by annual fall maneuvers with the whole fleet in August and September. The year would typically conclude with a winter training cruise. During torpedo training on 16 February 1905, Wörth ran aground off

Haakon VII of Norway. Braunschweig was back in Kiel by 30 November.[12] On 14 December, Braunschweig was replaced as the deputy commander's flagship by the battleship Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, which had larger facilities for a command staff.[14]

The year 1906 followed the same pattern, concluding with fleet exercises in the North Sea in December before returning to Kiel.

dreadnought battleship Westfalen, while the crew from Kaiser Karl der Grosse was sent to Braunschweig.[16]

The fleet held training exercises in the Kattegat in May 1910. For the summer cruises of 1910 and 1911, the German fleet went to Norwegian waters; both years also saw winter cruises in the western Baltic.[16][17] On 26 April 1912, Braunschweig was relieved as the deputy flagship by the battleship Hannover. That year, Braunschweig did not take part in the summer training cruise, instead having her crew temporarily reduced. More sailors arrived on 8 December, allowing her to return to active service with V Division of III Squadron, under the command of KAdm Ehrhard Schmidt. She took part in a winter training cruise in February and March 1913, along with exercises in the North Sea in May. The ship's return to service proved to be short-lived; on 30 July her crew was reduced a second time in Kiel, now to man the new battleship König Albert. Braunschweig was assigned to the Reserve Division of the Baltic Sea as an inactive vessel.[16]

World War I

Map of the North and Baltic Seas in 1911

On 28 July 1914, Germany's ally,

Odensholm in the eastern Baltic. By 28 August, the ship's crew had been forced to detonate explosives to destroy Magdeburg before the relief force had arrived. As a result, Braunschweig and the rest of the squadron returned to Bornholm that day for further training exercises.[19]

Starting on 3 September, IV Squadron, assisted by the

Danzig to embark ground forces, while Braunschweig and IV Squadron steamed in advance. The operation was called off early, after British submarines were reportedly sighted in the Baltic. The two squadrons rendezvoused off Bornholm before proceeded on to Kiel, arriving on 26 September.[21]

Braunschweig underway, steaming at high speed

From 5 December 1914 to 2 March 1915, Braunschweig was occupied with guard ship duties in the mouth of the Elbe.[22] On 6 May, the IV Squadron ships were tasked with providing support to the assault on Libau (in modern Latvia). Braunschweig and the other ships were stationed off Gotland to intercept any Russian cruisers that might attempt to intervene in the landings; the Russians, however, did not do so. On 10 May, the British submarines HMS E1 and HMS E9 spotted IV Squadron, but were too far away to attack them.[23] Another stint in the Elbe followed from 28 May to 3 July.[22] The next day, following the loss of the minelaying cruiser SMS Albatross in the Baltic, the IV Squadron ships were transferred to reinforce the German naval forces in the area.[24] The army had again requested naval assistance, this time to support operations around Libau. On 7 July, Braunschweig left Kiel, bound for the eastern Baltic.[22] On 11 and 19 July, German cruisers, with the IV Squadron ships in support, conducted sweeps in the Baltic, though without engaging Russian forces.[25]

In August 1915, the German fleet attempted to clear the Gulf of Riga of Russian naval forces, to aid the German Army advancing on the city. IV Squadron was joined by I Battle Squadron, which consisted of the eight Nassau and Helgoland-class battleships, from the High Seas Fleet, along with three battlecruisers and a host of smaller craft. The task force was placed under command of VAdm Franz von Hipper, though operational command remained with Schmidt.[25] On the morning of 8 August, the Germans made their initial push into the Gulf; Braunschweig and Elsass were tasked with engaging the Russian pre-dreadnought Slava and preventing her from disrupting the German minesweepers. When it became clear that the minesweepers could not clear the minefield before nightfall, Schmidt called off the attempt.[26] A second attempt was made on 16 August; this time, Braunschweig remained outside the Gulf while the dreadnoughts Nassau and Posen took over the task of dealing with Slava.[27] By 19 August, the Russian minefields had been cleared and the flotilla entered the Gulf. Reports of Allied submarines in the area prompted the Germans to call off the operation the following day.[28]

Braunschweig remained in Libau until late September, when she was recalled to Kiel, arriving on the 23rd. Two days later, she resumed guard ship duty in the mouth of the Elbe, which lasted until 4 October. She returned to Kiel the next day, and on 12 October was deployed back to Libau to guard the port, along with Elsass and

Blohm & Voss shipyard, which lasted from 10 January to 26 February.[22]

On 4 March, the ship arrived back in Libau, where she began her duties as Schultz's command ship. During this period, her crew was reduced to the point that she was only capable of providing harbor defense. In June, the naval command further reduced the number of ships operating in the Baltic, and Schultz, whose role had been taken over by the commander of the VI Scouting Group, left Braunschweig on 3 June. The ship left Libau for Kiel on 1 August, arriving there two days later. On 24 August, her crew was reduced further. She was thereafter used as a training ship for naval recruits, until 20 August 1917, when she was decommissioned and used as a barracks ship until the end of the war in November 1918.[31] In this role, the ship supported III Submarine Flotilla.[32]

Postwar career

The

Reichspräsident (President of Germany) Friedrich Ebert came aboard the ship to observe the exercises on 5 and 6 September.[34]

In 1923, Braunschweig's bridge was rebuilt and enlarged.

naval review for Admiral Paul Behncke, the retiring Chef der Admiralität (Chief of the Admiralty). Zenker was promoted to replace Behncke, who was in turn replaced by now-VAdm Mommsen, who again made Braunschweig his flagship. Further exercises were held from 29 September to 5 October.[35]

On 1 April 1925, the command structure of the fleet was again reorganized, the O.d.S becoming the Flottenchef. The fleet was also expanded with the addition of the battleships Hessen and Elsass, though Braunschweig remained the flagship. Later that month, the battleships and cruisers of the fleet went on a cruise in the Baltic, and the summer cruise in June went to Norway. Braunschweig made stops in several cities, including

hulk in Wilhelmshaven before being broken up for scrap.[9]

Footnotes

Notes

  1. Seiner Majestät Schiff" (English: His Majesty's Ship).[1]
  2. ^ In Imperial German Navy gun nomenclature, "SK" (Schnelladekanone) denotes that the gun is quick firing, while the L/40 denotes the length of the gun. In this case, the L/40 gun is 40 caliber, meaning that the gun is 40 times as long as it is in diameter.[7]
  3. ^ This is a misidentification of the name of the class on the part of the treaty writers; Lothringen was a member of the Braunschweig class.

Citations

  1. ^ Jordan, p. 179.
  2. ^ Herwig, pp. 43–44.
  3. ^ Staff, p. 4.
  4. ^ Campbell & Sieche, pp. 21–22.
  5. ^ Herwig, p. 57.
  6. ^ a b c Gröner, p. 18.
  7. ^ Grießmer, p. 177.
  8. ^ Hore, p. 68.
  9. ^ a b c d e Gröner, p. 20.
  10. ^ Dodson, p. 51.
  11. ^ Gröner, p. 19.
  12. ^ a b c d Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, p. 113.
  13. ^ "Naval & Military intelligence". The Times. No. 36957. London. 22 December 1902. p. 10.
  14. ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, pp. 113–114.
  15. ^ Staff, p. 7.
  16. ^ a b c d e f g Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, p. 114.
  17. ^ a b c Staff, p. 8.
  18. ^ Scheer, p. 15.
  19. ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 8, p. 92.
  20. ^ Halpern, p. 185.
  21. ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, pp. 114–115.
  22. ^ a b c d e f Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, p. 115.
  23. ^ Halpern, p. 192.
  24. ^ Halpern, p. 195.
  25. ^ a b Halpern, p. 196.
  26. ^ Halpern, pp. 196–197.
  27. ^ Halpern, p. 197.
  28. ^ Halpern, pp. 197–198.
  29. ^ Polmar & Noot, pp. 44–45.
  30. ^ Herwig, p. 168.
  31. ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, pp. 115–116.
  32. ^ Gibson & Prendergast, p. 329.
  33. ^ Treaty of Versailles Section II: Naval Clauses, Article 181.
  34. ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, p. 116.
  35. ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, pp. 116–118.
  36. ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz Vol. 2, p. 118.

References

Further reading

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