The Deutschland Class (1906)
The Deutschland on trials. This was Germany's newest creation the year of the Dreadnought. Enlarge
Above, the lead ship Deutschland steams at speed on her trials in the Baltic. Like a stately castle gone to sea, she represented the culmination of Germany's pre-dreadnought power, appropriately named after the Fatherland itself. The five battleships in this class were virtual repeats of the preceding Braunschweig class in armament, general layout and concept. The mark of visual distinction between the two classes was that funnel casings on the Deutschlands extended only one-third of the way up the funnel shaft; on the Braunschweigs, casings were continued to the very cap, giving the earlier ships a fatter-funneled profile. Not visible to the naked eye but of note, these were the first battleships to be equipped with the Model 1904 trainable submerged torpedo tube. Also of note, considerably greater protection was worked into the design than in the preceding class, at the expense of a degree of maneuverability. This was fortunate since they (along with the Hessen of the Braunschweig class) were the only pre-dreadnoughts to participate in the Battle of Jutland, the all-time armored battleship slugfest. By this time, they were known in the rest of the fleet as the "five minute ships" because that was the amount of time they were expected to last in combat with dreadnoughts. Indeed, the only battleship sunk at Jutland was SMS Pommern -- a member of the Deutschland class, although it was torpedoes, not naval shellfire, that did her in.The story goes that Adm. Reinhard Scheer, on his way to the top command, had commanded the pre-dreadnought squadron for some years. When Scheer, newly ascended to the top chair, cut the pre-dreadnoughts out of the operational orders leading to Jutland, officers from the squadron personally petitioned their C-in-C to take them along. In a moment of sentiment that was to be fraught with consequences, Scheer backed down. He had just conceded some 3 knots in fleet speed by including them. Pre-dreadnoughts were never again permitted to sail with the battle fleet; but this was Monday morning quarterbacking. No favorable opportunity for sortie presented itself to the Germans for the remainder of the War.
Like the Braunschweigers, the Deutschland class found itself obsolete virtually as soon as commissioned. The dreadnought revolution had this effect worldwide, as it was intended to. Yet this dark cloud turned out to have a silver lining. Again like the Braunschweig group, some of the Deutschlands were allowed to be retained under the Versailles Treaty of 1919. Two of the four surviving members of the group were sold for scrapping in 1920. Hannover remained in service until 1935, when it was planned to convert her to a radio-controlled target ship; however, these plans were never realized. She was used for experiments with mines for a time and survived WWII as a hulk at Bremerhaven, waiting at the wrecker's yard until she was dismembered starting in 1946. The Schliesen and Schleswig-Holstein lived through the Weimar Republic and on through the Nazi era, serving in Adm. Raeder's navy and taking part in several notorious Nazi campaigns: the crushing of Poland, the invasion of Norway, and Operation Barbarossa, as well as the long, agonizing retreat of the Wehrmacht before the relentless Red Army as the "Thousand-Year Reich" neared the end of its 12-year span (see below for details).
Specifications for the Deutschland class:
Dimensions: 430'(OA) x 73' x 26'7" Displacement: 14,218 tons std. Armament: (4) 11"/40 cal. (2x2), (14) 6.7"/35 cal., (20) 3.2" guns; (6) 17.7" torpedo tubes. Armor: 10/4" belt, 11" barbettes and turrets, 11" conning tower; 8" upper belt (side of upper deck); 6¾" secondary turrets; 6¾" casemates; 5½" aft CT, 2¼" deck. Fuel capacity: 700 tons of coal std, 1800 tons maximum; 200 tons of oil. Propulsion: (12) coal-fired Schultz-Thornycroft boilers; (3) 3-cyl vertical triple expansion engines developing 16,990 SHP, shafted to triple screw. Maximum speed: 18.6 kts. Crew: 743. Range: 4,800nm @ 10 kts. Cost: 23.8 - 23.9M marks each (£1.2M each at 1906 valuation.)
Ships in class: Deutschland · Hannover · Schliesen · Schleswig-Holstein · Pommern
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 127.6m x 22.2m x 8.21m Displacement: 14,218 tons std. Armament: (4) 280 mm/40 cal. (2x2), (14) 170 mm/35 cal., (20) 81 mm guns; (6) 450 mm torpedo tubes. Armor: 254/100 mm belt, 280 mm barbettes and turrets, 280 mm conning tower; 203 mm upper belt (side of upper deck); 172 mm secondary turrets; 172 mm casemates; 140 mm aft CT, 57 mm deck. Fuel capacity: 700 tons of coal std, 1,800 tons maximum; 200 tons of oil. Propulsion: (12) coal-fired Schultz-Thornycroft boilers; (3) 3-cyl vertical triple expansion engines developing 12,669 kW, shafted to triple screw. Maximum speed: 34.5 km/hr. Crew: 743. Range: 8,890 km @ 18.5 km/hr. Cost: 23.8 - 23.9M marks each (£1.2M each at 1906 valuation.)
Here is Hannover boiling along through the chop, her dense coal-smoke billowing off to port on the wind.
The lost battleship Pommern seen at her mooring in Wilhelmshaven before the War, above, and running at speed (below).
Here is Pommern in a painting by Claus Bergen, running all out in the wee hours of June 1, 1916 after surviving the main exchanges of the Battle of Jutland. For a thrilling enlarged view, click here. Together with the rest of the High Seas Fleet, Pommern was attempting to cut across the tail of the even larger British formation under cover of darkness. The goal: to break through the British gauntlet of steel, close the Danish coast, and flee south to the safety of Wilhelmshaven, the principal German base. Amazingly, most of the German fleet got through without being sunk -- Pommern was not one of the lucky ones, however -- and even more amazingly, they got through without a whisper of their movements coming to the British C-in-C, Adm. Jellicoe, in his flagship's charthouse only a few miles away.
Around 2 a.m., in company with an odd mixture of unscathed pre-dreadnoughts and battle-damaged superdreadnoughts, she found herself crossing a flotilla of destroyers when the British captains (less gun-shy than their counterparts in Grand Fleet battleships) launched an all-out torpedo attack on the Germans. They also had the temerity to report the contact to Jellicoe by wireless; but efficient German jamming apparently prevented the messages from getting through. The torpedoes missed all the prime targets -- the Helgoland class dreadnoughts -- but Pommern was hit by several torpedoes launched by the destroyer HMS Obedient. The 10-year-old battleship perished in one gigantic, shattering detonation -- literally blown to atoms. All hands -- 845 men -- were lost with their ship. According to an officer on the Obedient:Amidships on the waterline of the Pommern appeared a dull, red ball of fire. Quicker than one can imagine, it spread fore and aft, until, reaching the foremast and mainmast, it flared up the masts in big, red tongues of flame, uniting between the mastheads in a big, black cloud of smoke and sparks. Then we saw the ends of the ship come up as if her back had been broken, before the mist shut her from view.Fawcett and Hooper, The Fighting at Jutland (London: Macmillan, 1921), 208; quoted in Robert Massie, Castles of Steel (New York: Presidio, 2003), 648.
Pertinent Weblinks:
Pre-Dreadnoughts of the Third Reich
The Schliesen transiting the Panama Canal in 1938, on one of her several voyages as a training ship. The two forward funnels were trunked into one in a 1930-31 refit, while the aft funnel retained its round stovepipe shape. The remaining ships were converted to oil firing during the 1931 refit, but Schliesen relied on coal fuel until 1938.
Schleswig Holstein was modernized in 1926-7 and returned to service as flagship of the Reichsmarine from 1927 to 1935. At that point, she was converted to a training ship and numerous berths were installed for cadet seamen. She is seen here in that guise, on a training cruise in the late Thirties. This profile shows the combining of the funnels. Masts have been modernized in a rather bizarre pattern unlike any seen in any other navy, with a rangefinder and fire control station installed atop the foremast. Original ram bow and hull shape remain unchanged. The swastika flag and Nazi eagle at stern, just visible under the flagpole, seems the only visible innovation since Hitler's takeover.
In a notably historic frame excerpted from a Nazi propaganda film, the Schleswig Holstein fires the opening salvos of the Second World War on September 1, 1939. This unprovoked attack on the Poles was a typically loathsome instance of Nazi treachery. While ostensibly on a goodwill visit to Gdánsk, Schleswig Holstein opened fire on the Polish military complex at Westerplatte, signaling the opening of hostilities in WWII. Her 11" shellfire supported German marines, erupting from her former cadet berthing area to spearhead a 7-day assault on the Polish base. You can see the rangefinder atop the foremast locked onto the target. Spotters in the gunnery control station below checked the fall of shot and telephoned corrections to the turrets after each round. After her marines secured the port, the old battleship lent her artillery to operations at Gdynia and later Hela. The German blitzkrieg, combined with a Soviet invasion from the east, crushed Poland within weeks.Although far from modern, the Schleswig Holstein was still a large and impressive warship. The original concave cutwater and feudal shields were retained at the bow, no doubt to imbue patriotism and martial spirit in the crew. Swastika flags were much in evidence, reminding one and all of the Nazis' crackpot racial supremacist ideology. Nazi eagles clutching a swastika medallion were installed on either side of the stern (left), as on all German capital ships. For a closeup view of one of these regulation adlers, salvaged from the wreck of the Graf Spee, click here.
After provoking war with Poland and her allies, the Schleswig-Holstein supported German ground troops during the Polish campaign, took part in the German invasion of Norway, escorted convoys through the Baltic to supply the invasion of the USSR, acted as a port icebreaker for merchant convoys, and eventually supported the retreating German Army on the Eastern Front.
While employed in the latter capacity in December 1944, the old relic sustained 3 direct hits from British bombers. Her main turrets were returned to working order to support the ground troops, but the ship was eventually rendered stationary when the Nazis could not refuel her. Her guns were removed to assist in the "strategic retreat" ashore, and she was scuttled on March 21, 1945 in 5 fathoms (12m). The hulk was claimed by the Russians as a war prize, and was floated in 1946, towed first to Kronstadt and then to Talinn. Renamed Borodino, she was used first as a training hulk and then as a target ship. In this capacity she was finally sunk in the Gulf of Finland in 1956, after 50 years' duty. Her wreck remains where it sank that day.
Schliesen is dwarfed by the scenic grandeur of a Norwegian fjord, during operations to take over that neutral country in 1940.
Schliesen's war history was fascinating too. Starting in 1940, she provided fire support for Wehrmacht units in the invasion of Norway, escorted Baltic convoys, acted as an icebreaker at Kiel, and once again served as a cadet training ship. As the European war reached its climax, she supported the retreating German Army in Poland until she ran out of ammunition, then embarked more than 1,000 wounded and ferried them back to Germany. The plan was to replenish the magazines and return to the Eastern Front, but she struck a mine in the Baltic on May 3, 1945 and was towed into Swinemünde in sinking condition. There she was beached and partially flooded to make her settle on an even keel. Her main guns remained in service until just a few days before Grand Adm. Dönitz announced the German surrender when, once again out of ammo and within view of the advancing Red Army, she was blown up by her crew to prevent her from falling into Russian hands.
The wreck was broken up by an East German company starting in 1949. Most of the ship was gone by 1956, but with characteristic communist efficiency, the job dragged out until the early Seventies.
