The Wittelsbach Class (1900)
First fruit of the 1898 Navy Law: the name ship Wittelsbach on trials in 1900. A dramatic moment was beautifully captured on film. The vessel appears to have a minesweeping spar shipped at bow. At 18.1 kts, Mecklenburg was the speediest of the 5-ship class (Schwaben at 16.9 knots being the slowest). These were the first battleships commissioned after the 1898 Navy Law mandated the development of a powerful German navy. Entering service in 1900-01, they reflected an increased tempo of armaments building in the new century. Soon after, Tirpitz went to the Reichstag and demanded doubling of the already-increased budget: the previous class of five had taken a leisurely 4 years to construct, but build times would compress to 2½-3 years with the new money.
Improved Kaiser Friedrichs, the Wittelsbachs incorporated enhanced armor protection. Like the model, they featured low freeboard with the bow turret brought up onto the roof of a gunhouse bristling with 5.9" guns (to make up for their small calibre main weapons, they toted no less than 18 of their secondary guns, all in single casemate mounts.) The extra deck of clearance brought the bow 9.4" guns up to 30 feet above the water's surface in calm conditions. The secondary battery mounting was changed from the mostly-turret mounting in the Kaier Friedrichs. Most of the numerous 5.9" guns were carried in casemates in the central redoubt, but there were four singles mounted in small cylindrical turrets, two to each side at the top of the sided armament pyramid, as seen in the schematic and photos.As for main armament, the class continued the Krupp high-velocity 9.4"/40 cal. guns used in the Kaiser Friedrich III class, and thus were considered second-class battleships, inferior to their 12-inch-armed French, British, and Russian counterparts.
The design made clever use of cutouts in the hull, giving them a bit of the tumble-home look of the Borodino class, with its full beam only extending only one deck above the waterline, a nearly-vertical walled gunhouse rising on the inboard side, and a narrow, wet deck between the two verticals. As in the Kaiser class, the stern turret was sited one deck lower to the water than the bow turret, on a narrow quarterdeck running down the center section of the stern, stepped down to the cutout deck which carried the ship's fabric out to the outboard contours of the hull. Although the ships were a clear derivative from the preceding Kaisers, incremental improvements were made; as in the armor, also in the machinery. With an additional 1000 HP, the ships delivered a more dependable 18 knots. Fuel capacity was improved by 25%, and oil fuel capacity was doubled.
Still in commission at the beginning of WWI, these vessels were quickly relegated to harbor defense and later to more menial uses, some of them being hulked for utility ships and others becoming floating barracks for Germany's U-boat heroes. Of the five, Zähringen was spared by the Versailles Treaty and became a radio-controlled target ship for the remnant German navy (Reichsmarine) under the Weimar Republic. In this rôle she survived the Hitler régime and died with it at the end of the Second World War. On December 18, 1944, the old ship was hit by bombs during an air raid on Gdynia and sank in shallow water. The Nazi military authorities refloated and moved her to the harbor entrance, where she was sunk as a block ship on March 26, 1945. The wreck was raised and scrapped beginning in 1949, the rusty remnants of the last of the Wittelsbachs, half a century old. She had witnessed a time of mind-numbing change: the dreadnought arms race in its entirety, the First War, the collapse of the European dynastic system, depression, war again, and the birth of the Cold War. One can hardly blame her for wanting to crawl back into the blast furnace and start over.
Specifications for the Wittelsbach class:
Dimensions: 416' x 74'9" x 26'4" Displacement: 12,798 tons deep laden. Armament: (4) 9.4"/40 cal. (2x2), (18) 5.9"/40, (12) 3.4" guns and (8) machine guns; (5) 17.7" torpedo tubes. Armor: 9"/4" belt, 10" turrets and barbettes, 5½" lower deck redoubt and sided casemates, 10" conn, 6" bow gunhouse casemates and 5.6" gun turrets; 3" deck. Fuel capacity: 653 tons of coal (max. 1,400 tons) and 2,000 tons of bunker oil. Propulsion: 12 coal-fired boilers, 6 cylindrical and 6 Schultz-Thornycroft. (3) 3-cyl vertical triple expansion engines developing 15,000 ihp, shafted to triple screw. Maximum speed: 18.1 kts. Crew: 683. Average cost: £1,100,000 at 1900 valuation (equivalent to $5,335,000 US in 1900).
Ships in class: Witteslbach · Wettin · Zähringen · Schwaben · Mecklenburg.
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 126.8m x 22.8m x 8m Displacement: 12,798 tons deep laden. Armament: (4) 239 mm/40 cal. (2x2), (18) 150 mm/40, (12) 86 mm guns and (8) machine guns; (5) 450mm torpedo tubes. Armor: 229/102 mm belt, 253 mm turrets and barbettes, 250 mm lower deck redoubt and sided casemates, 153 mm bow gunhouse casemates and 150 mm gun turrets; 253 mm conning tower; 77 mm deck. Fuel capacity: 653 tons of coal (max. 1,400 tons) and 2,000 tons of bunker oil. Propulsion: 12 coal-fired boilers, 6 cylindrical and 6 Schultz-Thornycroft; (3) 3-cyl vertical triple expansion engines developing 11,186 kW, shafted to triple screw. Maximum speed: 33.52 km/hr. Crew: 683.
SMS Mecklenburg in a dramatic backlit photo, showing off her speed and power. At 18.1 kts, she was the speediest of the 5-ship class (Schwaben at 16.9 knots being the slowest).
SMS Wettin calmly anchored in the Weser. As seen in the schematic, the high sides of these ships were partially protected by 5½" armor as high as the weather deck. This modest degree of armor extended the length of the redoubt up to the main deck, and one deck higher yet in the middle, covering the casemated 5.9" battery. This marked a big improvement over the French style protection offered in the preceding class (French protection = generic steel shell plating on upperworks). The photo above shows the narrow central section and the elaborate geometry of the abutments on which the central mass was raised.
Germania, a Teutonic allegorical figure, graces an old card of the Zähringen. Germania was Britannia's opposite number, a national personification, usually shown wearing a breastplate and packing sword, shield, and crown. The most titanic Teutonic sculpture ever was a 38m (125-foot-tall) bronze Germania installed 1871-1883 overlooking the Rhine at Niederwald in Hesse, commemorating the victory over France in 1870 and the unification of Germany under Bismarck and Wilhelm I. In fact, that monarch both laid the cornerstone and dedicated the monument on its completion. Costing over one million gold marks (US $250,000), the monument was designed by Karl Weisbach with the figure and reliefs by sculptor Johannes Schilling. Its out-of-the-way location is no doubt responsible for its being one of the few bits of Hohenzollern Germany to survive two world wars. Looking at the Zähringen card, as yet the shield is emphasized over the sword. Within 10 years, and after three generations of dreadnoughts, that emphasis would change.
Stern of the ship: Detail of an inboard profile, or cutaway view, of the Wittelsbach, executed in exuberant Germanic detail in 1900. Boilers, engines, three screws, and aft 9.4" barbette are among the systems shown in this detail. Click to view entire diagram, or to view native size Querschnitt with 94 call-outs crifply lettered in German Fraktur Gothic fcript.
While these ships were used strictly for coast defense in the Great War -- their places in the line of battle taken by more modern ships --, it was their training in the Brandenburgs, Kaiser Friedrichs and Wittelsbachs, that enabled many of Germany's mariners to crew dreadnoughts and destroyers in decades to come.
