Gazelle class
 SMS Thetis
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The Gazelle- class was a class of small cruisers in the Imperial Navy . At the time of development, the ships were referred to as "Cruiser IV. Class" or "Small Protected Cruiser". They were based on the official drafts of 1895/96 and 1897/1900 and were transverse or longitudinal frame steel structures. It was built in two subclasses. Under the official draft of 1895/96, SMS Gazelle and, with a reinforced machine system, the cruisers SMS Niobe , SMS Nymphe , SMS Thetis , SMS Ariadne , SMS Medusa and SMS Amazone were created . The second official draft provided for a slightly enlarged version: SMS Frauenlob , SMS Arcona and SMS Undine .
The ships of this class were the first modern small cruisers of the Imperial Navy and were built as augmentation structures based on the first naval law of 1898. As a ship class, they had no predecessors, but were based on the Avisos of the Meteor class (1890/92) and the single ship SMS Hela (1895) constructed. The general specifications and the line plan were adopted from the Hela and the hull was enlarged in width, so that stronger armament could be installed. The class is the ancestor of a number of other classes of small cruisers, which ended with the Kolberg class from 1910. The following Magdeburg- class small cruisers were designed according to more modern principles.
The Germania shipyard in Kiel delivered three cruisers: the type ship Gazelle , the Nymph and the Amazone . Five cruisers came from AG Weser in Bremen with Niobe , Ariadne , Medusa , the type ship of the improved second series Frauenlob and Arcona (second series). The Thetis was the only ship built in an imperial shipyard in Gdansk . The Howaldt shipyard in Kiel delivered the last cruiser of the class (second series) with the Undine .
Six of the cruisers had long-term use in the fleet as reconnaissance aircraft: the Niobe from April 1901 to September 1904, the Ariadne from May 1901 to September 1906, the Amazone from December 1901 to September 1905, the Frauenlob from February 1903 to January 1908, the Medusa from April 1903 to August 1907 and the Arcona from July 1903 to June 1907.
Three were used as school cruisers: the Nymph from January 1902 to September 1907, and from May 1908 to February 1909, the Undine from January 1905 to July 1912 and the Medusa from September 1907 to May 1908.
Four served as foreign cruisers: the Gazelle from June 1901 to August 1904, the Thetis from September 1901 to June 1906, the Niobe from June 1906 to March 1909 and the Arcona from July 1907 to March 1910.
From 1904 to July 1912, all ten cruisers were transferred to the reserve. Only the Arcona , which had been converted into a mine cruiser, came back into service on October 31, 1912 and was active at the beginning of the war. The others were not put back into service until they were mobilized. The Ariadne , the Undine and the Frauenlobstraße were lost during the war.
The gazelle was scrapped shortly after the end of the war, while the remaining six were initially available for the Imperial Navy. The Medusa was in service from July 1920 to September 1924 and the Arcona from May 1921 to December 1923. She was replaced by the Amazon , which remained in service until January 1930. In April 1922 the Thetis also came into service, which was replaced in November 1924 by the Nymph , which remained in service until April 1929.
The Niobe was only a reserve ship for the Reichsmarine and was sold to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1926, where it was in service as the school cruiser Dalmacija until 1941 . After the attack by the Axis powers on the ally, the ship was captured by Italy on April 17, 1941 and used as a Cattaro by its navy in the Adriatic. After the capitulation of Italy, the ship fell to the German Navy on September 9, 1943 and was put back into service with a German-Croatian crew under its original name, but was lost on December 22, 1943.
Footnotes
- ↑ Technical data of SMS Thetis with the required values, other ships partly deviated from them.
literature
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung and Martin Maass: The German Warships 1815–1945 Volume 1 . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 .
- Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford.
- Alfred G. Nagel, Amazone reminiscences from the time when three navies became , Kommissionsverlag Walter G. Mühlau, Kiel.
