Rhine class (1872)
 Drawing of the Rhine
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The Rhine class was a series of two monitors that the German Imperial Navy had built for the defense of the Rhine and Moselle . The ships SMS Rhein and SMS Mosel supplied by AG Weser in 1874 and named after these two rivers were only used very rarely and sold again after ten years.
history
During the Franco-Prussian War , the French moved gunboats on the Rhine and Loire . The boats brought to Strasbourg only partially arrived there and were not used during the war. Their crews took part in the defense of the fortress against the German troops on land . Four of the boats used on the Loire came into German hands when Orléans was captured in December 1870. A contingent of eight officers and 120 men from the Navy was able to make three of the boats navigable. However, it was not used during the war. The boats were transferred to Kiel in the spring of 1871 and overtaken by the Imperial Shipyard there . Two of these river cannon boats came onto the Rhine in 1874, but were not used.
After the war, the Imperial Navy considered whether warships should be stationed on these rivers to defend the Rhine and Moselle. The decision was finally made in favor of two armored vehicles, the development and construction of which was entrusted to Bremer Werft AG Weser, which was the first to receive its order from the Navy. The shipyard based its construction on the Leitha and Maros monitors of the Austrian Navy built for the Danube in 1871 . The ironworks in Gusswerk in Styria had manufactured the armor plates for these , from which AG Weser also ordered the armor material for the two German ships. In 1872 the design for the monitors was completed and construction began in Bremen in July of the same year. The launch could also take place in 1872, but the completion of the two ships by the shipyard took until spring 1874. The construction costs of 94,500 thalers each had to be borne by the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft , as the two monitors were also to be used to defend the Rhine bridges .
On April 25, 1874, both monitors came into service and started the journey to Rotterdam and up the Rhine. Presumably they received their armament in the Wesel fortress . In the spring of 1875 trips were made on the Rhine to Strasbourg. On April 20, 1875, Kaiser Wilhelm I also visited the monitors in front of Biebrich . On May 17th they were subordinated to the 7th fortress inspection of the VIII Army Corps . Initially, Mainz was the base for the Rhine and Moselle . Later they were moored in Koblenz together with the two former French gunboats with which they formed the "Rhein-Flußkanonenboot-Flotilla" . Further use of the ships are not recorded. Their extensive inactivity earned them the nickname "Loreley Flotilla", an allusion to the first verse ("I don't know what it should mean") of the poem " Die Lore-Ley " by Heinrich Heine . The advancing military development quickly made the two Rhine- class ships obsolete. They were therefore sold at the end of December 1884 for 3,500 marks . No information is available about their whereabouts.
technology
The monitors of the Rhine class had an iron hull in transverse frame construction . They were a total of 49.6 m long, with a waterline of 47.85 m with a construction displacement of 200 t. At their widest point, the ships measured 7.85 m. At the maximum displacement of 283 t in operational condition, they had a draft of 0.7 m forward and 1.07 m aft . The hull was equipped with cells at the bow and stern, which could be flooded in combat situations. The draft increased to up to 1.6 m, the freeboard, however, decreased to just 5 to 20 cm.
The central part of the monitors was designed as a casemate with 55 mm wrought iron armor on the sides and 16 mm on top . The armor material was applied to a 150 to 200 mm thick layer of teak . The gun turret, in which two bronze cannons of the caliber 12 cm L / 19 were positioned, was given the same protection . The tower could be rotated by hand, the ammunition for the guns was stored on both sides of the tower within the casemate. There was a supply of 300 rounds on board. There was a command post on the turret, which was protected with 16 mm wrought iron in the horizontal and 40 mm in the vertical areas.
The monitors were driven by two horizontally arranged 2-cylinder steam engines with simple steam expansion , which generated an indicated output of 320 PSi. The machines acted on two propellers with a diameter of 0.95 m and enabled the ships to reach a top speed of 8.25 knots . The steam required was supplied by two steam locomotive boilers , each of which was fed via two furnaces and operated at an operating pressure of 7 atm . The driving characteristics of the monitors were mediocre, when they were flooded they could hardly be controlled at all.
While the propulsion system was housed in the aft area, the rooms for the crew were in the front part. These were only set up later, so that the crew could not stay overnight on board at first. The crew consisted of an officer and 22 men. Eight men were needed to operate the guns.
literature
- Gardiner, Robert (Ed.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 . Conway Maritime Press, London 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 , pp. 261 .
- Gröner, Erich / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 , p. 163 f .
- Hildebrand, Hans H. / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 6 : Ship biographies from Lützow to Prussia . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, S. 120 (Approved licensed edition by Koehler's Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, approx. 1990).
- Hildebrand, Hans H. / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 7 : Ship biographies from Prussian eagle to Ulan . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, S. 68–70 (Approved licensed edition Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg, approx. 1990).
Footnotes
- ↑ Hildebrand / Röhr / Steinmetz: The German warships. Volume 7, pp. 68f.
- ↑ Hildebrand / Röhr / Steinmetz: The German warships. Volume 7, pp. 69f.
- ↑ a b c d e Hildebrand / Röhr / Steinmetz: The German warships. Volume 7, p. 69.
- ↑ a b c d e f Gröner / Jung / Maass: The German warships. Volume 1, p. 163.
- ↑ Gröner / Jung / Maass: The German warships. Volume 1, p. 164.
- ↑ a b c Hildebrand / Röhr / Steinmetz: The German warships. Volume 7, p. 70.
- ↑ a b The Rhine cannon boats . In: Illustrirte Zeitung . JJ Weber, Leipzig 3rd July 1875.