SMS Baden (1915)
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The SMS Baden was the second large-scale ship of the Bavaria class of the Imperial Navy . She was the last new German liner to be put into service and the last flagship of the ocean-going fleet . It was named after the Grand Duchy of Baden , its predecessor was the Baden of 1880, an ironclad of the Sachsen class .
construction
The Danziger Schichau shipyard , which was commissioned with the construction on April 1, 1913 , laid the keel for the ship with the household name Ersatz Wörth on December 20 of the same year under construction number 913 . Eight months after the type ship Bavaria , the new building was ready for launch on October 30, 1915. The further expansion dragged on until October of the following year. The total cost of the ship was around 49 million marks .
commitment
The Baden was put into service on October 19, 1916. The usual test drives as well as the individual training could be completed by mid-March 1917, so that on March 14th, the fleet chief Admiral Reinhard Scheer was able to switch from the previous flagship Friedrich the Great to the Baden . The ship was involved in exercises of the deep sea fleet in the Baltic Sea as well as the liners in the North Sea. During a return voyage from Heligoland in August, during which Kaiser Wilhelm II was on board, there was a slight grounding off Cuxhaven , but this had no consequences.
After the Battle of the Skagerrak , submarine warfare became the focus of the Imperial Navy. The high seas became a fleet-in-being . This role was one of the reasons for the unrest and refusal to serve on various ships in the deep-sea fleet that had already occurred in June 1917. The Albion company and the Finland Intervention therefore created a welcome change for part of the fleet. However, Baden was not involved in either venture. It was not until April 23 and 24, 1918, that the deep-sea fleet was back at sea to provide a British convoy reported in Norwegian waters . However, this was just as rarely encountered as the Grand Fleet . During this venture, the Moltke suffered a serious machine damage and had to be towed through the Oldenburg .
On August 7th, Vice-Admiral Franz von Hipper succeeded Reinhard Scheer, who had been appointed Chief of Admiralty's staff, as Chief of the Fleet. Shortly afterwards, the Schlussstein company , which was ultimately not completed, began . After the end of the submarine war in October, the opportunity arose to use the submarines as part of the fleet for one last major advance against the coast of Flanders and the Thames estuary, which was intended to provoke a meeting with the Grand Fleet. Refusals of orders on various ships, especially those of Thuringia and Heligoland , prevented the fleet from leaving the ship on October 29th. The squadrons were released to their home ports, whereby on November 1st the sailors' uprising in Kiel triggered the November Revolution.
In the course of the armistice negotiations , the internment of the modern ships of the deep-sea fleet was requested. However, the Baden was not on the list drawn up by the Entente . In their place, the internment of the still under construction and unseaworthy battle cruiser Mackensen was requested. After this error had been corrected, the Baden ran to Scapa Flow on January 7, 1919 accompanied by Regensburg . The small cruiser took over the redundant crew members of the former flagship and brought them back to Germany by January 16.
Whereabouts
When the order to scuttling was given on June 21, 1919 , the Baden sank only slowly. The British therefore succeeded in towing the ship into shallow water after the anchor chains were blown, where it sank aground. By July, the hull was sealed and pumped dry. British experts were then able to examine the re-buoyant ship for its structural features.
The Baden was awarded to Great Britain as spoils of war. Although still modern and on a par with the best ships of the Royal Navy at the time , the liner was not taken over into the British fleet, but used as a target ship . On August 16, 1921, the Baden was sunk while attempting to shoot. The wreck lies in the English Channel southwest of Portsmouth at a depth of about 170 meters in the Hurd's Deep .
Commanders
| October 19, 1916 to August 5, 1918 | Captain Victor Harder |
| August 24 to November 30, 1918 | Sea captain Heinrich Retzmann |
| December 1, 1918 to June 21, 1919 | Corvette Captain Otto Zirzow |
literature
- Siegfried Breyer: Battleships and battle cruisers 1905–1970 . JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-88199-474-2 , p. 300-302 .
- Erich Gröner , 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. 52-54 .
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies. A mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present day . tape 2 : Ship biographies from Baden to Eber . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, S. 26–32 (Approved licensed edition by Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg approx. 1990).
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 50 ′ N , 2 ° 23 ′ W