SMS Greif (ship, 1886)

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flag
Overview
Type Aviso
Shipyard

Germania shipyard , Kiel
Construction no .: 26

Order 1884 as:
replacement for Loreley
Keel laying 1885
Launch July 29, 1886
Namesake Mythical creature griffin
Commissioning July 9, 1887
Removed from ship register October 25, 1912
Whereabouts Sold in 1921 and demolished in Hamburg
Technical specifications
displacement

Construction: 2050 t
Maximum: 2266 t

length

KWL : 99.5 m
over everything: 102.6 m

width

9.75 m

Draft

4.22-4.34 m

crew

7 officers and 170–185 men

drive
  • 6 double-ended cylinder boilers
    from 1906:
    8 cylinder boilers
  • 2 horizontal 2-cylinder double expansion steam engines
  • 5431 PSi
    5795 PSi
  • 2 four- bladed propellers 4 m
speed

18.2 kn
19.1 kn

Range

2180 nm at 12 kn
3960 nm at 10 kn

Armament
1887-1891:
1891-1911:
  • 6-8 Sk - 8.8 cm L / 35
    696-800 rounds
  • 4-6 rev - 3.7 cm
stock

330–350 t coal
436 t coal

Volume

1376 BRT
933 NRT

SMS Greif was an unarmored Aviso of the Imperial Navy before the First World War .

The advent of torpedo boats in the last quarter of the 19th century posed a major threat to large warships. The Greif was therefore not only designed, like the Avisos before it, as a fast reconnaissance and dispatch ship, but also intended and armed for fighting torpedo boats. With a top speed of 19  knots , she was fast enough to intercept torpedo boats; However, in order to be able to achieve this speed, their armament was considerably inferior to that of contemporary small cruisers .

Construction and technical data

The ship was in 1885 in Kiel Germaniawerft placed on Kiel, expired on 29 July 1886 from the stack and was put into service on 9 July 1887th The ship was 102.6 meters long (99.5 meters in the waterline) and 9.75 m wide and had a draft of 4.22 m. The water displacement was 2266 tons . The ship had three funnels and two masts, but auxiliary sails were dispensed with for the first time on a German cruiser.

drive

Two 3-cylinder double expansion steam engines , manufactured by AG Germania in Berlin-Tegel, gave 5341 PSi and a top speed of 19 knots. This made the Greif the fastest ship in the high seas fleet at the time. The steam was generated in six double-ended cylinder boilers that had been supplied by the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel and were set up in three boiler rooms one behind the other. The range of action was 2180 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 12 knots. In 1906 the double-end boilers were replaced by eight cylinder boilers, which were housed in two boiler rooms.

Armament

The armament initially consisted of two 10.5 cm ring cannons (one each fore and aft) and ten 3.7 cm revolver cannons . From 1891, the two 10.5 cm guns were replaced by eight 8.8 cm quick-loading guns and the 3.7 cm guns were reduced to just four. With this conversion, the ship was much better suited to the role that the new torpedo boat destroyers had in the British Royal Navy . The crew numbered 170-185 men.

career

The Greif was only partially seaworthy because it had a hard time rolling in heavy seas . With the speed of the torpedo boats increasing very soon, the Greif was soon no longer usable as a torpedo boat destroyer and was instead used as a training ship, naval scout and test ship.

After commissioning, the Greif undertook extensive sea exercises in the Shetland Islands until mid-September 1887 and was then deactivated again on October 17, 1887 in order to carry out improvements. In March 1889 she was reactivated, used several times by Kaiser Wilhelm II for ceremonial purposes, then as a fisheries protection ship and from June to August 1889 as an escort, dispatch and mail ship of the imperial yacht Hohenzollern on the north cape of the emperor. After taking part in the autumn maneuvers of the deep sea fleet, it was decommissioned and modernized on September 30, 1889. On November 1, 1890, she was reactivated and assigned to the torpedo attempt command. From June to August 1891 the Greif was converted at the Imperial Shipyard in Kiel: the two 10.5 cm cannons and six of the ten 3.7 cm revolver cannons were removed and replaced by eight 8.8 cm cannons.

In the period that followed, fleet service alternated between reconnaissance and dispatch ship, with repeated downtimes and decommissioning. On April 1, 1899, the obsolete ship was removed from the active fleet and used as a training ship as well as for testing ship radio technology. In September 1901 it was reclassified as a small cruiser since 1899, like all remaining Avisos , and transferred to the reserve fleet. On October 25, 1912, the Greif was removed from the list of active ships. Too old to be reactivated in World War I, the ship was once again in service as a mining hulk in 1917 . It was scrapped in Hamburg in 1921.

Commanders

Surname Period
KL Hirschberg July 1887 to October 1887
KL / KK Flichtenhöfer March 1889 to September 1889
Unknown (overpass) May 1888
KL Rollmann, Max November 1890 to September 1891
KK Jaeschke, Paul September 1891 to January 1892
KL Obenheimer January 1892 to September 1892
KK Wodrig September 1892 to April 1893
KK Wodrig October 1893 to April 1894
KL Gildemeister April 1894 to September 1894
KZS Wodrig September 1894 to October 1894
KK Mandt May 1897 to October 1897
KK Bredow, Heinrich October 1897 to September 1898
KL / KK Schliebner September 1898 to September 1899
KK Prowe September 1899 to August 1900
KK Bruch, Ludwig August 1900 to September 1900

Remarks

  1. Numbers in italics: data after boiler replacement in 1906.

Others

  • The Cross Road in the district of Kiel Gaarden-Ost was named after the SMS Greif.

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 .
  • John Roberts, HC Timewell, Roger Chesneau (Eds.), Eugene M. Kolesnik (Eds.): Warships of the World 1860 to 1905 - Volume 1: Great Britain / Germany . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5402-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Information about Greifstrasse in the Kiel Wiki