SMS Hessen
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 The Hessians after modernization in 1926 |
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| Type | Ship of the line |
| class | Braunschweig class |
| Construction designation | Ship of the line L |
| Construction data | |
| Shipyard | Germania shipyard , Kiel |
| Keel laying | April 15, 1902 |
| Launch | September 18, 1903 |
| Commissioning | May 19, 1905 |
| Whereabouts | Retired January 18, 1917, returned to service on January 5, 1925, retired November 12, 1934, then target ship, delivered to the Soviet Union in 1946, scrapped around 1960 |
| Technical specifications | |
| Displacement | Construction: 13,208 t maximum: 14,394 t |
| length | Water line: 126 m over all: 127.7 m |
| width | 22.2 m |
| Draft | 8.16 m |
| Armament |
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| Machine system | 3 standing 3-cylinder triple expansion piston engines 14 oil / coal-fired steam boilers (6 of which are cylinder boilers ) 3 screws (central shaft: 4-wing Ø 4.5 m; outer shaft: 3-wing Ø 4.8 m) |
| Drive power | Continuous load: 16,000 PSi maximum: 16,486 PSi |
| Fuel supply | 1,670 tons of coal and 240 tons of oil |
| speed | 18.2 kn |
| Driving range | 5,200 nm at 10 kn |
| crew | 35 officers and 708 men |
SMS Hessen was a ship of the line of the Braunschweig class of the German Imperial Navy . Her sister ships were SMS Braunschweig , SMS Elsass , SMS Preußen and SMS Lothringen .
From 1925 to 1934 she was back in service with the Reichsmarine . From 1937 she was used as a remote-controlled target ship and after the end of the war in 1946 it was delivered to the Soviet Union .
Construction and technical data
Their construction was supervised by August Müller . The Hesse was in on 15 April 1902 Germania Werft in Kiel set to Kiel, was on September 18, 1903 - christened by Princess Irene of Hesse-Darmstadt , the wife of Prince Henry of Prussia - from the stack and was on May 19, 1905 put into service. The construction costs amounted to 23.9 million gold marks .
The ship was 127.7 m long ( waterline 126 m), 22.2 m wide and had a maximum draft of 8.16 m. The water displacement was 13,208 t (standard) and 14,394 t (maximum). The armament consisted of four 28 cm rapid loading cannons in twin turrets , fourteen 17 cm rapid loading cannons, eighteen 8.8 cm rapid loading cannons and six 45 cm torpedo tubes. The crew numbered 35 officers and 708 men. The turret armor was up to 300 mm and the belt armor up to 225 mm thick; the turret had 225 mm and the deck 40 mm armor. The ships of the Braunschweig class had three funnels and ran with their three three-cylinder triple expansion steam engines at up to 18.7 knots. The range of action was 5,200 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 10 kn.
Compared to their predecessors, the ships of the Braunschweig class had stronger main and casemate artillery . Their seaworthiness was also improved; although they tended to roll in rough seas , they took less water overboard than their predecessor classes.
Imperial Navy
The Hessen was assigned to the 2nd Squadron of the High Seas Fleet on March 4, 1906 and took part in various fleet maneuvers and trips abroad (Norway, the Baltic Sea, Canary Islands, Spain) from 1906 to 1914. She was involved in serious accidents twice: during the autumn maneuvers of 1911 she rammed and sank the Danish freighter Askesund near Bülk, and on her summer voyage in 1912 she rammed the G 110 torpedo boat in the Baltic Sea, killing three of the boat's crew. In February 1912 she was on duty as an icebreaker in the Baltic Sea.
Like the successors to the Deutschland class , the Hessen and its sister ships were already out of date when the First World War broke out. As the oldest ship of the line in an active squadron, her replacement by the large ship SMS König was scheduled for August 26, 1914.
Military service
At the beginning of the war, the Hessen remained in the Second Squadron, which was stationed in the mouth of the Elbe and should also be used in the Baltic Sea if necessary. An independent deployment of the squadron in the Baltic Sea against Libau , which was planned for November, was prohibited by the Kaiser near Bornholm “because of the danger of submarines”.
The squadron was part of the cover forces in the various naval operations. In none of these advances did the Second Squadron have any combat contact. In June 1915, additional oil burners were built into the machinery. From April 5, 1916, the squadron had to regularly deploy a ship to guard the sound, the Hessen was the first to take up this service. In April 1916, the ship was retrofitted with four anti-aircraft machine guns.
May 31st / April 1st In June 1916 it took part in the Battle of the Skagerrak , as the only ship of its class, under sea captain Rudolf Bartels . Together with the five ships of the Germany class ( SMS Germany , Pomerania , Silesia , Schleswig-Holstein , Hanover ) it formed the second squadron under Rear Admiral Franz Mauve at the end of the deep sea fleet. The six ships were the only pre-dreadnought ships of the line on either side. The ships struggled to keep the speed of the high seas fleet and had fallen behind at the start of the battle. By the fleet commander Reinhard Scheer commanded the first battle-turn , used by 180 ° simultaneously in all vessels should also make sure that the old ships are not left behind. In fact, as the battle progressed, they got more into the middle of the German battle line. At around 9:25 p.m., the squadron came under fire from the British battlecruisers without clearly sighting the enemy. Only Hessen , Hanover and Germany seem to have answered fire with 20, 8 and 4 shots. The Schleswig-Holstein , which itself did not shoot, received a 34.3-cm (?) - results, which killed three people and more were wounded. British destroyers attacked several times in the early hours of the morning. The Hessen was able to avoid a torpedo, but the Pomerania running in front of her received at least one torpedo hit, which apparently hit a magazine and led to the immediate sinking of the ship and the entire crew. The Hessen remained undamaged during the battle.
In December 1916, the Hessen served briefly as a target ship in the Baltic Sea before she went to the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel on December 12, 1916 to be disarmed. On January 18, 1917, she was decommissioned. The armament was expanded and until the end of the war it was used as a barge for the 1st submarine flotilla in Brunsbüttel . A warning label on the hull led to the nickname "SMS Kleinste Fahrt".
Imperial Navy
Hopelessly out of date it was of no interest to the victorious powers. With their four sister ships and four somewhat newer ships of the Germany class , they became the original equipment of the Reichsmarine . Not significantly modernized, the Hanover and Braunschweig were commissioned in 1921, followed by Alsace in 1924 .
The Hessen was overtaken in 1924 and put back into service on January 5, 1925 as the fourth ship of the line of the Reichsmarine . Their 8.8 cm guns were reduced to just four, which were replaced by anti-aircraft guns in 1930. Initially it had two old 45 cm torpedo tubes, which were later replaced by a more modern torpedo system with two 50 cm torpedo tubes. In 1931 the number of 17 cm guns was reduced to twelve.
The ship made many training trips in the interwar years. It first visited Norway in June 1925 and Libau and Reval at the beginning of 1926 and was then involved in the first major association trip of the Imperial Navy to the Mediterranean in May / June, on which the Hessians visited Port Mahon , Cartagena and Vigo . In 1927 the even longer trip followed from March to June with visits by the Hessians to the Canary Islands and Cape Verde and to Lisbon . In July, the Hessians visited the Free City of Danzig together with the T 190 torpedo boat as the first German warship after the First World War . In 1928 she visited Norway again, and in 1929 the fleet voyage took four ships of the line, five new and four old torpedo boats to northern Spain. The Hessians called at the ports of Caraminal on the Arosa Bay , Villagarcía de Arosa and El Ferrol . In late summer there was another trip to the Baltic Sea with Schleswig-Holstein , eighteen torpedo boats, six minesweepers and tenders, on which the two liners visited Stockholm with five torpedo boats from August 30 to September 5.
The organizational change of the Reichsmarine on January 1, 1930 meant that the four ships of the line Schleswig-Holstein (the Flottenflaggschiff), Silesia , Alsace and Hesse were united under one "commander of the ships of the line" in Kiel. From April 2 to June 18, the fleet voyage to Spain and the Mediterranean was carried out with four ships of the line, a light cruiser and ten torpedo boats. All ships visited Vigo, the Hesse then Alicante and with the Schleswig-Holstein Palermo and Syracuse . Then the Hesse ran to Venice and met the Silesia and Schleswig-Holstein in front of Corfu and then visited Palma with the other three liners , Alicante again alone and again four of them Cádiz . Another visit to Kristiansand took place in autumn .
In the summer of 1931 the next fleet trip took place back to Norway. In 1932 the Hessen made a visit from Visby to Gotland and then with the fleet flagship Schleswig-Holstein from July 6th to 12th in Oslo . In autumn she visited Gdansk again. The foreign trip to Spain planned for 1933 was canceled for the fleet, the Hessen made only one visit abroad in Reval. In 1934 there was another summer trip to Norway, and the Hessians visited Bergen and the Sognefjord .
On November 12, 1934, the Hessen was decommissioned and replaced by the armored ship Admiral Scheer .
Target ship
Then she was converted into a radio-controlled target ship. Masts, armament and two chimneys were removed, a new bow section added, which made the ship 10 m longer, and a turbine propulsion system installed, which allowed the target ship to reach a maximum speed of 20 knots by remote control. From April 1, 1937, the Hessen served the Navy as a target ship, steered by the command boat Blitz , the former torpedo boat T 185 (ex V 185 ), which had been in use with the target ship Zähringen since 1933 . For the operation as a target ship, there was a crew of 80 who were not on board for the remote-controlled operation. By converting the old torpedo boat T 151 (ex V 151 ), the Hessen received its own command boat called Komet on March 12, 1937 . On August 30, the first sharp exercise with the light cruiser Leipzig took place . The command boat Komet became a torpedo catch boat in April 1939. It was replaced by the converted torpedo boat T 123 (ex T 23 ex S 23 ), which was also called Komet .
Soviet Navy
After the end of the Second World War , the Hessen and the Blitz were confiscated by the Soviet Union . At the beginning of January 1946 they went to Libau together with four other former German ships (the light cruiser Nürnberg , the destroyer Erich Steinbrinck , the torpedo boat T 33 and the old torpedo boat and now the torpedo catch boat T 107 ) and were renamed Tsel and Wystrel . The remaining crews of six ships were of the ride-and then also to the Soviet Navy to be delivered submarine tender Otto desires returned to Germany.
The Hessen / Tsel was finally retired at the end of the 1950s or the beginning of the 1960s and then scrapped.
Commanders
| September 19, 1905 to January 18, 1917 | |
| September 19, 1905 to September 1906 | Sea captain Carl Derzewski |
| September 1906 | Kapitänleutnant Max Lans (deputy) |
| September 1906 to September 1908 | Sea captain Karl Dick |
| September 1908 to September 1910 | Captain Ehrhardt Schmidt |
| September 1910 to December 1911 | Sea captain Friedrich von Kühlwetter |
| December 1911 to January 1912 | Corvette Captain Adalbert Zuckschwerdt (deputy) |
| January 1912 to September 1915 | Sea captain Hans Küsel |
| September 1915 to July 1916 | Sea captain Rudolf Bartels |
| July to September 1916 | Sea captain Max Lans |
| September 1916 | Sea captain Ernst Ewers |
| September 1916 to January 18, 1917 | Sea captain Max Lans |
| January 6, 1925 to November 12, 1934 | |
| January 6, 1925 to April 1926 | Sea captain Karl Klüpfel |
| April 1926 to September 1927 | Sea captain Ernst Junkermann |
| September 1927 to September 1928 | Sea captain Emil Heusinger von Waldegg |
| September 27, 1928 to September 28, 1930 | Frigate Captain / Sea Captain Otto Feige |
| September 29, 1930 to September 26, 1932 | Sea captain Willy von Nordeck |
| September 27, 1932 to October 2, 1933 | Sea captain Rolf Carls |
| October 3, 1933 to September 1934 | Sea captain Hermann Boehm |
| September 12th to November 12th 1934 | Sea captain Wilhelm Marschall |
Known crew members
- Eberhard Ahrens (1892–1945), ship's doctor
- Carl-Heinz Birnbacher (1910–1991) was Deputy Commander of the Fleet from 1968 to 1970 as Rear Admiral of the German Navy
- Robert Gysae (1911–1989), from 1967 to 1970 commander of the North Sea Marine Division
- Günter Kuhnke (1912–1990) was Head of the Naval Office from 1966 to 1972 as Rear Admiral
- Alfred Schumann (1902–1985), was in 1963 as Flotilla Admiral Deputy Inspector of the Navy and Chief of Staff Fü M
Picture gallery
SMS Hessen
Side view of the Hessen
Ships of the 2nd squadron of the German deep sea fleet in the North Sea before the First World War.
In the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal under the Levensau high bridge
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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. Koehler's publishing company, Herford,
- VE Tarrant: Jutland: The German Perspective. Cassell Military Paperbacks, 1995, ISBN 0-304-35848-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tarrant, p. 195.
- ^ Tarrant, p. 243.
- ↑ H. Merleker: Ships also have nicknames in Die Seekiste No. 2 1951, p. 82/83
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↑ The ship was packed with more than 1,500 tons of cork in order to keep it buoyant after hits?
According to Hildebrand, there was no cork on board that had not proven itself at Zähringen (risk of fire) - ↑ Built in 1907 at Vulcan Stettin, 1923–1933 in T-Flotilla of the Reichsmarine, until September 1936 minesweeper.
- ↑ Short biography of Otto Feige (in English). In: Axis Biographical Research. Retrieved June 25, 2016 .
Web links
- http://www.german-navy.de/hochseeflotte/ships/battleships/hessen/index.html
- http://www.deutsche-schutzgebiete.de/sms_hessen.htm
- Elevation of a class ship
- engl. Overview of the Braunschweig class
