SMS Kaiser (1911)
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SMS Kaiser was the type ship of the Kaiser class , a series of five large-line ships ( battleships ) of the Imperial Navy before and during the First World War .
Prewar service
The Kaiser was commissioned as a replacement for the outdated Siegfried- class coastal armored ship SMS Hildebrand, which is about to be retired . She was built at the Imperial Shipyard in Kiel and launched on March 22, 1911. The commissioning took place on August 1, 1912.
On December 8, 1913, the Kaiser became the flagship of the Detached Division under Rear Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz , the previous director of the Naval Academy , which was to march into the South Atlantic and as far as Chile . Together with the liner SMS König Albert and the small cruiser SMS Strasbourg , she ran from December 9th via the Canary Islands and Sierra Leone until December 29th to Lomé in Togo . From December 31, 1913 to January 3, 1914, the ships continued to Cameroon , where from January 2, Victoria and Duala were called. There the division met the ships of the West Africa station, the gunboats SMS Panther and SMS Eber . The march continued on January 15th. Swakopmund was reached on the 21st and Lüderitz Bay in German South West Africa on the 22nd . For political reasons, a visit to Cape Town had already been dispensed with when planning the final trip. From Lüderitzbucht the division marched on January 28th via St. Helena (February 2nd) to Rio de Janeiro (February 15th to 25th), where the Brazilian President Hermes Rodrigues da Fonseca visited the ships. The ships went to the Argentine Mar del Plata , where the ships of the line remained, while the squadron chief sailed with the Strasbourg on March 5 to Buenos Aires . He fell ill there, so that the commander of the emperors , Captain Adolf von Trotha , took the lead, moved the liners to Montevideo and paid his respects to the President of Uruguay , José Batlle y Ordóñez . Strasbourg also arrived there on the 12th and Rear Admiral von Rebeur-Paschwitz on the 15th, who took over command again and led the division around Cape Horn to Valparaíso (April 3rd to 11th) in Chile. From there, the division returned via a number of ports, visiting Bahía Blanca (April 25th to 28th) and Santos (May 7th to 12th) , among others . There, the Strasbourg separated from the division, as it was ordered to reinforce the East American station in the Dominican Republic .
The liners ran on May 16 from Rio de Janeiro via Cape Verde , Funchal on Madeira and Vigo and returned home on June 17, 1914, where they were for the III. Squadrons stepped. On the approximately 20,000 nautical miles long journey, not a single significant damage had occurred.
War effort
The ship was involved in almost all naval advances and in the Battle of the Skagerrak from May 31 to June 1, 1916 as part of the deep-sea fleet . Mostly it was the flagship of the 2nd Admiral of the III., From December 1916 of the IV. Squadron.
From September 24 to November 2, 1917, the emperor was involved in the conquest of the Baltic Islands . On October 14, in front of the Kassar-Wik , she shot the Russian destroyer Grom immobilized with the second volley, which, however, could initially be towed away. Boarded by German units, the Grom sank on the same day in Moon Sound because of the heavy artillery hits towed by the torpedo boat SMS B 98 .
With her sister ship Empress took Emperor on the second naval battle at Helgoland in part on 17 and 18 November 1917 where the two ships of the line to secure the II. Reconnaissance group under Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter (flagship of the light cruiser SMS Königsberg formed) and a heavy hit scored on the cruiser HMS Calypso . On February 2, 1918, she ran out to secure the small cruiser SMS Stralsund, which had been damaged by a mine , and then took part in the fleet advance from April 23 to 25, 1918, which was canceled after the turbine crash of the battle cruiser SMS Moltke .
On November 19, 1918, she left Wilhelmshaven as a ship to be interned . On June 21, 1919, she was self- sunk in Scapa Flow on the Orkneys with the other ships of the interned deep-sea fleet in order to avoid the final confiscation by the victorious powers.
The Kaiser wreck was lifted by a British salvage company on March 20, 1929. It was then taken to Rosyth and scrapped there until 1930.
Commanders
| August to September 1912 | Sea captain Georg von Ammon |
| October 1912 to January 1913 | Sea captain Friedrich von Bülow |
| January to September 1913 | Sea captain Ernst Ritter von Mann Edler von Tiechler |
| September 1913 to January 1916 | Sea captain Adolf von Trotha |
| January 1916 to June 1917 | Sea captain Walter Freiherr von Keyserlingk |
| June 1917 to August 1918 | Sea captain Max Loesch |
| August 6 to November 5, 1918 | Sea captain Hermann Bauer |
| September / October 1918 | Captain Ernst Vanselow (deputy) |
| November 1918 to June 21, 1919 | Lieutenant Curd Wippern |
See also
literature
- Erich Gröner, Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945. Volume 1. Bernard & Graefe, 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,
