SMS Emperor Barbarossa
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SMS Kaiser Barbarossa was the last ship of the Kaiser Friedrich class , a class of five ships of the line of the Imperial Navy .
construction
As the fourth ship of the class of the household names was posted on August 3, 1898 Battleship A provided new building on keel laid. For the F. Schichau shipyard in Danzig , it was the first order placed by the Imperial Navy for a large warship. The liner was ready for launch on April 21, 1900, six months after the last emperor Charlemagne . After a naming ceremony speech by the State Secretary of the Navy Office , Alfred Tirpitz , christened Princess Louise Sophie of Prussia the ship after the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I in the name of Emperor Barbarossa .
The further expansion extended into the spring of 1901. After a 7 m deep fairway had been dredged, the Kaiser Barbarossa was brought to the Danzig district of Neufahrwasser and the acceptance test run was carried out on May 4th. The ship was then moved to Kiel .
Peace time
The Kaiser Barbarossa was first put into service on June 10, 1901 in Kiel. From July 19, the ship was assigned to the I. Squadron and a short time later took it on a trip to Cádiz to meet the Brandenburg -class ships returning from China . From August 22nd to September 21st the ship took part in the autumn maneuvers of the fleet, during which a fleet parade was held in front of Tsar Nicholas II in the Bay of Danzig .
In December 1901, Emperor Barbarossa traveled along the southern Norwegian coast with other units. In April and May 1902, the 1st Squadron carried out a training trip around the British Isles . The ship also took part in the Kiel Week as well as in various exercises and maneuvers. Other smaller trips were made, including visits to Bergen . A trip made in spring 1903 led again to Spain. Sustained damage to the rudder post made it necessary to spend around three weeks at the Kaiserliche Werft Kiel at the end of July 1903 , where a temporary repair was carried out. The Kaiser Barbarossa then took part in the autumn maneuvers and in November the winter voyage of the fleet. On December 15, the ship was decommissioned and the damage suffered was subsequently repaired, which lasted until January 1905.
At that time, it was decided to modernize the ships of the Kaiser Friedrich class. The Kaiser Barbarossa was the first ship on which this was carried out. Among other things, the foremast , which was designed as a heavy tower mast, was replaced by a star mast. In addition, four of the 15 cm guns of the middle artillery and the torpedo tube located at the stern were omitted . The first part of the modernization was completed by autumn 1907.
The Kaiser Barbarossa was put back into service on October 1, 1907 and reassigned to the 1st Squadron. With this the ship took part in several exercises and maneuvers. Various trips were also made, one of which led to the Azores in 1908 . On September 17, 1909, Kaiser Barbarossa resigned from the 1st Squadron. In the following months, the squadron received the Nassau- class units, the first German large-line ships . With the exception of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the ships of the Kaiser Friedrich class were combined in the reserve formation of the Baltic Sea. In April 1910, the Kaiser Barbarossa was assigned to the Association of School and Test Ships and carried out exercises in the Baltic Sea together with them. During the autumn maneuvers the ship belonged to the temporarily formed III. Squadron. After its completion, it returned to the now renamed Reserve Division of the Baltic Sea on September 17, but was decommissioned on October 13.
Although the Kaiser Barbarossa was technically completely outdated, the Kaiserliche Werft Kiel carried out the remaining modernization work until the middle of the following year. The military value of the ship could not be noticeably increased as a result. After completion of the work, the Kaiser Barbarossa was activated again from July 31 to September 15, 1911 and again in the temporarily formed III. Squadron deployed during the autumn maneuvers. Then the decommissioned ship remained in the reserve.
Use in the First World War
After the outbreak of the First World War , the Kaiser Barbarossa was put back into service on August 5, 1914 and assigned to the newly established V Squadron, whose flagship was the Kaiser Wilhelm II . The squadron was mainly used in the security service in the North Sea, but took part from September 19 to 26 and from December 26 to 30 in advances into the eastern Baltic Sea. Due to their low combat value, the ships of the Kaiser Friedrich class were withdrawn from service at the front in February 1915. Due to the shortage of personnel in the Imperial Navy, the crew of the Kaiser Barbarossa was reduced on March 5 , but was brought back to normal on April 11. The ship was used as a target ship for torpedo inspection in the Baltic Sea for the next seven months. The last decommissioning took place on November 19.
Whereabouts
The Kaiser Barbarossa was disarmed in 1916 and was used as a houseboat for prisoners of war in Wilhelmshaven until the end of the war . On December 6, 1919, it was finally deleted from the list of warships. The ship was scrapped in Rüstringen the following year .
Commanders
| June 10 to October 1901 | Sea captain Hugo Westphal |
| October 1901 to October 1902 | Sea captain Leopold Koellner |
| October 1902 to December 15, 1903 | Sea captain Carl Franz |
| October 1, 1907 to September 1909 | Frigate Captain / Sea Captain Felix Funke |
| September 1909 to August 1910 | Sea captain Wigand Bossart |
| August to September 1910 | Sea captain Friedrich Boedicker |
| September 13th to October 13th 1910 | Sea captain Richard Lange |
| July 31 to September 15, 1911 | Sea captain Gottfried Freiherr von Dalwigk zu Lichtenfels |
| August 5, 1914 to March 1915 | Sea captain Ernst-Oldwig von Natzmer |
| March to November 19, 1915 | Sea captain Max Schlicht |
literature
- 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. 37-39 .
- Hans. H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 5 : Ship biographies from Kaiser to Lütjens . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, S. 22-24 .
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: Ship classes and ship types of the German Navy . tape 10 : The armored ships and ships of the line of the Brandenburg, Kaiser Friedrich III, Wittelsbach, Braunschweig and Germany classes . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 2001, ISBN 3-7637-6211-6 .
Footnotes
- ↑ In the Imperial Navy, the class was initially called, at least unofficially, the Kaiser class, as the names of all ships began with Kaiser . This happened even though there was already an Kaiser class in the Imperial Navy with the armored ships SMS Kaiser and SMS Deutschland from 1874 . Only with the commissioning of the large liner of the new Kaiser class in 1912 did the general name of the old liner class change to better differentiate it from Kaiser Friedrich class (Hildebrand / Röhr / Steinmetz: p. 26).
- ↑ The III. Squadron was not formed as a permanent association until October 1, 1913 and consisted of the ships of the Kaiser and König classes until the end of 1916 , and then of the latter and SMS Bayern until the end of the war .