SMS Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (1891)

The Elector Friedrich Wilhelm
Ship data
Ship type	Ship of the line
Ship class	Brandenburg class
Construction designation:	Ironclad D
Keel laying :	1890
Launching ( ship christening ):	June 30, 1891
Commissioning:	April 29, 1894
Builder:	Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven construction no .: 13
Crew:	568-591 men
Building-costs:	16.054 million marks
Sister ships:	SMS Brandenburg SMS Weißenburg SMS Wörth
Technical specifications
Construction displacement :	10,060 tons
Maximum deployment displacement :	10,670 tons
Length:	KWL : 113.9 m over all: 115.7 m
Width:	19.5 m
Draft :	7.4 m
Machinery:	12 horizontal cylinder steam boilers with coal firing 2 vertical 3-cylinder triple expansion steam engines
Number of screws :	2 three-leaf Ø 5.0 m
Shaft speed:	109 rpm
Power:	9,886 PSi
Top speed:	16.9 kn
Driving range:	4,300 nm at 10 kn
Fuel supply:	Max. 1050 tons of coal
Armor
Belt armor:	305 - 406 mm
Deck:	60 mm
Towers:	127 mm
Control center:	horizontal: 30 mm vertical: 300 mm
Barbettes :	300 mm steel
Armament
Guns:	6 × 28 cm (4 L / 40 + 2 L / 35 ) jacket ring cannons in three twin towers with a total of 352 rounds
Gun range 28 cm:	15.9 km
Guns 10.5 cm L / 35 :	8 with a total of 600 rounds
Guns 8,8 cm L / 35 :	8 with a total of 2000 shots
Revolver cannons 3.7 cm:	12
Torpedo tubes Ø 45 cm:	6 (4 sides, 2 bow) all over water

SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm was an ironclad , newlyclassifiedas a ship of the line in 1899, of the Brandenburg class of the Imperial Navy . Sister ships were SMS Brandenburg , SMS Weißenburg and SMS Wörth . Although the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm was the type ship of the class, contrary to common practice, this was named after her sister ship Brandenburg . After being used in the fleet and in 1900/1901 also off China, the ship wassoldto the Ottoman Empire in September 1910 with the sister ship Weißenburg , where it was sold under the new name Barbaros Hayreddin until it was sunk on August 8, 1915 in the Dardanelles by a British U-boat service was on.

Building history

In 1888, after Kaiser Wilhelm II took office , planning began for the four large ironclad ships of the Brandenburg class , which were designed by the chief designer of the Imperial Navy, Alfred Dietrich.

Technical specifications

The ships were 116 m long and 19.5 m wide and had a draft of 7.9 m. The water displacement was a maximum of 10,670 tons, the crew strength 570-590 men. Two triple expansion machines with a total of 10,000 hp gave them a speed of up to 17 knots. The range of action was 4,500 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 10 knots.

The four ships were the first German warships to be equipped on a larger scale with belt armor made of nickel steel. The belt armor was 30–40 cm thick and reached 114 cm below and 84 cm above the waterline. The armor was 6 cm, that of the barbed 30 cm. The ships were very maneuverable, but very wet when the sea was rough, so they took over a lot of water. They later became the first radio- equipped ships in the German Navy.

The main armament consisted of six 28 cm guns in three double barbeds (one each fore, amidships and aft), with the barrel length in the amidships barbette being shorter than in those fore and aft. There were also six (later eight) 10.5-cm rapid-loading cannons in side casemates , eight 8.8-cm rapid-loading cannons , twelve 3.7-cm revolver cannons and six 45-cm torpedo tubes. The heavy artillery could only be loaded in midship position, and its rate of fire was slow once the ready-made ammunition loaded in the turret was used up. The arrangement of the heavy artillery in three double barbeds on the midship line was progressive, as this enabled broadside fire with all guns on both sides. In the so-called Kaiser Friedrich class that followed , they went back to the smaller caliber of 24 cm and only four guns fore and aft.

Mission history

The Elector Friedrich Wilhelm was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven in 1890, christened and launched on June 30, 1891 as the first ship of the new class in the presence of the imperial couple , but only on April 29, 1894 as the third ship of the class in Service provided. The ship was named after the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm , who founded the first Brandenburg fleet, acquired colonies and went down in history as the Great Elector .

Before the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm , the sister ships Brandenburg , after which the class is generally named, and the Wörth had already been put into service. A number of accidents occurred during the test and the first commander suffered a heart attack.

Fleet service

The Elector Friedrich Wilhelm was on November 16, flagship of the First Division of the maneuver squadron. With the commissioning of the Brandenburg class , the Imperial Navy finally gave up the decommissioning of its main combat ships in winter. On December 5, 1894, Elector Friedrich Wilhelm began his first trip abroad as the flagship of the fleet to Sweden, where the 1st Division was in Vaxholm off Stockholm from December 7th to 11th , while the 2nd Division visited Karlskrona . On the march back, the units carried out another maneuver. On December 19, the ship went to the shipyard to u. a. to raise the chimneys. In 1895 the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm made the first major voyage at the end of March together with Brandenburg to the Shetland Islands . A trip to Kirkwall followed in May and the Kiel Canal inaugurated in June . On July 1, the division began an Atlantic trip to northern Spain. The return march took place on the 27th from Vigo via Queenstown, today Cobh , to Cowes , where the Emperor stayed with his yacht and the SMS Gefion . On August 10, the division returned to Wilhelmshaven and began the usual maneuvers in the North Sea, where the lack of reconnaissance ships was evident, even though the express steamer Normannia had been chartered from Hapag . In November the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm went on a visit to Gothenburg with the armored ships Württemberg and Sachsen as well as the Aviso Wacht . In 1896 the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm visited Vlissingen in the Netherlands at the end of April and in May Bergen (Norway) as part of the training and visiting trips of the now 1st Squadron , was visited by the Chinese Viceroy Li Hongzhang accompanied by the Emperor and took part in a naval parade in September before the Russian Tsar Nicholas in Kiel. In 1897, Reinhard Scheer , who later became the fleet chief, was the ship's and squadron's navigational officer. The most important trip took place in August to accompany the imperial couple to Kronstadt to visit the royal family. In 1898 there was a maneuver trip with the first circumnavigation of the British Isles by a navy since the times of the Armada with stops in Queenstown, Greenock and Kirkwall and from December 9th to 13th a stay in Kungsbacka .

On February 27, 1899, the four ships of the Brandenburg class were declared ships of the line under the Fleet Act . In May another trip to the Atlantic took place, which led on May 8th via Falmouth (Cornwall) to Lisbon (12th). In order to narrow down the German impression on the Portuguese a day later, part of the British Atlantic fleet with eight ships of the line and 4 armored cruisers arrived in the Portuguese capital. The Elector Friedrich Wilhelm was visited by the Portuguese King Karl I. At the end of the trip, the division took part in a parade off Dover on May 24th in honor of the 80th birthday of the British Queen Victoria and then returned to Kiel on May 31st. In December 1899 the division visited Kristiansand .

For Elector Friedrich Wilhelm, visits to the shipyard followed at the turn of the year and in the New Year. The training trip in May 1900 led to the Shetlands and the Sognefjord and to Bergen. The subsequent maneuvers were canceled in order to prepare for the planned foreign assignment.

East Asia deployment

During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 they besieged the legation district in Beijing and murdered the German ambassador, Baron Clemens von Ketteler . The widespread violence against the Europeans in China led to an alliance of eight nations against the nationalist Chinese movement, which included Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the United States, France and Japan. The soldiers currently stationed in China were too few to defeat the boxers. In Beijing it was a force of a little over 400 men from the eight nations who defended the legation district. The main element of German military power in China was the East Asian cruiser squadron , which consisted of the protected cruisers SMS Kaiserin Augusta , SMS Hansa and SMS Hertha , the small cruisers SMS Irene and SMS Gefion and the gunboats SMS Iltis and SMS Jaguar . In addition, there were 500 German soldiers in Taku as part of an international force of around 2100 men who, under the leadership of British Admiral Edward Seymour, tried to terrorize Beijing, but were stopped by the violent resistance of the boxers at Tientsin .

Despite the objections of the Naval Minister Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz , who considered the operation unnecessary and too extensive, in the summer of 1900 the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm became the flagship of Rear Admiral Richard von Geißler together with her sister ships of the Brandenburg class of the 1st Division of the First Liner Squadron and the small cruiser Hela sent to East Asia. They left Kiel on July 9, 1900 and Wilhelmshaven on the 11th to support the international armed forces in China. On 17./18. July the division bunkered in Gibraltar and passed the Suez Canal on 26/27. , where the gunboat SMS Luchs joined the association. In front of Perim and in Aden, the ships bunkered again in order to start the crossing of the Indian Ocean to Colombo on August 2nd without a lynx . From there, the association continued through Malakka Street to Singapore , where the first long break was made during the division's departure from August 19 to 23. On the 28th the division reached Hong Kong and on August 30th it was in the roadstead of Wusung near Shanghai and participated in the "blockade" of the Chinese Navy, which had no intention of going up the Yangtze River against the overwhelming international forces. In addition to the four German ships of the line, two British ships blocked the exit from the river alongside a large number of cruisers, cannon and torpedo boats of all nations. The siege of the Legation Quarter in Beijing was now over.

The Wörth soon continued to Taku, the other three ships did not enter the Yellow Sea until the end of September . They should support the planned landings of the International Expeditionary Force at Qinhuangdao and Shanhaiguan starting October 3rd. At the same time, the landing corps of the ships of the line replaced the sailors of the cruiser squadron there on land. From the end of October, the ships returned individually to the Wusung roadstead. Only one ship usually stayed in the Yellow Sea. Docking times were agreed for all ships and the usual replacement of part of the crews in the cruiser squadron was planned. At the same time, the Navy increased its demands for the division to withdraw because of a lack of real tasks. Elector Friedrich Wilhelm went to the dock in Nagasaki from January 4 to 23, 1901 . Then she was the only one of the liners to make a trip up the Yangtze to Nanjing to visit the Chinese governor general there. In March the whole division was temporarily gathered in Tsingtau to take over the newly arrived crew members and to familiarize them with the tasks during small exercises. On May 26, the order to return home for the entire liner division was received, although the Foreign Office demanded that two ships remain in front of China.

On June 1, 1901, the German association with the four ships of the line and the Hela began the march back home, which was reached on August 11. On the way back there were longer stays in Singapore and Colombo, where the German commander-in-chief of the international troops, Field Marshal Alfred Graf Waldersee , overtook the division on his journey home on the Gera . During the march against the monsoon, the security division called Mahé (Seychelles) as an additional coal station. After marching over Aden and Port Said, the division met the new I. Division of the I. Squadron under Prince Heinrich of Prussia on August 1st in Cádiz on the SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Große and both divisions then ran home together. The entire operation was extremely costly, as foreign coal stations had to be used on the marches to and from East Asia. These ships were actually not needed for operations during the Boxer Rebellion . The demonstrative nature of the operation, which cost the Reich over 100 million marks, was obvious. No other nation deployed its forces to the same extent.

Fleet service again

The Elector Friedrich Wilhelm was rebuilt several times from 1902, so to get eight (instead of six) of the 10.5 cm casemate guns and to increase the coal bunker capacity. In 1906 the four ships were out of date, but this has less to do with the construction of the HMS Dreadnought , which is often listed in this context. At the time, this was a single ship with a number of teething problems. The ships of the Brandenburg class had outdated armor and outdated guns that could no longer keep up with more modern weapons in terms of rate of fire and range. Their speed was also out of date. From 1907 on, the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm was only used for training purposes in the reserve fleet of the North Sea.

Ottoman Empire and World War I

Naval flagship Barbaros Hayreddin

On September 12, 1910, the ship was sold to the Ottoman Empire for 9 million marks , where it was then renamed Barbaros Hayreddin , after the former commander-in-chief (Kapudan Pascha) of the Ottoman Navy Khair ad-Din Barbarossa (1534–1546), Provided service. The sister ship Weißenburg was sold at the same time and was then called Turgut Reis .

Balkan Wars

During the First Balkan War, Barbaros Hayreddin bombed Bulgarian troops in the old battleship Mesudiye on November 17, 1912 near the Turkish positions near Çatalca . There were few worthwhile goals, but the moral effect was substantial. On December 16, 1912, the Ottoman Navy under Ramiz Bey tried to break out of the Dardanelles with the ships of the line Barbaros Hayreddin , Torgud Reis and Mesudiye , the cruiser Mecidiye and three destroyers in order to wage sea war in the Aegean Sea. In the battle of Elli , the attempt failed alone on the armored cruiser Georgios Averoff under Rear Admiral Pavlos Koundouriotis and the destroyers Aetos , Ierax and Pantir . Koundouriotis separated with his fast units from his three old ships of the line Spetsai , Hydra and Psara and stopped the Ottoman fleet. He focused his fire on the flagship Barbaros Hayreddin , which had seven dead and fourteen wounded. There were also eight dead and 20 wounded on the Turgut Reis and three dead and seven wounded on the Mesudiye . The Mecidiye was also slightly damaged. The Ottomans fled to the Dardanelles.

A second attempt by the Ottoman Navy on January 18, 1913 to break out of the Dardanelles also failed in the battle of Lemnos . The attempt made again under Ramiz Bey by the ships of the line Barbaros Hayreddin , Turgut Reis and Mesudiye , the cruiser Mecidiye and five destroyers failed about four hours after the breakout from the Dardanelles in the fire of the Greek squadron under Rear Admiral Koundouriotis with the Georgios Averoff , the old ships of the line Spetsai , Hydra and Psara as well as seven destroyers, since the Greek admiral did not, as expected by the Turks and ordered by his own government, which Georgios Averoff had sent to pursue the Hamidiye , which had broken out alone five days earlier . When they got within combat range of the Turks about three hours after passing the Dardanelles exit, the Mecidiye and the destroyers turned off immediately and the Mesudiye soon after hits by Hydra and Psara . After 20 minutes of fighting a volley which hit Georgios Averoff the Barbaros Hayreddin and destroyed its central tower, which she hove to. After a few minutes the Turgut Reis followed . The Georgios Averoff followed them for over two hours and, thanks to its higher speed, was able to bring itself into favorable positions for further hits. The Barbaros Hayreddin suffered over 20 hits, had destroyed large parts of its artillery and left 32 dead and 45 wounded. The Torgud Reis suffered a leak and further damage from seventeen hits, which left nine dead and 49 wounded. The Mesudiye had also received several hits and complained about 68 failures.

On February 8, 1913, the Ottoman Navy supported an amphibious assault on Şarköy on the north bank of the Sea of Marmara near Tekirdag , where Bulgarian troops broke through in December. The Barbaros Hayreddin and the Torgud Reis were about a kilometer off the coast and supported the land troops with other ships. The attack was unsuccessful, but the ships very successfully covered the retreat of the Ottoman land troops with their guns.

In March 1913, the Barbaros Hayreddin was used again in the Black Sea to support the front at Çatalca. On March 26, they stopped an advance by the Bulgarians with their heavy and medium artillery together with the Turgut Reis . On March 30th the next operation took place in which a Turkish attack was supported.

World war

During the First World War , the Barbaros Hayreddin gave some artillery to the coastal defense of the Dardanelles. She was sunk on August 8, 1915 under the German commander Hermann Lorey on the way to the Dardanelles by a torpedo of the British submarine HMS E11 off Bolayır at the northern end of the Gallipoli peninsula in the Sea of ​​Marmara. There were 253 dead.

Commanders

The commanders of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm during their service in the Imperial Navy in chronological order:

April 29 to June 1894	Sea captain Valette
June 5th to September 5th 1894	Sea captain Rudolf Rittmeyer
November 1, 1894 to September 1895	Sea captain Oscar Boeters
October 1895	Corvette Captain Otto Hoepner (deputy)
October 1895 to September 1897	Sea captain Friedrich Graf von Baudissin
September 1897 to October 1899	Sea captain Karl Galster
October 1899 to September 1901	Sea captain Henning von Holtzendorff
September 1901 to October 14, 1902	Sea captain Johannes Wallmann
December 14, 1905 to October 1906	Frigate captain / sea captain Karl von Levetzow
October 1906	Corvette Captain Franz Brüninghaus (deputy)
October 1906 to September 1908	Sea captain Friedrich Marwede
September 30, 1908 to November 30, 1909	Sea captain Leo Jacobson
November 30, 1909 to September 1910	Frigate captain / sea captain Hans Uthemann

literature

• Lynn E. Bodin: The Boxer Rebellion , Osprey Publishing, London 1979
• Edward J. Erickson: Defeat in detail: the Ottoman Army in the Balkans. 1912-1913. Greenwood Publishing, 2003.
• Edward J. Erickson: Ordered to die: a history of the Ottoman army in the First World War. Greenwood Press, 2001.
• Robert Gardiner, Randal Gray, Przemyslaw Budzbon: Conway's all the world's fighting ships, 1906-1921. Naval Institute Press, 1985.
• Erich Gröner / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945. Volume 1. Munich 1982. ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 .
• Hans Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. A mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present day. Biographies, Volume 3. Mundus Verlag 1990.
• Bernd Langensiepen / Dirk Nottelmann / Jochen Krüsmann: Half moon and imperial eagle. Breslau and Goeben on the Bosporus 1914–1918. Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Hamburg 1999. ISBN 3-8132-0588-6
• Lawrence Sondhaus: Naval warfare, 1815-1914. Routledge, 2001.

Web links

Commons : SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm (1891)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• SMS Elector Friedrich Wilhelm on deutsche-schutzgebiete.de
• Postcards about the ship and its sisters

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bodin, pp. 5f.
2. ↑ Bodin, p. 1
3. ↑ Bodin, p. 6
4. ↑ Bodin, p. 11
5. ↑ Bodin, p. 11f.
6. ↑ Mesudiye in the Engl. Wikipedia
7. ↑ Destroyer of the Wild Beast class in the Engl. Wikipedia
8. ↑ Spetsai. in the engl. Wikipedia
9. ↑ Hydra. in the engl. Wikipedia
10. ↑ Psara. in the engl. Wikipedia
11. ↑ Erickson, 2003, p. 264 ff.
12. ↑ Erickson, 2003, p. 288