SMS Mackensen
 The Mackensen launched
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SMS Mackensen was a large cruiser in the Imperial Navy . The ship gave its name to a class of four battle cruisers that were built during the First World War . Like her sister ships, the Mackensen was not completed.
construction
As early as 1912, planning began for a new class of battle cruisers, which was to be built following the Derfflinger class . In particular, the caliber and number of tubes of the heavy artillery were the subject of various discussions and memoranda. It was not until May 23, 1914, that the final design, which envisaged eight cannons with a caliber of 35 cm as the main armament, was approved. On August 14th, after the outbreak of the First World War, the Hamburg shipyard Blohm & Voss received the order to build two ships of the new class. The estimated costs of around 66 million marks each were to be paid for the first ship from the normal budget of 1914, and for the second from the war fund.
The shipyard stretched the keel on January 30, 1915 for the new building, which was called the replacement Victoria Louise and was listed as a large cruiser due to the requirements of the fleet laws in the naval budget . The launch was originally planned for the spring of 1916. However, due to the heavy use of the shipyard as a result of the war and the lack of shipyard workers, construction progressed only slowly. So the launch could only take place on April 17, 1917 as part of a small celebration. After a speech by Colonel General Josias von Heeringen , the new building was baptized in the name of Field Marshal General August von Mackensen , who was very successful on the Eastern Front . The act of baptism was performed by his wife Dorothea.
The further expansion of the ship also proceeded very slowly and was finally stopped. At the end of the war, the Mackensen was about 12 months before completion at normal construction speed. However, there was no further construction.
Whereabouts
The Mackensen part because of an error to the according to the armistice to inter alternating modern ships of the Imperial Navy. The battle cruiser was accidentally placed on the list of ships required by the Entente instead of the fleet flagship Baden . However, the error was noticed and corrected after a short time. A delivery of the half-finished and unseaworthy Mackensen would hardly have been possible anyway.
Since the German Reich was not allowed to build ships with a constructive displacement of over 10,000 tons according to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty , completion of the Mackensen was ruled out. The ship was therefore removed from the list of warships on November 17, 1919. The ship was sold in 1921 and scrapped in Kiel from 1923 to 1924.
literature
- Breyer, Siegfried: Battleships and battle cruisers 1905–1970 . JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-88199-474-2 , p. 302-304 .
- Gröner, Erich / 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. 85-87 .
- Hildebrand, Hans H. / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 6 : Ship biographies from Lützow to Prussia . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, S. 30–32 (Approved licensed edition by Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg approx. 1990).
References and comments
- ↑ Today about 199,000,000 €.
- ^ According to Gröner 15 months (Gröner, Erich: Die deutschen Kriegsschiffe. Volume 1, p. 87.).
SMS Mackensen | SMS Graf Spee | Replacement Freya | Replacement Friedrich Carl
List of ships of the Imperial Navy
List of German battleships and battlecruisers