SMS Magdeburg (1911)
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SMS Magdeburg was a small cruiser of the Imperial Navy . The Magdeburg was the type ship of the Magdeburg class named after herand her sister ships were the Stralsund , Strasbourg and Breslau .
The cruiser was lost on the coast of Estonia on August 26, 1914 shortly after the start of the First World War . The Russian Navy then found a German signal book that had been weighed down with lead and thrown overboard. The British naval intelligence service succeeded in deciphering the German naval radio messages with the help of the signal book .
Technical specifications
The ship was in the 1910 AG Weser in Bremen to replace the Buzzard laid down on and ran on May 13 in 1911 according baptism of the Lord Mayor of Magdeburg , Hermann Otto Reimarus , from the stack . It was the tenth small cruiser that AG Weser built for the Imperial Navy. The commissioning took place on August 20, 1912. On December 1, 1912, the Magdeburg began its service as a torpedo test ship, replacing the Augsburg .
With a length of 138.7 m ( waterline 136 m), a width of 13.5 m and a draft of 5.1 m, the Magdeburg displaced 4,570 tons. It was armed with twelve rapid-loading cannons of 10.5 cm caliber and two 50 cm torpedo tubes . The ship had a long, flat stern that had space for 120 mines and a corresponding launching device. The crew numbered about 373 men.
Three Bergmann turbines with a total design output of 25,000 hp (29,904 hp at the time of acceptance) and three screws enabled the Magdeburg to achieve a top speed of 27.6 knots. With a bunker capacity of 1,200 tons of coal, she was able to travel 5,820 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 12 knots . However, the engine rooms were very cramped, so that maintenance work was difficult to carry out. From a speed of 22 knots there were very high vibrations in the hull, so that the speed of the ship was subject to considerable restrictions. As with the previous Kolberg class , the four cruisers of the Magdeburg class had different propulsion systems. Stralsund , which was also built by AG Weser, had the same three-shaft system and achieved 35,515 hp and 28.2 knots during acceptance. Constructed for the same power and 27 knots, the Wroclaw built by AG Vulcan in Stettin achieved 33,482 HP and 27.5 knots with its AEG Vulcan turbines acting on four shafts. The Strasbourg built at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven had marine turbines that worked on two shafts and made 33,742 hp during the acceptance tests and enabled a speed of 28.2 knots.
The Magdeburg- class cruisers were the first in the Imperial Navy that no longer had a battering bow . They had a so-called cruiser bow with a straight stem , which was much steeper above the waterline than below. They were also the first small cruisers in the German Navy with belt armor covering about 80% of their length. However, this was achieved at the expense of lower deck armor. This was a maximum of 40 mm, the belt armor, however, 60 mm.
fate
Due to the inadequate machinery, the Magdeburg could not be used in regular fleet service and was instead used as a torpedo test ship in place of the small cruiser Augsburg , which then became an artillery test ship. For this purpose, the two front guns in the so-called swallow nests were replaced by torpedo tubes. With this armament the ship sailed until its sinking.
After the war began, the Magdeburg was used in the Baltic Sea . In the first few weeks she carried out mine-laying operations and shelled the coast near Libau . On August 25, 1914, she advanced into the Gulf of Finland . There she ran aground the next day in the thick fog near the island of Odensholm , off the Estonian north coast. All attempts to get the ship afloat again failed. When the Russian cruisers Bogatyr and Pallada approached and took the Magdeburg under fire, the crew blew up their own ship. The torpedo boat V 26 and the small cruiser Amazone took over the survivors. A total of 15 men were killed. The commander , Korvettenkapitän habenicht, two officers and 54 non-commissioned officers and men were taken prisoner by the Russians.
The Russians were able to recover the ten guns of the Magdeburg , with which they then equipped a total of four of their ships: the gunboat Chrabry received six 10.5 cm guns, the guard ship Yastreb two, and the two guard ships Kopchik and Korshun each received one. The wreck of the Magdeburg was later completely destroyed by the Russians and above all by ice drift in the winter of 1914/15.
Signal book
The Russians also found three copies of the secret signal book ( code book ) of the Imperial Navy. When the Russian ships suddenly emerged from the morning mist, the Germans had weighed one of them down with lead and thrown it overboard. Russian divers found it and were able to retrieve it. Two more specimens were discovered on board. The Russians offered one of the signal books to their British allies, who gratefully accepted it on October 13, 1914. As a result, it turned out to be an extremely valuable gift, because the British, through their newly established naval intelligence service Room 40 and with the help of the signal book, succeeded in deciphering all German naval radio messages, which proved to be an enormous strategic and tactical advantage for the Royal Navy in naval warfare proved. The famous Zimmermann telegram , which ultimately led to the United States' entry into World War II, could be deciphered using Room 40 .
Commanders
| August to September 1912 | Frigate Captain Heinrich Rohardt |
| September 1912 to February 1913 | Frigate Captain Wilhelm Most |
| February 1913 to March 1914 | Frigate Captain / Sea Captain Gustav Otto Julius Maerker |
| March to August 1914 | Corvette Captain Richard habenicht |
replacement
A replacement for a small cruiser Magdeburg was under construction at Howaldtswerke in Kiel at the end of the war under construction number 602. It was launched on November 17, 1917, also under the name Magdeburg , but was not completed by the end of the war (about nine months before completion) and was scrapped in Kiel in 1922.
literature
- Gerhard Koop / Klaus-Peter Schmolke: Small cruisers 1903-1918, Bremen to Cologne class , Volume 12, ship classes and ship types of the German Navy, Bernard & Graefe Verlag Munich, 2004, ISBN 3-7637-6252-3
- Matti E. Mäkelä: The secret of the "Magdeburg" :, The history of the small cruiser and the meaning of its signal books in the First World War, Bernard & Graefe Verlag Koblenz, 1984, ISBN 3-7637-5424-5
Web links
- http://www.german-navy.de/hochseeflotte/ships/smallcruiser/magdeburg/index.html
- http://www.kaiserliche-marine.de/
- Alexej Jurjewitsch Emelin: The legends of the cruiser "Magdeburg" ( Memento from February 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- Magdeburg class on worldwar1.co.uk (Engl.)
- Magdeburg class on historyofwar.org (Engl.)
- Magdeburg- class with many pictures on battleships-cruisers.co.uk (engl.)
- Title page of the signal book of the Imperial Navy.
