SMS S 15 (1912)
 The sister boat S 14
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S 15 was a large torpedo boat of the Imperial Navy . The boat was part of a twelve-unit series that wasawardedto Schichau-Werke by the Reichsmarinamt in1912. S 15 wasseverely damaged by a sea mineon August 21, 1917 during a reconnaissance voyage in the English Channel , then decommissioned as irreparable and scrapped.
history
Construction and commissioning
The Schichau shipyard in Elbing , West Prussia, began building the S 13 to S 24 series of boats in 1911 . The third boat with hull number 866, for which the designation S 15 was planned, was ready for launch on March 23, 1912 . The boat was completed by late fall of the year and was put into active service by the Navy on November 1st. The construction cost around 1,600,000 marks .
Calls
The boat formed the VII. Torpedo Boat Flotilla with the sister ships of the complete series and in this context belonged to the 13th Torpedo Boat Half Flotilla with the boats S 13 to S 18 .
At the beginning of the war it was used in the outpost service in the North Sea and as a submarine safety device during advances by heavy units of the deep-sea fleet , for example during the Skagerrak Battle under the then commander OLt. S. Christian Schmidt as the guide boat of the 13th Half Flotilla (Chief: Kaptl. Georg von Zitzewitz). For the first time, the boat was converted to the more powerful 8.8 cm L / 45 TK in 1916. The bridge was also rebuilt and the front windshield raised. Since January 1917, Kapitänleutnant Diedrich Jacobs was in command of the boat. At the beginning of 1917, the 8.8 cm guns on the S 15 together with the other boats intended to be relocated to Flanders were exchanged for much more powerful 10.5 cm L / 45 cannons. On February 18, 1917, the boat moved to Zeebrugge together with the sister ships S 18 , S 20 and S 24 , the larger boats G 95 and G 96 and four A-II boats . S 15 with its three sister boats formed the 2nd destroyer half-flotilla of the Destroyer Flotilla Flanders and also served here as the guide boat of the half-flotilla.
The boat drove the following missions as part of this association:
- 25-26 February 1917 against English shipping in the English Channel
- March 17-18, 1917 against canal guard and The Downs , while the steamer SS Greypoint (894 GRT ) was sunk by S 20
- April 20-21, 1917 Bombardment of Calais , Dover (loss of the large boats G 42 and G 85 in battle)
- April 26-27, 1917 Bombardment of Margate and North Foreland
- 4 to 5 June 1917 Enlightenment against Thornton Bank , while loss of S 20 and severe damage to S 15 (four dead, seven wounded), which according to hit in the turbine room moving unable to Zeebrugge be introduced had
- Repair at the Imperial Shipyard in Hoboken near Antwerp
- August 21, 1917 in the English Channel to 51 ° 15 ' N , 2 ° 55' O to a sea mine run, by sister boat S 24 introduced
- decommissioned on September 20, 1917 as irreparable and then scrapped in Ghent
literature
- Harald Fock: Black journeymen , Volume 2: Destroyers before 1914 , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1981, ISBN 3-7822-0206-6 .
- Erich Gröner : The German warships 1815-1945 Volume 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speed boats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats , Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6 .
- Bernd Langensiepen , Dirk Nottelmann : The loss of S 20 - or: Many dogs are dead of the rabbit ... In: Marine-Nachrichtenblatt 4/2013, issue 3 pp. 2-14.