SMS was one of five pre-dreadnought battleships built for the German (Imperial Navy) between 1904 and 1906. Named after the German province of Silesia, was laid down at the Schichau-Werke shipyard in Danzig on 19 November 1904, launched on 28 May 1906, and commissioned on 5 May 1908. She was armed with a battery of four guns and had a top speed of . The ships of her class were already outdated by the time they entered service, as they were inferior in size, armor, firepower, and speed to the revolutionary new British battleship .
After commissioning, was assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, later being transferred to II Battle Squadron. She was primarily occupied with training cruises and fleet maneuvers in her early career. She served with the fleet throughout the first two years of World War I, seeing action at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, where she was briefly actively engaged in combat. After Jutland, the Imperial Navy relegated to guard duties before withdrawing her altogether in 1917, when she became a training ship. The Treaty of Versailles permitted the German navy to keep eight obsolete battleships, including , to defend the German coast. Initially kept in reserve, she was modernized in the mid-1920s and saw extensive service with the reorganized .
saw limited combat during World War II, briefly bombarding Polish forces during the invasion of Poland in September 1939. She escorted minesweepers during Operation Weserübung, the invasion of Norway and Denmark in April 1940. After the operation, she was given secondary duties, primarily serving as a training ship and icebreaker. She ended her career providing fire support in the Baltic coast. While off Swinemünde on 3 May 1945, she struck a mine and was towed into Swinemünde, where she was sunk by her crew in shallow water, though much of her superstructure, including her main battery, remained above water. In the remaining days of the war, used her anti-aircraft guns to defend the city from air attack. After the end of the war, she was broken up, though some parts of the ship remained visible until the 1970s.
Design
The passage of the Second Naval Law in 1900 under the direction of (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Alfred von Tirpitz secured funding for the construction of twenty new battleships over the next seventeen years. The first group, the five s, were laid down in the early 1900s, and shortly thereafter design work began on a follow-on design, which became the . The -class ships were broadly similar to the s, featuring incremental improvements in armor protection. They also abandoned the gun turrets for the secondary battery guns, moving them back to traditional casemates to save weight. The British battleship —armed with ten 12-inch (30.5 cm) guns—was commissioned in December 1906. Dreadnoughts revolutionary design rendered every capital ship of the German navy obsolete, including the class.
was long, had a beam of , and a draft of . She displaced , and had a full-load displacement of . She was equipped with three triple expansion engines and twelve coal-fired water-tube boilers that produced a rated and a top speed of . Although the third-fastest ship of her class, was the second-least fuel efficient. At a cruising speed of , she could steam for . She had a standard crew of 35 officers and 708 enlisted men.
The ship's primary armament of four 28 cm SK L/40 guns in two twin turrets; one turret was placed forward and the other aft. Her offensive armament was rounded out with a secondary battery of fourteen SK L/40 guns mounted individually in casemates. A battery of twenty SK L/45 guns in single mounts provided defense against torpedo boats. The ship was fitted with six torpedo tubes, all submerged in the hull. One was in the bow, one in the stern, and four on the broadside. Her armored belt was thick amidships in the citadel and she had a armored deck. The main battery turrets had sides.
Service history The contracts for the last two members of the class, ordered under the contract names "R" and "Q", were awarded on 11 June 1904. "R" was laid down on 19 November at the Schichau dockyard in Danzig. She was launched on 28 May 1906, at which time Duchess Mathilde of Pless christened her after the province of Silesia. Graf von Zedlitz Trützschler, the of Silesia, gave a speech at the launching ceremony. A shipyard crew took the ship from Danzig to Kiel in March 1908 for her final fitting out. was commissioned into the fleet on 5 May. She then began sea trials, which were delayed from 6 July to 5 September when the ship was temporarily used as a torpedo testing ship in place of the protected cruiser , which had to go into drydock for an overhaul. By early September, had completed her overhaul, allowing to join the fleet. She received her full crew on 22 September and thereafter joined I Battle Squadron.
The ships of the High Seas Fleet embarked on a cruise into the Atlantic Ocean that lasted from 7 July to 1 August. While on the way back to Germany, they were received by the British Royal Navy in Spithead. In late 1909, Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff became the new fleet commander. His tenure as fleet commander was marked by strategic experimentation, due to the threat the latest underwater weapons posed, and the fact that the new s were too wide to pass through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. Accordingly, the fleet was transferred from Kiel to Wilhelmshaven on 1 April 1910. In May 1910, the fleet conducted training maneuvers in the Kattegat. These were in accordance with Holtzendorff's strategy, which envisioned drawing the Royal Navy into the narrow waters there. The annual summer cruise was to Norway, and was followed by fleet training, during which another fleet review was held in Danzig on 29 August. A training cruise into the Baltic Sea took place at the end of the year.
In March 1911, the fleet conducted exercises in the Skagerrak and Kattegat. and the rest of the fleet received British and American naval squadrons at Kiel in June and July. The year's autumn maneuvers were confined to the Baltic and the Kattegat, during which another fleet review was held in order to prepare for an Austro-Hungarian delegation that included Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Admiral Rudolf Montecuccoli. On 3 November 1911, was transferred to II Battle Squadron with the rest of her sister ships; at this time, she transferred back to Kiel, where II Squadron was based. In mid-1912, due to the Agadir Crisis, the summer cruise was confined to the Baltic, to avoid exposing the fleet during the period of heightened tension with Britain and France. The fleet thereafter held the annual autumn maneuvers in August and September. A winter cruise in the Baltic followed at the end of the year. In 1913 the same uneventful pattern followed. On 14 July 1914, the annual summer cruise to Norway began. The threat of war during the July Crisis forced Kaiser Wilhelm II to end the cruise after only two weeks; by the end of July the fleet was back in port.
World War I served with the High Seas Fleet through the first two years of the war. At the outbreak of the conflict, the ship was deployed to guard the German Bight. She then rejoined the High Seas Fleet to support the battlecruisers that bombarded Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby on 15–16 December 1914. During the operation, the German battle fleet of 12 dreadnoughts and 8 pre-dreadnoughts came to within of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. Skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens convinced Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl that he was confronted with the entire Grand Fleet, and so he broke off the engagement and went back home. Two fruitless fleet advances followed on 17–18 and 21–23 April 1915. Another followed on 17–18 May, and another on 23–24 October. In March 1916, was employed as a target ship for U-boats. On 24–25 April, and her sisters joined the dreadnoughts of the High Seas Fleet to support the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group on a raid of the English coast. While en route to the target, the battlecruiser was damaged by a mine. The remaining battlecruisers conducted a short bombardment of the ports of Yarmouth and Lowestoft. The target's visibility was poor, so the operation was soon called off before the British fleet could intervene. Squadron exercises in the Baltic followed from 11 to 22 May.
Battle of Jutland
Admiral Scheer immediately planned another foray into the North Sea, but the damage to delayed the operation until the end of May. was the second ship in IV Division of II Battle Squadron under the command of Rear Admiral , positioned at the rear of the German line. During the ensuing operation, was the second to last ship in the German line, followed only by her sister ship . During the "Run to the North", Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the commander of the fleet, ordered the fleet to pursue the British V Battle Squadron at top speed. The slower -class ships could not keep up with the faster dreadnoughts and quickly fell behind. By 19:30, the Grand Fleet had arrived on the scene and confronted Scheer with a large numerical superiority. The German fleet was severely hampered by the presence of the slower -class ships; if Scheer ordered an immediate turn towards Germany, he would have to sacrifice the slower ships to make good his escape.
Scheer decided to reverse the course of the fleet with the , a maneuver that required every unit in the German line to turn 180° simultaneously. As they had fallen behind, the ships of IIBattle Squadron could not conform to the new course following the turn. and the other five ships of the squadron were, therefore, located on the disengaged side of the German line. Mauve considered moving his ships to the rear of the line, astern of IIIBattle Squadron dreadnoughts, but decided against it when he realized the movement would interfere with the maneuvering of Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers. Instead, he attempted to place his ships at the head of the line.
Later on the first day of the battle, the hard-pressed battlecruisers of I Scouting Group were being pursued by their British opponents. and the other so-called "five-minute ships" came to their aid by steaming in between the opposing battlecruiser squadrons. and her sisters could barely make out a target in the darkness. Owing to the poor visibility their shooting was ineffective. The British battlecruisers scored several hits on the German ships; in the brief melee a near miss from a large-caliber gun sprayed shell splinters onto 's decks, killing one man and wounding another. Admiral Mauve ordered an 8-point turn to the south, and the British did not follow.
Late on the 31st, the fleet organized for the night return to Germany; and fell in behind the mauled battlecruisers and at the rear of the line. British destroyers conducted a series of attacks against the fleet, some of which targeted . Regardless, the High Seas Fleet punched through the British destroyer forces and reached Horns Reef by 04:00 on 1 June. The German fleet reached Wilhelmshaven a few hours later, where the undamaged dreadnoughts of the and es took up defensive positions.
Later wartime service