SMS Goeben

SMS was the second of two s of the Imperial German Navy, launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War veteran General August Karl von Goeben. Along with her sister ship, was similar to the previous German battlecruiser design, , but larger, with increased armor protection and two more main guns in an additional turret. and were significantly larger and better armored than the comparable British .

Several months after her commissioning in 1912, , with the light cruiser , formed the German Mediterranean Division and patrolled there during the Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, and bombarded French positions in North Africa and then evaded British naval forces in the Mediterranean and reached Constantinople. The two ships were transferred to the Ottoman Empire on 16 August 1914, and became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy as , usually shortened to . By bombarding Russian facilities in the Black Sea, she brought Turkey into World War I on the German side. The ship operated primarily against Russian forces in the Black Sea during the war, including several inconclusive engagements with Russian battleships. She made a sortie into the Aegean in January 1918 that resulted in the Battle of Imbros, where sank a pair of British monitors but was herself badly damaged by mines.

In 1936 she was officially renamed TCG ("Ship of the Turkish Republic "); she carried the remains of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from Istanbul to İzmit in 1938. remained the flagship of the Turkish Navy until she was decommissioned in 1950. She was scrapped in 1973, after the West German government declined an invitation to buy her back from Turkey. She was the last surviving ship built by the Imperial German Navy, and the longest-serving dreadnought-type ship in any navy.

Design

As the German (Imperial Navy) continued in its arms race with the British Royal Navy in 1907, the (Imperial Navy Office) considered plans for the battlecruiser that was to be built for the following year. An increase in the budget raised the possibility of increasing the caliber of the main battery from the guns used in the previous battlecruiser, , to , but Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary of the Navy, opposed the increase, preferring to add a pair of 28 cm guns instead. The Construction Department supported the change, and ultimately two ships were authorized for the 1908 and 1909 building years; was the first, followed by .

was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of fully loaded. The ship displaced normally, and at full load. was powered by four Parsons steam turbines, with steam provided by twenty-four coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft water-tube boilers. The propulsion system was rated at and a top speed of , though she exceeded this speed significantly on her trials. At , the ship had a range of . Her crew consisted of 43 officers and 1,010 enlisted men.

The ship was armed with a main battery of ten SK L/50 guns mounted in five twin-gun turrets; of these, one was placed forward, two were ''en echelon'' amidships, and the other two were in a superfiring pair aft. Her secondary armament consisted of twelve SK L/45 guns placed in individual casemates in the central portion of the ship. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried twelve SK L/45 guns, also in individual mounts in the bow, the stern, and around the forward conning tower. She was also equipped with four submerged torpedo tubes, one in the bow, one in the stern, and one on each broadside.

The ship's armor consisted of Krupp cemented steel. The belt was thick in the citadel where it covered the ship's ammunition magazines and propulsion machinery spaces. The belt tapered down to on either end. The deck was thick, sloping downward at the side to connect to the bottom edge of the belt. The main battery gun turrets had faces, and they sat atop barbettes that were equally thick.

Service history

The Imperial Navy ordered , the third German battlecruiser, on 8 April 1909 under the provisional name "H" from the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, under construction number 201. Her keel was laid on 19 August; the hull was completed and the ship was launched on 28 March 1911. Fitting-out work followed, and she was commissioned into the German Navy on 2 July 1912.

When the First Balkan War broke out in October 1912, the German General Staff determined that a naval Mediterranean Division () was needed to project German power in the Mediterranean, and thus dispatched and the light cruiser to Constantinople. The two ships left Kiel on 4 November and arrived on 15 November 1912. Beginning in April 1913, visited many Mediterranean ports including Venice, Pola, and Naples, before sailing into Albanian waters. Following this trip, returned to Pola and remained there from 21 August to 16 October for maintenance.

On 29 June 1913, the Second Balkan War broke out and the Mediterranean Division was retained in the area. On 23 October 1913, (Rear Admiral) Wilhelm Souchon assumed command of the squadron. and continued their activities in the Mediterranean, and visited some 80 ports before the outbreak of World War I. The navy made plans to replace with her sister , but the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on 28 June 1914 and the subsequent rise in tensions between the Great Powers made this impossible. After the assassination, Souchon assessed that war was imminent between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente, and ordered his ships to make for Pola for repairs. Engineers came from Germany to work on the ship. had 4,460 boiler tubes replaced, among other repairs. Upon completion, the ships departed for Messina.

World War I

Pursuit of and

Kaiser Wilhelm II had ordered that in the event of war, and should either conduct raids in the western Mediterranean to prevent the return of French troops from North Africa to Europe, or break out into the Atlantic and attempt to return to German waters, on the squadron commander's discretion. On 3 August 1914, the two ships were en route to Algeria when Souchon received word of the declaration of war against France. bombarded Philippeville, French Algeria, for about 10 minutes early on 3 August while shelled nearby Bône, in accordance with the Kaiser's order. Tirpitz and Admiral Hugo von Pohl then transmitted secret orders to Souchon instructing him to sail to Constantinople, in direct contravention of the Kaiser's instructions and without his knowledge.

Since could not reach Constantinople without coaling, Souchon headed for Messina. The Germans encountered the British battlecruisers and , but Germany was not yet at war with Britain and neither side opened fire. The British turned to follow and , but the German ships were able to outrun the British, and arrived in Messina by 5 August. Refueling in Messina was complicated by the declaration of Italian neutrality on 2 August. Under international law, combatant ships were permitted only 24 hours in a neutral port. Sympathetic Italian naval authorities in the port allowed and to remain in port for around 36 hours while the ships coaled from a German collier. Despite the additional time, s fuel stocks were not sufficient to permit the voyage to Constantinople, so Souchon arranged to rendezvous with another collier in the Aegean Sea. The French fleet remained in the western Mediterranean, since the French naval commander in the Mediterranean, Admiral Lapeyrère, was convinced the Germans would either attempt to escape to the Atlantic or join the Austrians in Pola.

Souchon's two ships departed Messina early on 6 August through the southern entrance to the strait and headed for the eastern Mediterranean. The two British battlecruisers were 100 miles away, while a third, , was coaling in Bizerta, Tunisia. The only British naval force in Souchon's way was the 1st Cruiser Squadron, which consisted of the four armored cruisers , , and under the command of Rear Admiral Ernest Troubridge. The Germans headed initially towards the Adriatic in a feint; the move misled Troubridge, who sailed to intercept them in the mouth of the Adriatic. After realizing his mistake, Troubridge reversed course and ordered the light cruiser and two destroyers to launch a torpedo attack on the Germans. s lookouts spotted the ships, and in the darkness, she and evaded their pursuers undetected. Troubridge broke off the chase early on 7 August, convinced that any attack by his four older armored cruisers against —armed with her larger 28 cm guns—would be suicidal. Souchon's journey to Constantinople was now clear.

refilled her coal bunkers off the island of Donoussa near Naxos. During the afternoon of 10 August, the two ships entered the Dardanelles. They were met by an Ottoman picket boat, which guided them through to the Sea of Marmara. To circumvent neutrality requirements, the Ottoman government proposed that the ships be transferred to its ownership "by means of a fictitious sale." Before the Germans could approve this, the Ottomans announced on 11 August that they had purchased the ships for 80 million Marks. In a formal ceremony the two ships were commissioned in the Ottoman Navy on 16 August. On 23 September, Souchon accepted an offer to command the Turkish fleet. was renamed and was renamed ; their German crews donned Ottoman uniforms and fezzes.

Black Sea operations

= 1914

=

On 29 October bombarded Sevastopol in her first operation against Imperial Russia, though the Ottoman Empire was not yet at war with the Entente; Souchon conducted the operation to force Turkey into the war on the side of Germany. A shell struck the ship in the after funnel, but it failed to detonate and did negligible damage. Two other hits inflicted minor damage. The ship and her escorts passed through an inactive Russian minefield during the bombardment. As she returned to Turkish waters, came across the Russian minelayer which scuttled herself with 700 mines on board. During the engagement the escorting Russian destroyer was damaged by two of s secondary battery shells. In response to the bombardment, Russia declared war on 1 November, thus forcing the Ottomans into the wider world war. France and Great Britain bombarded the Turkish fortresses guarding the Dardanelles on 3 November and formally declared war two days later. From this engagement, the Russians drew the conclusion that the entire Black Sea Fleet would have to remain consolidated so it could not be defeated in detail (one ship at a time) by .

, escorted by , intercepted the Russian Black Sea Fleet off the Crimean coastline on 18 November as it returned from a bombardment of Trebizond. Despite the noon hour the conditions were foggy and none of the capital ships were spotted initially. The Black Sea Fleet had experimented with concentrating fire from several ships under the control of one "master" ship before the war, and held her fire until , the master ship, could see . When the gunnery commands were finally received they showed a range over in excess of s own estimate of , so opened fire using her own data before turned to fire her broadside. She scored a hit with her first salvo as a 12-inch shell partially penetrated the armor casemate protecting one of s secondary guns. It detonated some of the ready-use ammunition, starting a fire that filled the casemate and killed the entire gun crew. A total of thirteen men were killed and three were wounded.

returned fire and hit in the middle funnel; the shell detonated after it passed through the funnel and destroyed the antennae for the fire-control radio, so that could not correct s inaccurate range data. The other Russian ships either used s incorrect data or never saw and failed to register any hits. hit four more times, although one shell failed to detonate, before Souchon decided to break contact after 14 minutes of combat. The four hits out of nineteen shells fired killed 34 men and wounded 24.

The following month, on 5–6 December, and provided protection for troop transports, and on 10 December, bombarded Batum. On 23 December, and the protected cruiser escorted three transports to Trebizond. While returning from another transport escort operation on 26 December, struck a mine that exploded beneath the conning tower, on the starboard side, about one nautical mile outside the Bosphorus. The explosion tore a hole in the ship's hull, but the torpedo bulkhead held. Two minutes later, struck a second mine on the port side, just forward of the main battery wing barbette; this tore open a hole. The bulkhead bowed in but retained watertight protection of the ship's interior. However, some 600 tons of water flooded the ship. There was no dock in the Ottoman Empire large enough to service , so temporary repairs were effected inside steel cofferdams, which were pumped out to create a dry work area around the damaged hull. The holes were patched with concrete, which held for several years before more permanent work was necessary.

= 1915

=
Still damaged, sortied from the Bosphorus on 28 January and again on 7 February 1915 to help escape the Russian fleet; she also covered the return of . then underwent repair work to the mine damage until May. On 1 April, with repairs incomplete, left the Bosphorus in company with to cover the withdrawal of and the protected cruiser , which had been sent to bombard Odessa. Strong currents, however, forced the cruisers east to the approaches of the Dnieper-Bug Liman (bay) that led to Nikolayev. As they sailed west after a course correction, struck a mine and sank, so this attack had to be aborted. After and appeared off Sevastopol and sank two cargo steamers, the Russian fleet chased them all day, and detached several destroyers after dusk to attempt a torpedo attack. Only one destroyer, , was able to close the distance and launch an attack, which missed. and returned to the Bosphorus unharmed.

On 25 April, the same day the Allies landed at Gallipoli, Russian naval forces arrived off the Bosphorus and bombarded the forts guarding the strait. Two days later headed south to the Dardanelles to bombard Allied troops at Gallipoli, accompanied by the pre-dreadnought battleship . They were spotted at dawn from a kite balloon as they were getting into position. When the first round from the dreadnought landed close by, moved out of firing position, close to the cliffs, where ''Queen Elizabeth'' could not engage her. On 30 April tried again, but was spotted from the pre-dreadnought which had moved into the Dardanelles to bombard the Turkish headquarters at Çanakkale

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases