SMS Grosser Kurfürst was the second battleship of the four-ship König class. Her name means Great Elector, and refers to Frederick William I, the Prince-elector of Brandenburg. She was armed with ten 30. 5-centimeter guns in five twin turrets and could steam at a top speed of 21 knots. She took part in most of the fleet actions during the war, including the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916.
About SMS Grosser Kurfürst (1913) in brief
SMS Grosser Kurfürst was the second battleship of the four-ship König class. She served in the German Imperial Navy during World War I. Her name means Great Elector, and refers to Frederick William I, the Prince-elector of Brandenburg. She was armed with ten 30. 5-centimeter guns in five twin turrets and could steam at a top speed of 21 knots. She took part in most of the fleet actions during the war, including the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916. After Germany’s defeat and the signing of the Armistice in November 1918, she and her three sister ships were interned by the Royal Navy in Scapa Flow. Unlike her sister ships, she was raised in 1938 for scrapping and subsequently broken up in Rosyth. The Königs represented a refinement of the earlier Kaiser class, with the primary improvement being a more efficient arrangement of the main battery. The ships had also been intended to use a diesel engine on the center propeller shaft to increase their cruising range, but development of the diesels proved to be more complicated than expected, so an all-steam turbine powerplant was retained. The ship’s armored belt consisted of Krupp cement steel that was 18 cm thick in the central portion that protected the propulsion machinery spaces and the magazines. In the central part of the ship, the ship’s horizontal protection consisted of a 10cm deck, which was reduced to 4cm on the bow and stern, and a 4cm deck on the sides of the conning tower.
Her keel was laid down in October 1911 and launched on 5 May 1913; she was formally commissioned into the Imperial Navy on 30 July 1914, days before the outbreak of war between Germany and the United Kingdom. She had a length of 175. 4 m, a beam of 29. 5 m and a draft of 9. 19 m. She was powered by three AEG-Vulcan steam turbines, with steam provided by three oil-fired and twelve coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft water-tube boilers, which developed a total of 45,570 shaft horsepower and yielded a maximum speed of21 knots. The ship had a range of 8,000 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 12 knots. Her crew numbered 41 officers and 1,095 enlisted men, with a crew of 41 officers and 41 enlisted men. Her secondary armament consisted of fourteen 15 cm SK L45 quick-firing guns and six 8.8 cm SK L45quick-f firing guns, all mounted singly in casemates. She shelled Russian positions during Operation Albion in September and October 1917. On 21 June 1919, the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the fleet to be scuttled to ensure that the British would not be able to seize the ships.
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