Königsberg was the lead ship of her class of light cruisers built by the German Kaiserliche Marine. Named after Königsburg, the capital of East Prussia, she was laid down in January 1905, launched in December of that year and completed by June 1906. The ship was armed with a main battery of ten 10. 5-centimeter guns and had a top speed of 24. 1 knots. She served with the High Seas Fleet’s reconnaissance force. On 20 September 1914, she surprised and sank the British protected cruiser HMS Pegasus in the Battle of Zanzibar.
About SMS Königsberg (1905) in brief
Königsberg was the lead ship of her class of light cruisers built by the German Kaiserliche Marine. Named after Königsburg, the capital of East Prussia, she was laid down in January 1905, launched in December of that year and completed by June 1906. The ship was armed with a main battery of ten 10. 5-centimeter guns and had a top speed of 24. 1 knots. She was also equipped with a pair of 45 cm torpedo tubes with five torpedoes submerged in the hull on the broadside. She served with the High Seas Fleet’s reconnaissance force. In April 1914, the ship was sent on what was to have been a two-year deployment to German East Africa, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. On 20 September 1914, she surprised and sank the British protected cruiser HMS Pegasus in the Battle of Zanzibar. In July 1915, the British sent two monitors, Mersey and Severn, to destroy the German cruiser. The surviving crew salvaged all ten of her main guns and joined Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s guerrilla campaign in East Africa. The remains of the ship were partially broken up in 1963–1965 for scrap, and the remains sank into the Rufiji Riverbed. Königberg was ordered under the contract name ‘Eatz Meteor’ and was laid. down at the Imperial Imperial Dockyard in Kiel on 12 December 1905, when she was launched. She then stopped sailing during three sailing regattas, including the Kiel Weekzollern and the Siegfried Körte, and stopped sailing at the North Sea and Nordkörte.
Her trials were interrupted at the beginning of June 1907 when she stopped sailing and was commissioned into sea trials on 6 April 1907. She displaced 3,814 t at full load. All four members of the class were intended to be identical, but after the initial vessel was begun, the design staff incorporated lessons from the Russo-Japanese War. These included internal rearrangements and a lengthening of the hull. The ships were designed to serve both as fleet scouts in home waters and in Germany’s colonial empire. They were supplied with 1,500 rounds of ammunition, for 150 shells per gun, and were armed with ten 5. 2-cm SK guns in single mounts. The vessel was protected by an armored deck that was 80 mm thick amidships and 100mm thick on the conning tower. The German Kaiserlich Marine also ordered three other ships: Stettin, Stuttgart, and Nürnberg. The last ship was commissioned on 6 June 1907, and was then tasked with escorting Kaiser Wilhelm II’s yacht Hohenzoller during sailing trips to foreign countries. The two cruisers then stopped sail during the Siegielkönzern and North Sea Week. The cruiser was then sent on sailing trips during the North German winter.
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