SMS Mecklenburg
SMS Mecklenburg was the fifth ship of the Wittelsbach class of pre-dreadnought battleships of the German Imperial Navy. The ship was armed with a main battery of four 24-centimeter guns and had a top speed of 18 knots. She is the last ship of her class to be named after a German city, which was destroyed in World War II.
About SMS Mecklenburg in brief
SMS Mecklenburg was the fifth ship of the Wittelsbach class of pre-dreadnought battleships of the German Imperial Navy. The ship was armed with a main battery of four 24-centimeter guns and had a top speed of 18 knots. She spent the early period of her career in I Squadron, participating in the peacetime routine of training cruises and exercises. After World War I began in August 1914, the ship was mobilized with her sisters as IV Battle Squadron. She saw limited duty in the Baltic Sea against Russian naval forces, and as a guard ship in the North Sea. The German High Command withdrew the ship from active service in January 1916 due to a threat from submarines and naval mines, together with severe shortages in personnel. She was stricken from the navy list in January 1920 and sold for scrapping the following year. She is the last ship of her class to be named after a German city, which was destroyed in World War II. Her name was changed to SMS Meckenburg after the city was renamed after a former German president, who was also a member of the city’s ruling family, the Meckenberg family.
The last ship in her class was commissioned on 25 June 1903, a full year before her sister Schwaben. Meckenburg was the first capital ship to be built under the Navy Law of 1898, championed by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. The law authorized the last two ships of the class, as well as the five ships of Wittelsbach and Zähringen. The ships were broadly similar to the Kaiser Friedrichs, carrying the same armament but with a more comprehensive armor layout. Her armored belt was 225 millimeters thick in the central portion that protected her magazines and machinery spaces and reduced to 100 mm on either end of the hull. She displaced 11,774 t as designed and up to 12,798 t at full load. She had a crew of 30 officers and 650 enlisted men, and was powered by three 3-cylinder vertical triple-expansion engines that drove three screws. Her weaponry was rounded out with six 45 cm torpedo tubes, all submerged in the hull; one was in the bow, one in the stern, and the other four on the broadside.
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This page is based on the article SMS Mecklenburg published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
