SMS Posen
SMS Posen was one of four dreadnoughts built for the German Imperial Navy. She served with her three sister ships for the majority of World War I. In 1919, following the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow, she was ceded to the British as a replacement for the ships that had been sunk. In 1922, the ship was sent to ship-breakers in the Netherlands and scrapped in 1922.
About SMS Posen in brief
SMS Posen was one of four dreadnoughts built for the German Imperial Navy. She was equipped with a main battery of twelve 28 cm guns in six twin turrets in an unusual hexagonal arrangement. The ship served with her three sister ships for the majority of World War I. Posen retained three-shafted triple expansion engines with twelve coal-fired water-tube boilers instead of more advanced turbine engines. In 1919, following the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow, she was ceded to the British as a replacement for the ships that had been sunk. In 1922, the ship was sent to ship-breakers in the Netherlands and scrapped in 1922. She is the only ship of the Nassau class to have been named after a German city, the city of Posen, which was destroyed in World War II. The name “Posen” is now used to refer to one of the ships of the Baden-Baden class, one of which was scrapped in the 1920s and 1930s. The Posen name is also used for the replacement of the elderly Sachsen-class battleship Baden, which is still in service with the German Navy today. She has been named for the town of Baden in Germany, where she was built in the early 20th century. The word Posen is German for “dreadnought” or “big ship” and the word “posen” means “big” in German.
She had a top speed of 20 knots and a cruising radius of 8,300 nautical miles at a speed of 12 knots. Her armor was 300mm thick in the central portion of the hull and 80mm thick on the deck. The main battery had 280mm thick armor on the conning tower and conning tower sides, and the deck was protected with 400mm of armor plakings of the same caliber against aircraft. She also had six submerged torpedo tubes in the bow, and another in the stern, two on each broadside of the bulkhead of the torpedo head. Her secondary armament consisted of twelve 15 cm SK L45 guns and sixteen 8. 8cm SK L 45 guns, all of which were mounted in casemates. Later in her career, two of the 8 cm guns were replaced with high-angle Flak mount mount mounters for defense against the same type of aircraft. In the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, Posen accidentally rammed the light cruiser SMS Elbing, which suffered serious damage and was scuttled later in the night. She supported a German naval assault in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in 1918 to support the White Finns in the Finnish Civil War. She remained in Germany until the end of the war, when she was taken over by the British in 1919. In 1921, she became the first German battleship to be scrapped.
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This page is based on the article SMS Posen published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
