SMS Schleswig-Holstein was the last of the five Deutschland-class battleships built by the German Kaiserliche Marine. The ship was laid down in August 1905 and commissioned into the fleet nearly three years later. During World War I, she saw front-line service in II Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, culminating in the Battle of Jutland. In 1935, the old battleship was converted into a training ship for naval cadets. She fired the first shots of World War II when she bombarded the Polish base at Danzig’s Westerplatte in the early morning hours of 1 September 1939. She was sunk by British bombers in Gotenhafen in December 1944, and was subsequently salv
About SMS Schleswig-Holstein in brief
SMS Schleswig-Holstein was the last of the five Deutschland-class battleships built by the German Kaiserliche Marine. The ship was laid down in August 1905 and commissioned into the fleet nearly three years later. During World War I, she saw front-line service in II Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, culminating in the Battle of Jutland. In 1935, the old battleship was converted into a training ship for naval cadets. She fired the first shots of World War II when she bombarded the Polish base at Danzig’s Westerplatte in the early morning hours of 1 September 1939. She was sunk by British bombers in Gotenhafen in December 1944, and was subsequently salvaged and then beached for use by the Soviet Navy as a target. As of 1990, the ship’s bell was on display in the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden. She had a length of 127. 60 m, a beam of 22. 20 m, and a draft of 8. 21 m. She displaced 13,200 metric tons normally and up to 14,218 metric tons at combat loading. Her armored belt was 240mm thick amidships, and she had a 280mm deck on the main battery turrets had thick armored side sides. At a cruising speed of 10 knots, she could steam for 5,720 nautical miles. The ship’s primary armament consisted of four 28 cm SK L40 guns in two twin turrets; one turret was placed forward and the other aft.
She was also armed with six 45 cm torpedo tubes, all below the waterline, and had a standard crew of 35 officers and 708 enlisted men. The British battleship HMS Dreadnought – armed with ten 12-inch guns – was commissioned in December 1906. The last pre-dreadnought battleship of the German navy, Schles wig-Holenstein was commissioned on July 6, 1908, and christened by Empress Augusta of Schlesig-Holstein. At the christening ceremony, the German Duke of Gunther II was also in attendance; Ernst Gunther, the Prince of Württemberg, was also the German Empress of the Rhine. The German navy’s new dreadnought battleship, the HMS Dreadnought, was the world’s first battleship to be designed and built in the late 1800s and the first to be armed with 12 inch guns. The ships of her class were already outdated by the time they entered service, being inferior in size, armor, firepower and speed to the new generation of dreadnoughts. They also abandoned the gun turrets for the secondary battery guns, moving them back to traditional casemates to save weight. In the early 1900s, design work began on a follow-on design, which became the Deutschlands class.
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