SMS Schleswig-Holstein

Tirpitz's Second Naval Law of 1900 funded twenty new battleships over seventeen years. The Deutschland class followed the five Braunschweigs with incremental improvements in armour and a secondary battery moved back from turrets into casemates to save weight. Schleswig-Holstein was the fifth and last of them, laid down at the Germaniawerft in Kiel on 18 August 1905 under the provisional name Q. Before she was commissioned, HMS Dreadnought entered service in December 1906 with ten 12-inch guns, and rendered every capital ship in the German navy obsolete, this class included.

She measured 127.60 metres long and displaced 13,200 tonnes normally, driven by three triple-expansion engines and twelve coal-fired water-tube boilers for 16,767 indicated horsepower and 19.1 knots, the second-fastest and second most fuel-efficient of her class. Her main battery was four 28 cm SK L/40 guns in twin turrets fore and aft, with fourteen 17 cm guns in casemates, twenty 8.8 cm guns against torpedo boats and six submerged 45 cm torpedo tubes. Her belt was 240 mm amidships, her armoured deck 40 mm, her turret sides 280 mm. She carried 35 officers and 708 men.

She was launched on 17 December 1906, the last pre-dreadnought battleship Germany built, christened by the Empress Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein with Wilhelm II present, and the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein giving the commissioning speech. Her first crew came largely from her sister Schlesien. Assigned to II Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet on 21 September 1908, she settled into the fleet's rhythm: spring manoeuvres, a summer cruise to Norway, autumn training. Friedrich Boedicker commanded her from September 1910 for three years, and in 1913 she won the Kaiser's gunnery prize.

War found her on guard duty at the mouth of the Elbe while the fleet mobilised. In late October 1914 she and her sisters went to Kiel to have their underwater protection improved against torpedoes and mines, then rejoined the fleet. II Battle Squadron covered Hipper's battlecruisers during the bombardment of Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on 15 and 16 December 1914, an operation that brought the German fleet within ten nautical miles of an isolated squadron of six British battleships before Admiral von Ingenohl, convinced by destroyer skirmishing that the whole Grand Fleet lay ahead, turned for home.

At Jutland she was the last ship in the German line, rearmost of IV Division of II Battle Squadron under Rear Admiral Franz Mauve. During the run to the north the slow Deutschlands fell behind the dreadnoughts, and Scheer's battle turns repeatedly left them out of position on the disengaged side. Late on 31 May the so-called five-minute ships steamed between the opposing battlecruiser squadrons to relieve Hipper's badly damaged ships. Visibility was so poor that Schleswig-Holstein's gunners could not make out a target and she never fired her main battery.

At 21:35 a heavy-calibre shell struck her port side, punching a hole about 40 cm wide before exploding against the inner casemate armour. It tore apart 4.5 metres of the superstructure deck and disabled a port casemate gun; three men were killed and nine wounded. Mauve broke off and turned eight points to starboard. In the night action British destroyers attacked and Pommern was blown apart by a torpedo from Onslaught. Over the whole battle Schleswig-Holstein fired twenty 17 cm rounds. Repaired in June, she was withdrawn with the surviving Deutschlands, decommissioned on 2 May 1917 and disarmed as a barracks ship.

Article 181 of the Treaty of Versailles allowed the new Reichsmarine eight pre-dreadnought battleships for coastal defence, two of them in reserve. Schleswig-Holstein was among those retained, with her sisters Hannover and Schlesien. After an extensive refit she was recommissioned on 31 January 1926 as fleet flagship, with new fire control and an enlarged aft superstructure for the admiral's staff. Her 17 cm secondaries gave way to 15 cm guns, and four 50 cm torpedo tubes in main-deck casemates replaced the submerged ones.

She spent the later 1920s showing the flag. A training cruise into the Atlantic in May and June 1926 took her to Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona and Vigo, where the fleet chief Vice Admiral Konrad Mommsen met King Alfonso XIII; the following spring she was at Lisbon, where Mommsen was received by President Óscar Carmona. A dock visit over the winter of 1927 trunked her fore funnel back into the second and heightened both. The arrival of the Deutschland-class Panzerschiffe from 1933 pushed the old battleships out of the front line.

She ceased to be fleet flagship on 22 September 1935 and was converted into a cadet training ship in two refits during 1936, losing her upper-deck 15 cm guns and torpedo tubes. Her two aft boiler rooms were converted to oil while the forward ones stayed coal-fired, and her complement fell to 31 officers and 565 sailors, plus 175 cadets. Those cadets went a long way: six months to South America and the Caribbean from October 1936, around Africa the following year, and back to South American waters in 1938 and 1939.

She had been lying in the port of Danzig since August under the guise of a ceremonial visit, moored close to the Polish ammunition depot at the Westerplatte. At about 04:47 on 1 September 1939 she opened fire with her main battery on the Polish positions, firing the first shots of the Second World War. The salvoes were also the signal for the ground assault, which was repelled; a second attack that morning had still not broken into the installation by noon.

Torpedo boats T196 and Von der Gröben joined her on 4 September, and German infantry and engineers went ashore under heavy fire support from her guns. The Poles held until 10:30 on 7 September. She then shelled Polish positions at Hel and Redlowo until 13 September, returned to Hel with Schlesien between 25 and 27 September for further bombardment, and was lightly damaged by Polish coastal batteries there on 25 September. In April 1940 she was assigned to Gruppe 7 for the invasion of Denmark, supporting the capture of Korsor and Nyborg, and briefly grounded in the Great Belt.

Training work followed, until the worsening oil situation told in her favour: she still had coal-fired boilers, and was recommissioned on 1 February 1944, docking later that year at Gotenhafen to be converted into a convoy escort with heavy anti-aircraft armament. RAF bombers hit her three times on 18 December 1944 and she foundered in shallow water. Her crew went ashore to help defend Marienburg, and the remainder blew scuttling charges in the wreck on 21 March 1945. The Soviet Navy raised her in 1945 and 1946, towed her to Tallinn, then beached her off Osmussaar as a target, shelled until about 1966. Her bell was in the Bundeswehr military history museum in Dresden as of 1990.