laststandonzombieisland

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk navies of the 1866-1938 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  April__

Here we have the SMS Schlesien.

The German Battleship (Linienschiff) SMS Schlesien in the Panama canal in 1938. At 30-years old, her Pre-drednought lines can be seen very well.

She was one of the five Deutschland class of pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Kaiserliche Marine between 1904 and 1906. Named after the German province of Schlesien, she was built at the Schichau-Werke shipyard in Danzig, where she was commissioned into the Kasier’s navy on 5 May 1908. The ships of her class were already outdated by the time they entered service, being inferior in size, armor, firepower and speed to the new post-Dreadnought battleships, but that didnt stop the Schlesien from being used for almost 40-years.

Specs
Class and type:     Deutschland-class battleship
Displacement:     13,200t normal; 14,218t full load
Length:     127.6 m (419 ft)
Beam:     22.2 m (73 ft)
Draught:     7.7 m (25 ft)
Propulsion:     19,330 hp (14,410 kW), three shafts = 19.1 knots (35.4 km/h)
Speed:     17 knots (31 km/h)
Range:     5,000 nautical miles (9,000 km); 10 knots (20 km/h)
Complement:     743
Armament:

At construction:

2 × 2 – 28 cm (11 in) SK L/40 guns
14 × 17 cm (6.7 in) guns (casemated)
22 ×8.8 cm (3.5 in) (casemated)
6 × 45 cm (18 in) torpedo tubes

Armament in 1939:

2 × 2 – 28 cm (11 in) SK L/40 guns
Two 8.8 cm (3.5 in) guns
4 × 3.7 cm (1.5 in) guns (2×2)
22 × 2.0 cm (0.8 in) cannon

Armor:     230 mm in belt
280 mm in turrets
76 mm in deck

She served at Jutland where she traded shots with British battleships. Following the German defeat in World War I, the German navy, reorganized as the Reichsmarine, was permitted to retain three of the Deutschland class battleships one of these was Schlesien. In 1932 her captain was super-spy Wilhelm Canaris and she was the flagship of the small Weimar Navy. Schlesien toured the Americas on a training cruise which she carried 200 naval officer cadets. In March 1937 the ship stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Later that year in December, Schlesien stopped in Mar del Plata, Argentina. In 1938, the ship visited Samaná Bay in the Dominican Republic. During WWII she particpated in the invasions of Poland and Norway.

In April 1945, Schlesien was moved to Swinemünde to restock her ammunition supply as well as evacuate 1,000 wounded soldiers from the front. On 3 May she struck a mine at Zinnowitz outside Swinemünde and beached in shallow water. Due to the shallow depth, much of the ship remained above water, including her main armament; she was able to provide artillery support for retreating German units. Between 1949 and 1956, the wreck was demolished and then scrapped in situ by an East German company. However, some remains from the ship were still visible in 1970