laststandonzombieisland

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk/dieselpunk navies of the 1866-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  November 7

Here we see the beautiful new battlecruiser SMS Goeben of the Kasierliche Marine. She was the second of two Moltke-class battlecruisers of the Imperial German Navy, launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War hero General August Karl von Goeben.

 

She served only two years in the Kaiser’s navy officially before causing havoc and frustration in the Med while running from British and French warships on the outbreak of World War I. Her Admiral, William Souchon, made for Turkey where the ship was interned and then officially turned over to the Turkish Navy 16 August 1914, just over two weeks into the War. However, renamed the  Yavuz Sultan Selim after Ottoman sultan Selim I, and with her German crew wearing Turkish fez, she became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy.

As such she pulled Turkey into the War when Souchon sailed across the Black Sea to bombard Russian ports. For the rest of the war she traded shots with the occasional Russian battleship, avoiding lurking British subs, and generally trying to just stay one step ahead of the Turks themselves.

The Germans left in 1918 but the Selim remained. In 1936 she was renamed once again as the TCG Yavuz (“Ship of the Turkish Republic Yavuz“) since the old Ottoman name was passe.

 

Yavuz remained the flagship of the Turkish Navy until she was decommissioned in 1950. She was scrapped in 1973, after the West German government declined an invitation to buy her back from Turkey as a museum. She was the last surviving ship built by the Imperial German Navy, and the longest-serving battlecruiser or dreadnought-type ship in any navy, with some .

Specs:
Displacement:

Design: 22,979 t (22,616 long tons)
Full load: 25,400 t (25,000 long tons)

Length:     186.6 m (612 ft 2 in)
Beam:     30 m (98 ft 5 in)
Draft:     9.2 m (30 ft 2 in)
Installed power:

Design: 52,000 hp (39,000 kW)
Maximum: 85,782 hp (63,968 kW)

Propulsion:     4 screws, Parsons steam turbines
Speed:

Design: 25.5 kn (47.2 km/h; 29.3 mph)
Maximum: 28.4 kn (52.6 km/h; 32.7 mph)

Range:     4,120 nmi (7,630 km; 4,740 mi) at 14 kn (26 km/h; 16 mph)
Complement: 43 officers
1,010 men

Armament:

10 × 28 cm (11 in) SK L/50 guns (5 × 2)
12 × 15 cm (5.9 in) guns
12 × 8.8 cm (3.5 in) guns

Armor:

Belt: 280–100 mm (11–3.9 in)
Barbettes: 230 mm (9.1 in)
Turrets: 230 mm
Deck: 76.2–25.4 mm (3–1 in)
Conning tower: 350 mm (14 in)