Division Torpedo Boat (1887)
With the growing Navy of the German Empire and the rise of the torpedo weapon, the German Navy began to built torpedo boats. One series were so-called
Divisions-Torpedoboote (Division Torpedo Boats), designed to be torpedoboat flotilla leaders. Fitting with their purpose, the boats were numbered with the 'D'-prefix The boats were quite different from each other and got more and more bigger. The first one,
D1 was launched on December 19th, 1886 and comissioned on April 27th, 1887. Originally, it was called
D2, as her sister boat had already been launched on September 11th, 1886, but was comissioned later on May 1st, 1887. For naming purposes, however, the launch date did not count, but the comisssioning date, so the names were swapped on July 1st, 1887.
The first two boats had a lenght of 56,5m, a top speed of 20kn and were armed with three 350mm torpedo tubes (two on deck, one in the bow) and several 37mm revolver cannons.
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