Thiaria: Other People's ships

Hello again!

When the Germans found themselves in possession of the half-finished Salamis in 1914, they faced the problem how to adapt her to their own needs. German 350mm turrets were too large and 305mm ones too weak, but the cancellation of the Austro-Hungarian Ersatz Monarch class superdreadnoughts in January 1915 presented them with a rather elegant solution. The Skoda 350mm twins had slightly smaller barbette diameters than their US equivalents and could be adapted to the existing hull with relatively minor modifications, and the guns themselves were an exceptionally powerful model, firing a 700kg shell with better overall ballistics than the British 343mm/45 or the US 356/45. The Austrians had ordered 20 guns for the first Ersatz-Monarch-class vessels in 1913, and the first eight were scheduled for delivery during 1915, the rest to follow in 1916. Eight were needed to complete the battleship Patria, which had been ordered by the Mexican Empire in 1913 and requisitioned by the Austrian government in 1914 to be completed as the Kaiser Maximilian, but these guns would not be needed prior to 1916. The first eight guns were delivered to the Germans in 1915 in exchange for four UB-I and four UC-I class coastal submarines as compensation. As construction of Salamis progressed, the Germans suppressed the aft tripod, whose fighting top was useless anyway because of smoke interference, and fitted the forward tripod with an experimental two-storey fighting top which was the prototype for the installation later retrofitted to the Königs (although on tube masts). The first two turrets (with guns and barbettes) were delivered from Skoda in October 1915. The rest of the guns followed during 1916. The other two turrets had to be newly manufactured and were adapted to the existing US-supplied barbettes early in 1917. By that time the ship, which was launched in October 1915, was complete otherwise, and could be commissioned in September 1917. She still had the 88mm casemates in the superstructure, but without guns; four 88mm AA pieces were mounted aft. She took her name from an old ironclad which had been renamed Neptun in July 1915 on being hulked. SMS Brandenburg was integrated into the third battle squadron, where she replaced SMS Rheinland, which had become a constructive total loss after being grounded in the Baltic. She saw little action during the remainder of the war; in October 1918, her crew was one of the few in the HSF that did not join the mutiny. When the HSF was interned, SMS Brandenburg remained in Germany with the rest of her squadron. As about a third of her price had already been paid by the Greeks before the Germans requisitioned her in 1914, they claimed her for themselves, and as Greece had joined the Allied war effort early on and suffered considerable losses, the Brits grudgingly allowed her delivery in 1919. For the Greeks, who were in the middle of a war against Turkey and urgently needed an additional asset, she was a godsend. She was transferred early in 1920 and remained in service with the Greek navy throughout the Greco-Turkish war of 1920/1 and the second world war. Despite her rather weak protection, she repeatedly survived severe punishment (an aerial torpedo in 1941, six 381mm shells from the Italian battleship Francesco Morosini in 1942 and a German 500kg bomb early in 1943) and, after reconstruction, provided valuable ground bombardment service in 1943 and 1944 off Italy and Southern France. After the war, she had become structurally deficient, but was retained as a national monument in Faliro, where she remains to this day.

[ img ]

Greetings
GD

Shipbucket

Who is online