SMS Oldenburg was the fourth vessel of the Helgoland class of dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy. Oldenburg's keel was laid in March 1909 at the Schichau-Werke dockyard in Danzig. She was launched on 30 June 1910 and was commissioned into the fleet on 1 May 1912. The ship was equipped with twelve 30.5 cm (12 in) guns in six twin turrets, and had a top speed of 21.2 knots (39.3 km/h; 24.4 mph). Oldenburg was assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career, including World War I.
Along with her three sister ships, Helgoland, Ostfriesland, and Thüringen, Oldenburg participated in all of the major fleet operations of World War I in the North Sea against the British Grand Fleet, including the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916, the largest naval battle of the war. The ship also saw action in the Baltic Sea against the Imperial Russian Navy. She was present during the unsuccessful first incursion into the Gulf of Riga in August 1915, though she saw no combat during the operation.
After the German collapse in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet was interned and then scuttled in Scapa Flow during the peace negotiations. The four Helgoland-class ships were allowed to remain in Germany but eventually ceded to the victorious Allied powers as war reparations; Oldenburg was given to Japan, which sold the vessel to a British ship breaking firm in 1920. She was broken up for scrap in Dordrecht in 1921.
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Design
Many senior officers in the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) acknowledged that the Nassau-class battleships, armed with 28 cm (11 in) guns, were inferior to their British counterparts that carried 30.5 cm (12 in) guns. They sought to incorporate guns of the latter caliber in the next battleship design, though the significant increase in cost from the pre-dreadnought Deutschland-class battleships to the dreadnought Nassau class precluded another major qualitative increase until the 1908 budget year, two years after the first Nassaus were ordered. The design staff experimented with a variety of gun turret arrangements, including superfiring layouts like the American South Carolina class, but they ultimately settled on the same hexagonal arrangement of the Nassaus.
Characteristics
The ship was 167.2 m (548 ft 7 in) long, had a beam of 28.5 m (93 ft 6 in) and a draft of 8.94 m (29 ft 4 in), and displaced 24,700 metric tons (24,310 long tons) at full load. Oldenburg had a flush deck and minimal superstructure that consisted primarily of a large, armored conning tower forward and a smaller, secondary conning position further aft. The ship was fitted with a pair of pole masts, which held spotting tops and positions for searchlights. She had a crew of 42 officers and 1,071 enlisted men.
She was powered by three triple-expansion steam engines. Steam was provided by fifteen water-tube boilers, which were vented through three closely spaced funnels placed amidships. The engines were rated at 28,000 metric horsepower (27,617 ihp; 20,594 kW) and were capable of producing a top speed of 20.8 knots (38.5 km/h; 23.9 mph). Oldenburg stored up to 3,200 metric tons (3,100 long tons) of coal, allowing her to steam for 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). After 1915 the boilers were modified to burn oil, which would be sprayed on the coal to increase its burn rate; the ship could carry up to 197 metric tons (194 long tons).
Oldenburg was armed with a main battery of twelve 30.5 cm (12 in) SK L/50 guns in six twin gun turrets, with one turret fore, one aft, and two on each flank of the ship. The ship's secondary battery consisted of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 guns, all of which were mounted in casemates in the side of the upper deck. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried fourteen 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 guns. After 1914, two of the 8.8 cm guns were removed and replaced by 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns; later, an additional two 8.8 cm guns were replaced with anti-aircraft guns. This brought the total number of 8.8 cm SK L/45 guns to ten, and the number of 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns to four. Oldenburg was also armed with six 50 cm (19.7 in) submerged torpedo tubes; one was in the bow, one in the stern, and two on each broadside.
Her main armored belt was 300 mm (11.8 in) thick in the central citadel, and was composed of Krupp cemented armor (KCA). Her main battery gun turrets were protected by the same thickness of KCA on the sides and faces, as well as the barbettes that supported the turrets. Oldenburg's deck was 63.5 mm (2.5 in) thick.
Service history
Oldenburg was ordered by the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) under the provisional name Ersatz Frithjof, as a replacement for the old coastal defense ship Frithjof. The contract for the ship was awarded to the Schichau-Werke shipyard in Danzig under construction number 828. Her three sisters had been ordered for 1908, but because of budget constraints, Oldenburg's order was delayed to 1909. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary of the Navy, gave the contract to Schichau before the 1909 budget had been approved, and the shipbuilder began stockpiling materials to build the ship. This gave the impression that Germany was building more battleships than publicly admitted, which prompted a naval scare in Britain. The British public demanded "we want eight [new battleships] and we won't wait", and in the span of a year eight new battleships had been laid down in Britain, a major escalation in the international naval arms race.
Work began on Oldenburg on 1 March 1909 with the laying of her keel, and the ship was launched a little more than a year later on 30 June 1910. Duchess Sophia Charlotte of Oldenburg christened her, and Friedrich August, the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, gave the speech. After launching, the incomplete ship was transferred to Kiel for fitting out, including completion of the superstructure and the installation of armament, until August 1911. Named for the old ironclad Oldenburg, the ship was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 1 May 1912, just over three years after work commenced. Her first commander was Kapitän zur See (KzS—Captain at Sea) Hugo Langemak.
After her commissioning on 1 May 1912, Oldenburg conducted sea trials in the Baltic. On 17 July, she was assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, alongside her sisters. After individual ship training exercises, she joined I Squadron maneuvers and then fleet maneuvers in November. The annual summer cruise in July and August, which typically went to Norway, was interrupted by the Agadir Crisis. As a result, the cruise only went into the Baltic, in order to keep the fleet closer to Germany. Oldenburg and the rest of the fleet then fell into a pattern of individual ship, squadron, and full fleet exercises over the next two years of peace-time training. In September 1913, KzS Wilhelm Höpfner replaced Langemak as the ship's captain.
The annual summer cruise to Norway began on 14 July 1914, despite the rising international tensions following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. During the last peacetime cruise of the Imperial Navy, the fleet conducted drills in the Skagerrak before proceeding to the Norwegian fjords on 25 July. The following day the fleet began to steam back to Germany due to Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia. On 27 July, the entire fleet assembled off Cape Skudenes before returning to port, where they remained at a heightened state of readiness. War between Austria-Hungary and Serbia broke out on the 28th, and in the span of a week all of the major European powers had joined the conflict. By 29 July Oldenburg and the rest of I Squadron were back in Wilhelmshaven.
World War I
Oldenburg was present during the first sortie by German fleet into the North Sea, which took place on 2–3 November 1914. No British forces were encountered during the operation. A second operation followed on 15–16 December. This sortie was the initiation of a strategy adopted by Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander of the High Seas Fleet. Ingenohl intended to use the battlecruisers of Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Franz von Hipper's I Scouting Group to raid British coastal towns in order to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet where they could be destroyed by the High Seas Fleet. Early on 15 December the fleet left port to raid the towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby. That evening, the German battle fleet of eight pre-dreadnoughts and twelve dreadnoughts, including Oldenburg and her three sisters, came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. Skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced Ingenohl that he was faced with the entire Grand Fleet, so Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned the battle fleet back toward Germany, under orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to avoid risking the fleet unnecessarily.
The Battle of Dogger Bank, in which Vice Admiral David Beatty's 1st and 2nd Battlecruiser Squadrons ambushed the I Scouting Group battlecruisers, occurred on 24 January 1915. Oldenburg and the rest of I Squadron were sortied to reinforce the outnumbered German battlecruisers; I Squadron left port at 12:33 CET, along with the pre-dreadnoughts of II Squadron. They were too late, however, and they failed to locate any British forces. By 19:05, the fleet had returned to the Schillig Roads outside Wilhelmshaven. In the meantime, the armored cruiser Blücher had been overwhelmed by concentrated British fire and sunk, while the battlecruiser Seydlitz was severely damaged by an ammunition fire. As a result, Kaiser Wilhelm II removed Ingenohl from his post and replaced him with Admiral Hugo von Pohl on 2 February.
From 22 February to 13 March 1915, I Squadron was in the Baltic for unit training. Following their return to the North Sea, the ships participated in a series of uneventful fleet sorties on 29–30 March, 17–18 April, 21–22 April, 17–18 May, and 29–30 May. The fleet was largely inactive until 4 August, when I Squadron returned to the Baltic for another round of training maneuvers. From there, the squadron was attached to the naval force that attempted to sweep the Gulf of Riga of Russian naval forces in August 1915. The assault force included the eight I Squadron battleships, the battlecruisers Von der Tann, Moltke, and Seydlitz, several light cruisers, 32 destroyers and 13 minesweepers. The plan called for channels in Russian minefields to be swept so that the Russian naval presence, which included the pre-dreadnought battleship Slava, could be eliminated. The Germans would then lay minefields of their own to prevent Russian ships from returning to the Gulf. Oldenburg and the majority of the other big ships of the High Seas Fleet remained outside the Gulf for the entirety of the operation, to prevent possible intervention by the Russian fleet outside the Gulf. The dreadnoughts Nassau and Posen were detached on 16 August to escort the minesweepers and to destroy Slava, though they failed to sink the old battleship. After three days, the Russian minefields had been cleared, and the flotilla entered the Gulf on 19 August, but reports of Allied submarines in the area prompted a German withdrawal from the Gulf the following day. By 26 August, I Squadron had returned to Wilhelmshaven.
Fate
Oldenburg and her three sisters were to have taken part in a final fleet action at the end of October 1918, days before the Armistice was to take effect. The bulk of the High Seas Fleet was to have sortied from their base in Wilhelmshaven to engage the British Grand Fleet. Scheer—by now the Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) of the fleet—intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy to improve Germany's bargaining position, despite the expected casualties. But many of the war-weary sailors felt that the operation would disrupt the peace process and prolong the war. On the morning of 29 October 1918, the order was given to sail from Wilhelmshaven the following day. Starting on the night of 29 October, sailors on Thüringen and then on several other battleships mutinied. The unrest ultimately forced Hipper and Scheer to cancel the operation. Informed of the situation, the Kaiser stated "I no longer have a navy". In November, KzS Hermann Bauer became Oldenburg's final commander.
Following the German collapse that had resulted in the Armistice of 11 November 1918, a significant portion of the High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow. Oldenburg and her three sisters were not among the ships listed for internment, so they remained at German ports. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that formally ended the war in June 1919, Oldenburg and the other dreadnoughts that had remained in Germany were to be surrendered to the Allies under Article 185 as prizes of war. Negotiations between the Allies over which country received what vessels, and what those ships could be used for began in November. Oldenburg was struck from the German naval list on 5 November. While final decisions were still being made, the Allies decided that the ships in question were to sail to either a British or French port, and accordingly, on 8 May 1920, Oldenburg, Posen, and the torpedo boat V71 sailed for Rosyth, Britain, arriving on 12 May. Oldenburg, which had been renamed "M", was surrendered to Japan as a "propaganda" vessel, which could be used in weapons tests or other experiments. The Japanese Navy had no need for the ship; she was sold to a British ship-breaking firm in June 1920, re-sold to a Dutch firm, and broken up for scrap the following year in Dordrecht.