Wittelsbach Class Battleship

Wittelsbach Class Battleship

The Wittelsbach-class battleships were a group of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy). They were the first battleships produced under the Navy Law of 1898. The class was composed of the lead ship, Wettin, Zähringen, Schwaben, and Mecklenburg. All five ships were laid down between 1899 and 1900, and finished by 1904. The ships of the Wittelsbach class were similar in appearance to their predecessors of the Kaiser Friedrich III class, however, they had a flush main deck, as opposed to the lower quarterdeck of the Kaiser Friedrich class, and had a more extensive armor belt. Their armament was almost identical, though more efficiently arranged.

The ships were commissioned into the German fleet between 1902 and 1904, where they joined the I Squadron of the battle fleet. They were rapidly made obsolete by the launch of HMS Dreadnought in 1906. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, they were no longer fit for front-line service, though they saw some limited duty in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy. In 1916 the five ships were disarmed and employed in secondary roles. Wittelsbach, Wettin, and Schwaben became training ships, Mecklenburg was used as a prison ship and later as a floating barracks, and Zähringen became a target ship. All of the ships save Zähringen were broken up in 1921–22. Zähringen was rebuilt as a radio-controlled target ship in the mid-1920s. During World War II, she was badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1944 and scuttled in the final days of the war. She was eventually broken up in situ in 1949–50.