The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Germany Battleship Baden

Laid down on September 29, 1913, launched on October 30, 1915 and commissioned on October 19, 1916, Baden carried a main armament of eight of the new 15 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two superfiring centerline forward and two superfiring centerline aft. Baden was a member of the four-ship Bayern battleship class, of which only the Bayern and the Baden were completed. These two ships retained the coal-fired turbine engines with oil-fired supplementary burners of earlier German classes, as Germany had no assured supply of fuel oil. This class of ships could be considered to be the first German "super-dreadnoughts," were the only German ships to carry 15 inch guns and represented the ultimate German capital ships of the First World War. Technically, the German 15 inch gun was less accurate than the earlier, smaller German battleship guns and fired a lighter shell that was less effective than the British 15 inch shell, so it was a disappointment. Baden was named after a southern German state incorporated into modern Germany. After the Armistice, she was interned at Scapa Flow from January 1919. Baden was not scuttled with the rest of the interned German ships on June 21, 1919 but her crew attempted to scuttle her on the 29th. British tugs pushed her ashore and she was re-floated in July 1919. Baden served as a target vessel until sunk off Portsmouth by shells from British battleships on August 16, 1921.

See other battleships: Queen Elizabeth, Royal Oak, Friedrich der Grosse