The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Germany Battleship Bayern

Laid down on September 20, 1913, launched on February 18, 1915 and commissioned on March 18, 1916, Bayern 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. Bayern was the name ship of a four-ship battleship class, of which only the Bayern and the Baden were completed. These ships retained the coal-fired turbine engines with oil-fired supplementary burners of earlier German classes, as Germany lacked secure access to fuel oil. The Bayern class could be considered to be the first and only German "super-dreadnoughts" of the First World War, were the only German ships with 15 inch guns and represented the ultimate German capital ships of the First World War. Technically, the German 15 inch gun was not a success; it 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. Bayern is German for "Bavaria," and it was named after the large, southern German state that was then still a kingdom incorporated into the German Empire. Bayern missed the Battle of Jutland as she was still completing her "working up" process at the time. On October 12, 1917, Bayern struck a mine while operating in the Baltic Islands but returned home safely for complete repairs. After the Armistice, she was interned at Scapa Flow from November 26, 1918. In common with most of the rest of the German ships interned there, Bayern was scuttled on June 21, 1919. Salvaged during 1934, she was scrapped during the following year.

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