The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Germany Battle Cruiser Moltke

Laid down on December 7, 1908, launched on April 7, 1910 and commissioned on September 30, 1911, the ship carried a main armament of ten 11 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two superfiring centerline aft, one centerline forward and one wing turret on each side that could fire to both sides and forward and aft. These 11 inch guns were of an improved 50-caliber model with a higher muzzle velocity than the 11 inch guns found on earlier German capital ships. Moltke was the name ship in a two-ship battle cruiser class and the ships had coal-fired turbine engines. German battle cruisers were much better protected than their opposing British battle cruisers and really adhered more to the "fast battleships" concept of the Second World War. Helmuth Moltke (1800 - 1891) "The Silent" was the chief of the general staff in Berlin from 1858–1888. He reorganized the Prussian army and led it to victory in the series of wars that unified Germany by 1871. During the war, Moltke was, like most of the other German battle cruisers, often used in raids to draw out their British opposite numbers. The purpose of these raids was to use submarines to torpedo reacting British battle cruisers or to draw them to the battleships of the High Seas Fleet, lurking at a distance. She was involved in the bombardment of Yarmouth on November 3, 1916, the December 16, 1914 bombardment of Hartlepool and the January 24, 1915 Battle of Dogger Bank. During operations in the Gulf of Riga, she was torpedoed by British submarine E-1 but returned to Hamburg for repairs under her own power with over 400 tons of water on board. She participated in the bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft in April 1916 and the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916, where she was hit four times by 15 inch and once by a 13.5 inch shell but survived handily, serving as Admiral Franz von Hipper’s (1863–1932) flagship after he was forced to switch his flag from Lutzow. She suffered damage during a sortie into the North Sea to the latitude of Stavanger and was being towed by the battleship Oldenburg when she was torpedoed by the British submarine E-42 on April 25, 1918. She reached home having shipped 2,100 tons of water. After the Armistice, she was interned at Scapa Flow from November 24, 1918. In common with most of the other German ships interned there, Moltke was scuttled on June 21, 1919. Raised in 1927, she was scrapped during 1928 and 1929.

See other battle cruisers: Yavuz Sultan Selim, Derfflinger, Lion