The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Germany Battleship Rheinland

Laid down on June 1, 1907, launched on September 26, 1908 and commissioned on April 30, 1910, Rheinland carried a main armament of twelve 11 inch main guns mounted two per turret; one centerline forward, one centerline aft and one wing turret on each side that could fire to the side and forward and one wing turret on each side that could fire to the side and aft, the so-called “hexagonal” turret arrangement. Rheinland was a member of the four-ship Nassau battleship class which was powered by coal-fired expansion engines, as steam turbines were not yet available in Germany. The ships in this class were the first German “dreadnoughts.” After careful consideration, the Germans decided that their 11 inch gun was comparable to the British 12 inch gun (which it really was not, although it did have a higher rate of fire) and settled on the smaller weapon for their earliest “dreadnoughts.” Rheinland was named after the part of modern Germany lying along the Rhine River north of the Alsace-Lorraine region. During the war, Rheinland was involved in a number of sorties that failed to produce battles but was involved in the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916, where she was slightly damaged during the night following the main battle by hits from a couple of cruiser shells from the armored cruiser Black Prince , which subsequently exploded. In February 1918, while involved in the liberation of Finland from the disintegrating Russian Empire, she ran aground in a fog. Salvaged in July, she was towed back to Kiel and served as a barracks ship without being completely repaired. After the Armistice, she was deleted on November 5, 1919 and the hulk was scrapped in the Netherlands during 1920 and 1921.

Some other battleships: Friedrich der Grosse, Dreadnought, Prinz Eugen