The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Germany Battle Cruiser Seydlitz

Laid down on December 4, 1911, launched on March 30, 1912 and commissioned on May 22, 1913, Seydlitz 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. Seydlitz was the only ship in her battle cruiser class and the ship had coal-fired turbine engines. As with their earliest battleships, the Germans decided that their 11 inch gun was equivalent to the British 12 inch gun and settled on the smaller weapon for their earliest "dreadnoughts," including the Von der Tann and Seydlitz battle cruisers. As was the case with all German battle cruisers, the ships of this class were better protected than British battle cruisers and adhered to the later "fast battleship" concept of the Second World War. The ship was named after Friedrich Wilhelm Seydlitz (1721–1773), Frederick the Great’s brilliant cavalry commander in the Seven Years War. During the war, Seydlitz was, with most of the other German battle cruisers, used in raids to harass and 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 further out to sea. 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, where she was Admiral Franz von Hipper’s (1863–1932) flagship and took two heavy hits that caused both rear turrets to burn out with almost 160 dead. The disaster to her turrets, caused by a spreading magazine explosion, almost sank Seydlitz, but she returned under her own power. An examination of the damage led to later changes and anti-flash improvements on the magazine doors of all German capital ships, adding to their "unsinkable" reputation. She participated in the bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft in April 1916, where she struck a mine and returned with 1,400 tons of water aboard. At the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916, she sank the battle cruiser Queen Mary but was battered by 21 heavy and two medium shell hits plus a torpedo from the British destroyer Petard. Four of her five turrets were hit and two of them were burnt out. Incredibly, Seydlitz survived again, returning to base under her own power with 5,300 tons of water shipped. Her forecastle was actually almost awash and Seydlitz was able to reach harbor only by steaming in reverse, aided by two salvage pump vessels. One tough ship! After extensive repairs, she participated in some additional sorties but no more combats. After the Armistice, she was interned at Scapa Flow from November 24, 1918. In common with most of the other German ships interned there, Seydlitz was scuttled on June 21, 1919. Raised from the mud in 1928, she was scrapped during 1929 and 1930.

See other German battle cruisers: Yavuz Sutan Selim, Derfflinger, Moltke