Featured Article Summary #145

SMS Westfalen was a German battleship of the Nassau class and one of the first dreadnoughts built for the Imperial Navy. It was built at AG Weser in Bremen, launched in 1908, and joined the High Seas Fleet in 1909. The ship carried twelve 28 cm main guns arranged in six twin turrets. During World War I, it mainly operated with sister ships in the North Sea, including major action at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, where it fought heavily in night combat. It was later deployed to the Baltic Sea, supporting German operations against Russia and then backing the White Finns in 1918. After Germany’s fleet was scuttled in 1919, Westfalen was given to the Allies and eventually broken up for scrap in England by 1924. Design work on the Nassau-class began in late 1903 as Germany tried to keep up with the Anglo-German naval arms race, when foreign battleships were starting to use much heavier secondary guns than older German ships. Based on (incorrect) reports that Britain’s Lord Nelson class might carry extremely large secondary batteries, German designers initially planned an “all-big-gun” style ship with eight 28 cm guns, approved in March 1905, and later adjusted the design using lessons from the Russo-Japanese War. By January 1906 it had been refined into a larger ship with twelve such guns, just as Britain began work on HMS Dreadnought, the first true all-big-gun battleship. Westfalen was a large warship with a flush deck and ram bow, measuring 146.1 m long and 26.9 m wide, with a draft of 8.9 m. It displaced about 18,873 t normally and 20,535 t when fully loaded, carried a crew of 40 officers and 968 enlisted men, and had a relatively small superstructure with forward and aft conning towers. The ship used three-shaft triple expansion engines powered by twelve coal-fired water-tube boilers (later partly supplemented with oil), giving 22,000 PS and a top speed of 20 knots, with a cruising range of 8,300 nautical miles at 12 knots. Its main armament was twelve 28 cm guns in six hexagonally arranged turrets, supported by twelve 15 cm guns and sixteen 8.8 cm guns, plus six submerged 45 cm torpedo tubes. Armor protection included heavy Krupp cemented steel, with thick side belt armor in the middle that tapered toward the bow, and strong protection for the main gun turrets and conning towers. SMS Westfalen was ordered as a replacement for SMS Sachsen and secretly funded by the Reichstag in 1906, but delays meant she was only laid down on 12 August 1907. After being launched in July 1908, she required special pontoons to reach open water when moving from the Weser River, and she entered sea trials in late 1909 before joining the High Seas Fleet in May 1910. She served in I Battle Squadron as a squadron flagship, taking part in training and fleet exercises across the Kattegat, Skagerrak, and the Baltic, along with visits and reviews involving foreign naval officers and dignitaries. Command changes occurred through 1911–1913, and plans to transfer her to another squadron for modernization in 1914 were dropped after World War I began in July 1914. Westfalen took part in most German fleet operations in the North Sea, including the attack on English towns in December 1914. On 15 December, the German fleet came close to a small British force but, after misreading the situation, the German commander withdrew the fleet. Westfalen later supported operations in 1915, including movements after the Battle of Dogger Bank (where it saw no action), routine maintenance in late March, and further fleet advances that often failed to meet British ships.