- Yes!
- Nein!
- As of commissioning in 1893
- As of all refits, modifications, and updates by 1907
- Nein!
This is the third in a series of suggestions detailing the first modern battleships of many of the great and great-ish powers of the world- usually but not necessarily always entirely quite of full pre-dreadnought status, yet were the opening salvos of the era.|
And with that, this is the suggestion for the lead ship of the class that started that era… for the German Empire: the Pre-Dreadnought Battleship SMS Brandenburg, lead ship of the Brandenburg-class.|
specifically Brandenburg as of commissioning in November 1893, and as of 1907 when all the refits and ammo modernizations had been done.|
The Brandenburg-class were the first ever true battleships of the German Empire, and represent truly Day One of the rise of a meager Prussian coastal navy into the definitive challenger to the Royal Navy and its century of unquestioned naval dominance.
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Illustration of Brandenburg by William Frederick Mitchell, circa 1894
Brandenburg as depicted in Brassey’s Naval Annual 1902
1902 lithograph of Brandenburg
SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm
SMS Weissenburg
SMS Wörth
BACKGROUND:
The design of the Brandenburg-class is particularly a really fascinating one as unlike just about any other major or regional navy going into the naval design era of Steam-and-Steel, for Germany… there really was no previous design at all.
Sure the shipbuilders at AG Vulcan had built the Dingyuan-class Ironclad Battleships for China, but that was still just a mid-1870s vintage Sachsen-class Armored Frigate design at its core, just updated to 1880s technological standards and upscaled with battleship-grade armor and 12-inch/20-caliber Krupp Guns in traversing iron turrets- good and very quite legitimate Coastal Battleships (a term the Royal Navy would sneer at by the way) they were for the time, but their shiny veneer lost its luster far too fast for any nation not enthralled by the Jeune Ecole doctrine.
Going into 1891 Germany was only a 20-year old nation itself, and had never had a serious coastal defense navy beyond the Sachsen-class Armored Frigates, let alone a 1st Class Ironclad Battleship.
A further updated Dingyuan-class repeat was simply just not something that was going to cut it when the Danes, Swedes, Dutch, or Belgians could just buy an old ironclad design of even newer vintage off the Brits and post up just off the island of Helgoland and interdict trade before the German Army could do its thing, or worse get into a shooting war with the Russians; or god help them; the ****ing British.
DESIGN:
The first German Linienschiff, AKA the German name for the now-archaic term Ship of the Line until 1919…
…you know, the age of sail name for a battleship… just to point out culturally how far behind on even naming terms the Germans were in this field…
…would have to take an arduous path common to any organization getting into a field where they are starting from scratch: look at what everyone else is doing, put together a bastardized hodgepodge of all of them, and hope to god it doesn’t come out looking like Frankenstein.
This is where the Brandenburg-class design was born, thanks to the efforts of the project chief constructor Alfred Dietrich:
Starting with the Armored, Steel, Broadside, Corvette, (well that’s a mouthful) SMS Oldenburg (1884), and elements of the Siegfried-class Coastal Defense Ship and its traversing turrets, the upcoming class soon had a basic template to work with.
Attention was then paid to Russian battleships like the Ekaterina II-class, a battleship with an insane main armament of two twin 12-inch gun turrets… ON THE BOW… and a third twin turret aft of the superstructure.
Little hard to see it, but most Ironclads or pre-dreadnoughts total main armament was right on the bow of the Ekaterina II-class Ironclad Battleship Chesma seen here:
This would be rejected as German drydocks were not wide enough for a ship girthy enough to pack this kind of all-forward heavy armament… but the idea of a battleship with 3 turrets still stuck fast.
But then of all people, it was the French who (unknowingly… and probably very unwelcomingly once they found out about their part) came to the rescue, courtesy of the design of the The Amiral Baudin-class ironclad barbette ship… and its 3 single centerline 370mm guns…
…which became 3 TWIN centerline 283mm (11.1-inch) guns on the Brandenburg design when Alfred Dietrich would copy this layout, sacrificing end-on firepower for the absolute maximum of all-up broadside firepower, just enough so that the design was approved by the Reichsmarineamt despite the poor end-on firepower of only the bow or aft twin guns.
And here we get to the compounding quirks of the Brandenburg-class, and why they aren’t even briefly considered as a super early somehow semi-dreadnought; their rate of fire, caliber of the barrels, and lacking technology.
If you’re just coming from my Royal Sovereign-class suggestion, get ready to roll your eyes and groan again: .5 RPM fire rate. Oh dear sweet god not again.
During the 1890s, the Brandenburgs all had this appalling fire rate of one pair of 283mm shells every 2 minutes thanks to literally the only mechanization of the loading process being a simple hydraulic rammer… but during the 1903-1904 major refits across the whole class, machinery was apparently added to bring the fire rate up to 1 RPM. so it became passable at least, but yeah, when 12-inch gunned ships have double the fire rate regardless of whichever side of the turn of the century you’re on…
And then there’s the mixed calibers. Many pre-dreadnoughts and semi-dreadnoughts used mixed gun sizes within their weight class, such as a ship having two to four 12-inch main guns, and another couple 10-inch secondary guns, but to see use of the same gun caliber with different barrel calibers is both unusual and distinctly counterproductive, with any attempt to synchronize gunfire across the main armament being unnecessarily cumbersome, as the Japanese saw with their Kawachi-class dreadnought battleships.
Fortunately the Brandenburgs (at least initially) didn’t need to worry about such sophisticated issues! Aside from basic 1st generation rangefinders of some sort, There was NO central fire control, directors, or any of that new age fancy schmancy stuff in Germany at commissioning. It was just you, your wooden chair, your possibly tripod mounted rangefinder, and your 11-inch guns. Keep in mind that at the beginning of the 1890s, the only nations with real access to the very brand new technology of fire control were the British, French, Japanese, and Italians… and the Japanese and Italians just bought theirs from the British, their friend/ally/technopimp at any given time.
Keep in mind that up until the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, effective battleship gun ranges of roughly 3 nautical miles were actually still somewhat familiar to a sailor that would have fought alongside Lord Nelson on HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar… a century earlier in 1805.
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Originally the class was going to have a uniform armament of 3 sets of twin 283mm L/35 Marine Ring Kanones, but around this time the Germans developed the 283mm MRK L/40… unfortunately the limited size of the ship… which was still larger than anything Germany had built to date… meant that there was just barely room for the middle barbette, turret, and 35-caliber guns without the guns knocking into the aft superstructure (a common design trait going straight through to nearly the very last battleships) that was already scalloped out slightly to fit the L/35 guns, and not enough for the new 40-caliber guns amidships. Now ultimately the performance variation was largely negligible between the two calibers, but “almost the same” is a lot different than “exactly the same” at a range of 6000 meters, which the Russo-Japanese War showed to be the actual active combat range of contemporary pre-dreadnought battleships… or, double the range of the absolute longest potshot the aforementioned Battle of Trafalgar sailor would’ve even tried on a whim a century prior.
Aside from the strange armament choices, the hull of the ships had a mix of older design habits, and new innovations, with a partial double bottom running along almost half the hull (47% to be exact), but only 13 watertight compartments across the ship. For comparison, the first battleships of Japan, the Fuji-class… have 131 watertight compartments.
…so uhhhh just don’t eat any torpedoes or mines.
SMS Weißenburg being launched… yeah, 13 watertight compartment across all THAT
The hull shape had a mild tumblehome and as with all ships of the era, featured an armored ram bow. Most notably; why the Brandenburgs have the particularly unique silhouette they do is because of the raised forecastle deck that stretched from the bow all the way to the aft funnel via a thin flying superstructure, towering over the main deck-level weather deck and middle turret around it.
SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, circa 1900-1902
As a result, Germany’s very first Pre-Dreadnought designs are some of the most unique battleships of the era, and as it would turn out, all of them would have incredible lives as well.
Outside of the design itself, the Brandenburg-class and SMS Brandenburg herself was the first true battleship of the Kaiserliche Marine, representing a total change from the old 1880s coastal defense policies of Reichsmarineamt chief Leo von Caprivi, to the new 1890s oceangoing navy policies championed by the new German Kaiser, Wilhelm II and his new reichsmarineamt chief in vice admiral Alexander von Monts, and later Alfred von Tirpitz.
Despite this paradigm shift from brown water to blue water thinking that would only later become the doctrine of the High Seas Fleet under Tirpitz, the program itself was actually a response to the French Jeune École doctrine of commerce raiders and massed attack of capital ships via swarms of boats and small ships at a time when the traditional Battlefleet concept could theoretically be countered via torpedoes.
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HISTORY:
What would become SMS Brandenburg was laid down at the shipyards of AG Vulcan in the port city of Stettin as Linienschiff A in May 1890, launched on September 21st, 1891 after being personally christened by Kaiser Wilhelm II; and due to the issues of procuring the guns, was only finally commissioned on November 19th, 1893.
After a variety of sea trials, examinations, and showboating; at the very end of December 1893, SMS Brandenburg was assigned to the II Division of the Maneuver Squadron… which isn’t exactly the kind of unit you think of seeing a big lumbering battleship in. At this time, sea trials were actually still ongoing for the brand new battleship.
On February 14th, 1894, the forced draft section of these trials resulted in apparently the worst failure of machinery in German naval history (good to get that out the way early i suppose… especially considering how they tortured their WWII machinery) when during a forced draft test, a defective… and clearly also critically overpressured… main steam valve for the starboard boilers catastrophically exploded, killing 44 and injuring 7 via explosion; from the extreme pressure turning it into a pressure cooker, shrapnel from becoming a gigantic pipe bomb, and broiling from becoming a gigantic STEAM POWERED pipe bomb… all in all not a great way to go.
Due to this catastrophic explosion, Prince Albert Wilhelm Heinrich aboard the nearby transport ship SMS Pelikan came to aid the ship’s crew and its issue of exploding powerplants trying to kill them all.
Brandenburg then limped to the area off the eastern coast of Schleswig-Holstein; the Wiker Bucht; and then to Kiel for repairs, with the revelation of this incident drawing political criticism and resistance towards expanding the Kaiserliche Marine in its infancy. Though this would soon peter out, it did manage to slightly delay the funding of the first German Armored Cruiser, SMS Fürst Bismarck.
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Repairs would stretch to mid-April and further sea trials sans homicidal steam valves spanned all the way from late April to August. And I believe that it’s during these April 1894 repairs that Brandenburg received the first modification in her career- her funnels being doubled in height from 1.5 meters to 3 in order to reduce smoke interference with the spotting top on the mainmast.
This would be capped off with a cruise through the Kattegat to base at Wilhelmshaven, and finally, FINALLY, actually joining the II Squadron that she’d been in on paper since the end of 1893… only for the squadron to be immediately reorganized and Brandenburg kicked over to the I Squadron… where all of her sisters now were.
December 1894 would be a busy one: attending the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal at Kiel on the 4th, followed by the first ever German winter training cruise while en route to Stockholm for the tricentennial of the birth of the legendary Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus before returning home for yet more repairs… probably from all the Sabaton they were blasting… clearly the first German battleship still had some teething build quality issues to work out.
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1895 turned out to be the first truly serious year however of Brandenburg’s service and the test of both the ship, the whole class, and 1st generation German capital ship design; when SMS Brandenburg and I Squadron embarked on a fairly normal training cruise to Helgoland and then a quick hop to Bremerhaven…
…featuring as guest of honor, Kaiser Wilhelm II in person, aboard the fellow Brandenburg-class squadron flagship SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm…
…which then gradually morphed into a voyage into the northern North Sea, then changing to only Brandenburg and Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm making to a pit stop at Lerwick of the Shetland Islands as part of seeing how the ships fared in the North Sea’s usual assortment of absolutely god awful sea states, capped off by I Squadron returning to Kiel to show off the new battleships to foreign observers for the first time.
All of these trials, tribulations, and pageantry truly solidified the move of the Kaiserliche Marine from a brownwater coastal force of deterrence (and mainly against the wacky ambitions of Napoleon III at that) to a true navy rapidly approaching their goal of bluewater ambitions.
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The next 6 years were a wide and diverse series of diplomatic functions; sometimes with and without a fleet in tow; naval demonstrations, foreign inspections, fleet maneuvers and exercises, port calls, and laughing in the face of whatever god awful storms that the Atlantic Ocean, North Sea, and Baltic seas could all throw at it, rescuing SMS Oldenburg from an unplanned adventure courtesy of an unmanned storm driven coastal beaching… and then the accidental ramming of SMS Württemberg by the Brandenburg, who then left her entire ram bow embedded in the Württemberg when she backed up and; not quite entirely; out of the hapless ironclad, requiring lengthy repairs for both of them… whoops.
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During this period, Brandenburg would encounter two people who would be critical in the development of German naval warfare: Vice Admiral August von Thomsen, the new commander of I Squadron; and the new Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt… one Rear Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz.
The combined lessons and doctrines of these two led to both an emphasis on highly accurate long range gunnery and the high degree of skill it requires, something the Royal Navy found out the hard way during WWI.
Just before heading to China, in early/mid-1900, all Brandenburg-class battleships received wireless radiotelegraphy sets, the first German ships to do so, and when the technology was still brand new.
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Without going too far into the backstory of the Boxer Rebellion and its central antagonists, the Yìhéquán Movement, AKA the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, AKA the Boxers; the Boxer Rebellion was a nationalist uprising; soon supported by the Chinese imperial court straight up to Dowager Empress Cixi; against basically any western institution or peoples inside of the Qing Empire, from foreigners, Chinese Christians, missionaries, and churches on the local level; to the western-backed corporations and their respective governments imperialism and colonization efforts, centered around the Legation Quarter in Peking (now Beijing).
When it comes to the German angle of the Boxer Rebellion, they got involved after the German embassy in the Peking Legation Quarter was besieged by the Boxers, who killed the German Plenipotentiary (AKA super-diplomat) Baron Clemens von Ketteler.
These waves of violence that drew the ire of even the staunchly isolationist but increasingly ascendant Americans, resulted in basically every major nation on earth (save for the Ottoman Empire… no Turkish delights for the Chinese i guess) all agreeing to go to China and open a massive can of multinational whoopass against these nationalists with massive expeditionary forces, as a coalition called the Eight-Nation Alliance.
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On July 7th, 1900, the commander of the German expeditionary force, Admiral Richard von Geißler reported that the force was ready to go. The next day on July 8th, SMS Brandenburg and her sisters were transferred to the reestablished II Division that was now the naval component of the German contribution to the alliance. and on July 9th, the expeditionary force set sail, bound for the Shanghai subdivision of Wusong, at the mouth of the Huangpu River.
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And this was no token force either- the normal German Ostasiengeschwader at the time was a respectable enough colonial unit for an upcoming major power like Germany, consisting of:
the Victoria Louise-class protected cruisers SMS Hansa and SMS Hertha,
the small protected cruiser and flagship SMS Irene,
the unprotected cruiser SMS Gefion,
the Iltis-class gunboats SMS Iltis and SMS Jaguar
as well as the the unique proto-Scout Cruiser/Colonial Cruiser/Protected Cruiser SMS Kaiserin Augusta…
…which just so happens to be one of my very earliest suggestions… god i need to remake that one BADLY…
MEANWHILE… The II Squadron expeditionary force on the other hand was more like a WWI task force:
all four Brandenburg-class battleships, 6 cruisers, 10 freighters (presumably both for fleet support and to carry troops) and 3 torpedo boats supporting 6 regiments of German marines.
By the time the II Squadron reached Wusong on August 30th, 1900, the Siege of Peking had been broken, but there was plenty to do still. SMS Brandenburg during this period patrolled the mouth of the Yangtze and aided in the occupations of a couple of coastal forts.
After 9 months on station, the Boxer Rebellion dismantled, and Dowager Empress Cixi convinced that supporting them and declaring war on 8 major nations; most of whom had already spent part of the 19th century wrecking China;… all at the SAME TIME… was kind of a dumb decision.
On May 26th, 1901, the II Squadron and expeditionary force were finally recalled, and made it back to Helgoland by August 11th, 1901. one wild year indeed.
When all was said and done, the total estimated cost of this whole adventure for Germany was pegged at roughly 100 million marks… all because of a rebellion of people who thought they were so jacked that their bodies could literally deflect bullets…
…and yes the true believers of the Boxers actually did think that… briefly.
Until they got shot.
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The period of August 21st, 1901, to October 22nd, 1902, passed with little out of the ordinary. Exercises, maneuvers, zero colossal Chinese uprisings for once, you get the drill.
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On October 23rd, 1902, SMS Brandenburg got its first taste of being outdated and surplus to requirement and was decommissioned, its crew transferred to the new Wittelsbach-class pre-dreadnought battleship SMS Zähringen, and Brandenburg placed in reserve, slated for a major refit alongside all 3 sisters.
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And these’s weren’t some small upgrades either, these were extensive modifications-
The aft superstructure got its own armored conning tower, with 120mm sides and a 20mm roof, the obsolete fire tube boilers replaced with newer water tube boilers, extra space was dedicated to coal storage, both masts had their searchlights removed, An extra pair of 105mm SK L/35 guns were added, bringing the total to 5 per side…
…The torpedo armament was changed, with the broadside and bow tubes were removed entirely, while a traversable mounting from the bow was moved to the stern, which actually kind of makes sense as it could be used to ward off a close pursuit.
and thankfully further hydraulic machinery was added to bring the main guns loading sequence rate of fire up to 1 RPM… thank god for that
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All this bringing the Brandenburgs up to the kind of near-parity that the 1st and early 2nd generation pre-dreadnoughts sometimes received to make them more comparable to the final generation of pre-dreadnoughts.
Despite all that was added, with all that was removed, each ship of the class had a net reduction of 500-700 metric tonnes (490 to 690 long tons) of weight… which is not bad for an originally ~10,500 metric ton fully loaded battleship.
Brandenburg, 1893, absolutely PERFECT amidships profile shot.
Brandenburg (right( escorted by SMS Roon (left), 1906-
starboard side offset photo of sister ship SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm in 1910
After two and a half years in dock, SMS Brandenburg would return to active service in the Kaiserliche Marine on April 4th, 1905. A changed ship in a vastly changed navy.
As was the fate of most obsolescent pre-dreadnoughts going into the dreadnought battleship era; modernized or not; Brandenburg would have a short second service life, with this entire stint from April 4th, 1905, to September 30th, 1907, being little more than routine training, followed by being placed back into reserve, this time within a reserve formation (now that the german navy was large enough to have such a thing) and all her crew transferred to the Deutschland-class pre-dreadnought SMS Hannover.
Brandenburg would have a brief 3rd stint in active service in 1910, where she was reactivated, placed in the III Squadron of the Active Fleet- AKA “we have dreadnoughts and a battlecruiser on the way so we’ll just dump the obsolete tubs here for now for training uses”
Aaaaaaaand this was all just for the annual fleet maneuvers… because hey, you gotta pad those numbers somehow. And then Brandenburg went right back into reserves again.
In 1911 Brandenburg was transferred to the Training and Experimental Ships Unit; AKA the obsolete tub squadron, version 2.1; for you guessed it, training exercises; followed by yet another decommissioning, followed by a transfer to the Baltic Sea station where she would sit in effectively reserve for the next two years… until the Great War broke out.
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Illustration of a Brandenburg-class battleship with torpedo boats in the foreground
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When World War One began in August 1914, practically every old ship of relative note in the Kaiserliche Marine was reactivated, since being at war with the UK and the Royal ****ing Navy generally necessitates bringing everything that floats and can mount a gun.
SMS Brandenburg would be duly reactivated and assigned to V Squadron, a North Sea coastal defense force turned Baltic coastal invasion force, turned coastal force again, turned flag showing force, all under the command of Prince Albert Wilhelm Heinrich, Brandenburg’s onetime medic from back in the exploding steam pipe bomb boiler days.
…and they showed the flag once. at the Swedish island of Gotland. And then returned to the North Sea for a brief period. And that was it.
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After this spending late 1914 going from the North and Baltic seas, Brandenburg and V Squadron were withdrawn to Kiel and largely deactivated in February 1915, both due to a shortage of trained crewman (the sheer population of the Kaiserliche Marine being stretched to nearly the last available man) and the risks of operating such outdated ships in wartime against the Royal ****ing Navy of all people- and keep in mind the far more modern pre-dreadnoughts of II Battle Squadron were themselves nicknamed the “five minute ships” during the Battle of Jutland for a very good reason, because that’s how long they’d last against enemy dreadnoughts… let alone battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts.
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After several months in a shipyard, SMS Brandenburg would be moved to the occupied port of Libau (Liepāja, Latvia) around mid-December 1915, as the Russians clearly weren’t going to be much of a threat.
On December 20th, 1915, SMS Brandenburg was decommissioned out of the Kaiserliche Marine for the last time. Her 283mm L/40 and L/35 main guns were removed from the ship, bound for the Ottoman Empire, presumably for use in coastal forts protecting the Dardanelles.
In the waning days of WWI, the hulk that Brandenburg now was, was moved to Danzig with plans to convert her to a target ship… okay… because the British apparently didn’t have enough reasons to shoot at some errant Germans. This was canceled partway through due to the end of the war. Brandenburg was removed from what little was left on the post-Scapa Flow navy register on May 13th, 1919, and sold to the shipbreaker Norddeutsche Tiefbaugesellschaft to be broken up at the port of Danzig.
And so it was that SMS Brandenburg, the first battleship of the German Empire, and one of the most unique of the pre-dreadnought era of battleships at that, passed into history, joining the recently deceased German Empire in the rapidly expanding graveyard of 20th Century Europe.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS:
Displacement (normal load):
10,013 metric tonnes (9,855 long tons) (1894-1902)
9,300-9,500 metric tonnes (9,150-9,350 long tons) (1904-)
Displacement (maximum load):
10,670 metric tonnes (10,500 long tons) (1894-1902)
9,830-10,170 metric tonnes (9,675-10,009 long tons) (1904-)
Length:
115.7 meters overall
113.9 meters at the waterline
Beam:
19.5 meters
Draft:
7.6 meters at normal loads
7.9 meters at full loads
Powerplant:
12 scotch marine fire tube boilers, feeding into 2 Vertical Triple Expansion steam engines, producing 9900 indicated horsepower (10,000 metric horsepower), going down two shafts to two propellers, producing speeds of 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h; 19.0 mph), a distinctly average speed for the beginning of the pre-dreadnought era
Range:
4300 nautical miles cruising at 10 knots
Fuel:
640 long tons (650 metric tons) of coal during peacetime and/or non-critical operations
1030 long tons (1050 metric tons) for maximum range during wartime or for long range travel (such as to Dar es Salaam or Tsingtao)
Crew:
38 officers, 530 enlisted (1890-1903)
47 officers, 584 enlisted (1890-1903 as flagship)
30 officers, 561 enlisted (post-1904)
39 officers, 609 enlisted (post-1904 as flagship)
ARMOR:
Like with everything else involving this class, literally all four ships in the class have both differing armor thicknesses… AND MATERIALS… MIXED ACROSS PARTS OF EACH SHIP… ranging from the 1st generation Krupp Steel that was absolutely bleeding edge when the Brandenburgs were commissioned, to the soon-totally obsolete compound armor when they were originally laid down… and especially on Brandenburg, even just really thick teak wood backing as further standoff armor… uh… sure.
Unfortunately with being the first built, Brandenburg had Compound Armor… and Teak wood… as her main armor plate alongside SMS Wörth, though the three year build time meant that 1st generation Kruppstahl was still available in some areas, chiefly the barbettes.
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Much of the information seen below comes from wikipedia by way of one of its sources, which seems to be one of the very best on the subject, period-
Nottelmann, Dirk (2002). Die Brandenburg-Klasse: Höhepunkt des deutschen Panzerschiffbaus [The Brandenburg Class: High Point of German Armored Ship Construction] (in German).
Main Belt:
All four ships of the Brandenburg-class actively used teak backing to their armor belts as a form of protection- with the teak being used to help absorb the shock of a torpedo or naval mine detonation.
The belt followed the “French Principle” of armor; which is to say, a fully distributed armor layout with a thin waterline belt stretching from end to end rather than a comprehensive citadel… and if not for the ship design itself having such a large amount of area in a low main deck would reek of Infanta Maria Theresa-class syndrome
The belt was very narrow for a battleship, extending from 0.8 meters (2 ft 7 in) above the waterline to 1.6 meters (5 ft 3 in) below for a 2.4 meter (7 ft 10 in) total height.
With that said, the main waterline citadel belt was 400mm thick of Compound Armor across the citadel span above the waterline and backed by 200mm of Teak wood, while underwater along the same span the belt and backing was instead 200mm of Compound Armor backed by 200mm of Teak.
Outside of the Citadel, the forwards abovewater extension stepped down in 3 sections going from just ahead of the citadel abovewater belt to the bow- the first step down was to 380mm, the middle step was 330mm, terminating with the 300mm thick bow section.
Behind the citadel, the abovewater belt armor stepped down only twice, first to 350mm and then 300mm towards and at the stern.
And I have to point this out now- this specifically made for part of a very powerfully reinforced and very effective ram bow that maximized damage, and could minimize self-harm (provided the bow stays attached to the ship it’s supposed to) far beyond the usual ~3 inches of armored reinforcement that they usually had at this time. Meanwhile the thick armor behind the citadel gave the back half of Brandenburg a very high level of protection on a relatively very low and hard to shoot area.
Meanwhile, the forwards underwater extension tapered in 3 steps like the abovewater section- 190mm, then 180mm, then 150mm at the bow and an extended downwards area as seen in the cross section above. The aft underwater extension itself was a uniform thickness for once- 180mm
The entire span from citadel to ends was backed by 200mm of Teak; which while seemingly laughable, was meant as standoff armor to both sponge the shockwave and insulate the hull against mine and torpedo explosions.
Deck:
The armored deck was 60mm of compound armor that connected to the upper belt- this deck was a compromise between cost and effectiveness, as it could only really deflect close range shots from oblique angles, was helpless against plunging fire (a far more common threat back in the days when few shells had muzzle velocities reaching 700+ m/s), and could be broken by large enough on-impact detonations.
Barbettes:
(A and B - 1st generation Krupp Steel, C - compound armor)
All 3 barbettes featured a powerful 300mm of protection all around, and was further backed by 210mm of Teak as a shock/spall absorber… though if anything could do THAT much damage to a nearly 12-inch thick barbette (especially A and B) in the mid-1890s (which isn’t a whole hell of a lot), i really doubt that teak would saved anyone.
Main Turrets:
The turrets on the other hand seem almost… kind of forgotten in their protection, being just about the next step up from being open barbettes- it’s specifically stated “three 40 mm (1.6 in) layers, for a total of 120 mm (4.7 in)” showing that these 3 layers may be simply bolted on or otherwise NOT bonded together, meaning that if that is the case, the sides would have a decreased level of actual protection closer to 100mm… oh and there’s a 50mm roof to keep the rain and French insults out.
Primary Conning Tower:
300mm sides, 30mm roof
Rear Conning Tower (added during 1902-1904 refits):
The aft superstructure got its own armored conning tower, with 120mm sides and a 20mm roof.
Secondary guns:
The 105mm and 88mm guns all had a 42mm two-piece gunshield that consisted of a 22mm plate and 20mm plate bolted together.
ARMAMENT:
a thing to note- while it would take a while for old german warships to use smokeless powder propellants, the Kaiserliche Marine were really early to the post-black powder damage dealing game- using a bursting charge of Füllpulver C/88, an early naval picric acid bursting charge… so not much different from what the Japanese, British, and Americans would develop with early shimose powders (pure picric acid), Cordite (lyddite), Explosive D (dunnite) respectively, later moving to using tube powder propellant in 1906 and modern TNT charges around the same time… probably because anything derived from picric acid at this time was ludicrously dangerous and unstable.
2x2 283mm/40 MRK L/40 C/90 at the bow and aft ends
1x2 283mm/35 MRK L/35 C/90 amidships
(MRK, Marine Ring Kanone- The Prussians-turned-Germans were a little behind the times in the field of naval bureaucracy, as seen with these guns being the last generation to actually note that they used a traversing circular platform)
283mm MRK L/35 coastal gun at Oscarsborg Fortress- the L/35 and L/40 versions are built in the same exact way, literally the only constructional difference is the barrel length.
This was the first truly modern German capital ship naval gun, as while the Royal Navy effectively set the modern big gun standard with a primary 12-inch (305.4mm) and secondary 10-inch (254mm) calibers, the great industrial firm Krupp set the Germanic standard used by Germany and Austria-Hungary (possibly to be more efficient?) with the 283mm (11.1-inch) and 238mm (9.4-inch, always rounded up to 24 cm) cannons.
Aside from the hydraulic rammer at the breech, practically the whole loading operation was done by hand and the guns had to be moved to their straight forwards neutral elevation position just to start the process- and since these ships are dedicated broadsiders, you’ll almost always have to rotate one or two turrets roughly 90 degrees, which is almost certainly part of this originally 2 minute total reload.
The turrets were hydraulically operated and required the rotating gun houses to return to the centerline to reload the guns. In their original configuration, the guns had a rate of fire of one shot every two minutes, but after their refits in the early 1900s, the ships’ loading equipment was modernized to improve the rate to one shot per minute.
Ammunition magazines stored a total of 352 shells; these were 240 kg (530 lb) projectiles that had a 56.6 kg (125 lb) bursting charge, and a muzzle velocity of 715 m/s (685 m/s for the L/35), both still very respectable speeds for the mid-1890s.
Despite the limited ranging technology of the time that Germany had, the guns themselves actually had a maximum effective firing range of 11 kilometers at 25° firing angle, even as the true maximum firing range was 15 km at 25° (14.45 km for the L/35 guns).
It has to be said that even with ships as old as these- even 1st generation rangefinders effectively tripled or quadrupled the effective range of big guns simply by extending the distance your eyes could see out to before parallax set in- once again, it wasn’t until the Russo-Japanese War that navies realized just how game changing rangefinders and fire control were, and it wasn’t until WWI that it became apparent just how far out you could actually score hits reliably.
Ammunition used for the main guns was quite simple-
An Armor Piercing shell; Panzergranate L/2.6, designated “Psgr. L/2,6”
according to "Die Geschichte der deutschen Schiffsartillerie”, the penetration of Psgr. L/2.6 was 160mm at 13.12 km… at such a long range for guns of early 1890s vintage, that’s pretty good.
and a base fuzed High Explosive; Sprenggranate L/2.9; designated as “Spgr. L/2,9 Bdz”
Propellant used for most of the class’s lifetimes was brown powder, though around 1907 even the totally obsolete 1st generation pre-dreadnoughts like the Brandenburgs were carrying shells propelled by the tube powder-style smokeless powder Rohr-Pulver RP C/06.
8 x 1 - 105mm SK L/35 C/91
AS OF 1904 10 x 1 - 105mm SK L/35 C/91
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_41-35_skc91.php
This was the main intermediate caliber of Germany for a long time prior to the development of the 5-inch range of guns, and the 35-caliber C/91 is the first of these, and a really good one for the 4-inch range of guns.
like all Krupp designs it was a horizontal sliding breech design firing fixed ammunition. ammo types were the classic nose fuse HE and standard AP, with an original 1891 version propelled by brown powder, and a 1907 update featuring both the original Rohr-Pulver RP C/06 and a slightly different HE shell.
it seems that by 1907 the AP shell was just never modernized for these old guns, being now in the dreadnought era on 10+ year old obsolete ships.
total weights:
1891
AP L/3.8: 40.1 lbs. (18.2 kg)
HE L/3.89: 39.7 lbs. (18.0 kg)
1907
HE L/3,6: 47.2 lbs. (21.4 kg)
the bursting charge of the 1907 HE shell was 0.747 kg of TNT
like the 88mm guns below, the muzzle velocity was mediocre at best, and slightly dropped with the switch to RP C/06- tube powders being very safe propellants, but very weak in propulsion compared to all others
Muzzle Velocity:
1891 shells: 620 m/s
1907 shells: 600 m/s
8 x 1 - 88mm SK L/30 C/89
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_88mm-30_skc97.php
Nordenfelt QF Gun, 1.65" (42mm) caliber pictures of the 88mm is most of the way down the page past the unrelated Nordenfelt guns
unlike the excellent 105mm C/91s, the early German 88mm was rather mediocre even for its time, though it was the direct inspiration for the C/30 version used in WWII. that said, despite only about 2 years of production, the use of this early and low velocity 88mm went for quite a long time as an anti-torpedo boat gun.
like all guns of this caliber range, it fired fixed case shells with brown powder propellant that were holdovers from the 1880s. unlike most, when its propellant was switched to smokeless powder; likely RP C/06; in 1907, it’s shells were themselves updated to semi-armor piercing and nose fuze pure HE shells.
originally it fired a black powder 1883 common shell that was fully obsolete once brown powder was figured out, at which point it was replaced by an updated 1888 pattern using brown powder for propellant.
Common L/2.60 C/83: 14.7 lbs. (6.68kg)
Common L/2.60 C/83/88: 15.0 lbs. (6.81 kg)
in 1901, an intermediate SAP shell was developed and obsoleted in half a dozen years.
SAP L/2.80 C/01: 21.6 lbs. (7.04 kg)
with modernizations by and of 1907, the 88mm/30 C/89 peaked, now featuring smokeless powder propellant, and far more stable TNT bursting charges- with the C/07 HE shells holding a charge of 1.42 kg, and the C/07 SAP shell not much less.
total weights:
SAP L/3.70 C/07: 22.0 lbs. (9.98 kg)
HE L/3.70 C/07: 21.3 lbs. (9.65 kg)
HE L/3.80 C/07: 21.6 lbs. (9.80 kg)
what held these shell back was their weak muzzle velocity that only decreased when modernized-
C/83 C/83/88, C/01 shells: 616 m/s
C/07 shells: 590 m/s
88mm shell capacity per magazine was:
1891-1907 - 250
1907- 290
which is good because the fire rate was 15 RPM, a 4 second reload.
AS OF 1904
4 x 1 3.7 cm Maschinenkanone (Maxim-Nordenfelt) AKA QF 1-pounder pom-poms
around 1896 the German navy started buying Maxim-Nordenfelt 1-pounder autocannons; AKA 37mm scaled up maxim guns; later producing them domestically under license by DWM.
as of the end of the major refits in 1904, each of the Brandenburg-class received four 37mm MK Maxim-Nordenfelt 1-pounders; all to the mainmast’s fighting top at each corner; to aid 88mm cannons in the anti-torpedo boat role.
now something to be said- while they don’t have the 1914 army FlaK mountings as their addition predates the first aircraft flight by half a decade, their elevation and fairly flexible mounts for the time to ward torpedo boats away, plus the machine guns, does give each of the Brandenburg-class a basic level of AA defense that is ironically better than most 1916-era battleships and their 2-4 high angle guns.
12 x 1 - Maxim machine guns
at any given point the Brandenburgs would also feature a dozen early model maxim guns for point defense. from 1891 to the big 1904 overhauls, the ammo used was the original round-nosed 7.92/57mm Patrone 88. after 1904 (well really by 1900, swapping upgraded machine guns doesn’t exactly require cranes), the guns would’ve been updated or replaced with the MG 01 pattern Maxim, and now firing the legendary 7.92/57mm S Patrone round, AKA classic 8mm Mauser.
2 x 1 (bow), 1 x 2 (per side) 450mm C45/91 Br and/or C45/91S Torpedoes as of comissioning,
1 x 1 (stern) C/03 and/or C/03 D by 1907
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WTGER_PreWWII.php
Brandenburg’s armament system was rounded out with six single 450mm torpedo tubes capable of firing the C45/91 Br and its immediate improvement the C45/91S. a very strong compliment for a battleship- and surprisingly all in above-water swivel mounts, 2 at the bow, and 2 per side on the beam, likely surprisingly high up at the back of the superstructure- part of the specific design of the C45/91 Br as well as the C45/91S was being constructed strong enough to handle an over 2 meter drop into the water.
by 1907 the long-obsolete C45 torpedoes would’ve been replaced with the C/03, and the even more vastly improved C/03 D wet-heater torpedo… which may actually get a kill in War Thunder every now and then.
sadly for anyone looking to get any battleship launched torpedo kills, the Brandenburgs almost lost their torpedo armament entirely- in the big 1902-04 refits, only one launcher would remain, placed at the stern.
C45/91 Br stats:
Weight:
541 kg
length:
5.112 meters
Explosive Charge
87.5 kg of fullpulver 88
Range and Speed
500 meters at 32 knots
800 meters at 26 knots
C45/91S stats:
Weight:
550 kg
length:
5.1 meters
Explosive Charge
197 kg of fullpulver 88
Range and Speed
500 meters at 33.5 knots
1200 meters at 27 knots
(1907) C/03 stats:
Weight:
662 kg
length:
5.15 meters
Explosive Charge
176 kg of TNT
Range and Speed
1500 meters at 31 knots
3000 meters at 26 knots
(1907) C/03 D wet heater stats:
Weight:
675 kg
length:
5.15 meters
Explosive Charge
176 kg of TNT
Range and Speed
1850 meters at 31 knots
3700 meters at 26 knots
SOURCES:
Online:
BRANDENBURG battleships (1893 - 1894).
Literary:
Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1860–1905, PDF page 255
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Grießmer, Axel (1999). Die Linienschiffe der Kaiserlichen Marine: 1906–1918; Konstruktionen zwischen Rüstungskonkurrenz und Flottengesetz [The Battleships of the Imperial Navy: 1906–1918; Constructions between Arms Competition and Fleet Laws] (in German). Bonn: Bernard & Graefe Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7637-5985-9.
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Gröner, Erich (1990). German Warships: 1815–1945. Vol. I: Major Surface Vessels. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-0-87021-790-6.
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Hildebrand, Hans H.; Röhr, Albert & Steinmetz, Hans-Otto (1993). Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe: Biographien – ein Spiegel der Marinegeschichte von 1815 bis zur Gegenwart [The German Warships: Biographies − A Reflection of Naval History from 1815 to the Present] (in German). Vol. 2. Ratingen: Mundus Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8364-9743-5.
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Hildebrand, Hans H.; Röhr, Albert & Steinmetz, Hans-Otto (1993). Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe: Biographien – ein Spiegel der Marinegeschichte von 1815 bis zur Gegenwart [The German Warships: Biographies − A Reflection of Naval History from 1815 to the Present] (in German). Vol. 5. Ratingen: Mundus Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7822-0456-9.
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Koop, Gerhard & Schmolke, Klaus-Peter (2001). Die Panzer- und Linienschiffe der Brandenburg-, Kaiser Friedrich III-, Wittlesbach-, Braunschweig- und Deutschland-Klasse [The Armored and Battleships of the Brandenburg, Kaiser Friedrich III, Wittelsbach, Braunschweig, and Deutschland Classes] (in German). Bonn: Bernard & Graefe Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7637-6211-8.
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Nottelmann, Dirk (2002). Die Brandenburg-Klasse: Höhepunkt des deutschen Panzerschiffbaus [The Brandenburg Class: High Point of German Armored Ship Construction] (in German). Hamburg: Mittler. ISBN 978-3-8132-0740-8.