Portal:Germany/Selected article/9

SMS Lothringen was the last of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the Braunschweig class, built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy). She was laid down in December 1902, was launched in May 1904, and was commissioned in May 1906. She was named for Lothringen (now Lorraine), a province of the German Empire from 1871 to 1918. The ship was armed with a battery of four 28 cm (11 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Like all other pre-dreadnoughts built around the turn of the century, Lothringen was quickly made obsolete by the launching of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought in December 1906; as a result, her career as a front-line battleship was cut short.

Lothringen's peacetime career centered on squadron and fleet exercises and training cruises with II Battle Squadron. Scheduled to be withdrawn from service in July 1914 and replaced by newer dreadnought battleships, the outbreak of World War I that month prevented her retirement. She spent the first two years of the war primarily serving as a guard ship in the German Bight. She and the rest of II Squadron joined the dreadnoughts of the High Seas Fleet to support the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby in December 1914. In poor condition by 1916, she was withdrawn from fleet service in February. She thereafter patrolled the Danish straits until she was replaced by the battleship Hannover in September 1917. She spent the rest of the war as a disarmed training ship.

After the war, Lothringen was retained by the re-formed Reichsmarine and converted into a depot ship for F-type minesweepers from 1919 to 1920. After the task of clearing the wartime minefields in the North Sea was completed, she was placed in reserve in March 1920. The ship remained inactive for the next decade and was stricken from the naval register in March 1931 and sold to ship breakers later that year. (Full article...)