SMS Graf Spee

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SMS Graf Spee was a First World War German Mackensen class battle cruiser, named after Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee.

The first ship of the class, SMS Mackensen, was ordered in peacetime, with six more ordered during the wartime construction program. Although initially intended to carry 38 cm guns, the ships were built with 35 cm guns so as to keep their weight down. However, when it became known that Britain was building battlecruisers with 38 cm guns (HMS Renown and HMS Repulse), the design of the last three ships in the class was modified to accommodate 38 cm guns to be known as the Yorck class.

SMS Graf Spee was laid down on 30 November 1915 at the Schichau yards in Danzig. She had a length of 223 m (732 ft), a beam of 30.4 m, a draught of 9.3 m, and a designed displacement of 35,300 tons. The armament consisted of eight 35 cm guns, fourteen 15 cm guns and eight 8.8 cm guns as well as five torpedo tubes. Four engines were to give her a maximum speed of 28.8 knots and a range of 8,000 nautical miles at 14 knots. The crew was to number 1,186 men.

The war ended before any of these ships were completed. Construction of SMS Graf Spee was stopped shortly after the end of World War I on 17 November 1918, more than a year before completion, and she was scrapped in Kiel from 1921 to 1923. Work on Mackensen, launched 1917 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, was stopped 14 months before completion and the ship was broken up in 1921. Prinz Eitel Friedrich was about 21 months from completion when construction was stopped; she was launched after the war and scrapped immediately thereafter. Fürst Bismarck was never launched and scrapped in the shipyard in 1920-1922.