SMS was a of the Imperial German Navy, built in the early 1910s and named after the Lower Silesian city of Breslau. Following her commissioning, and the battlecruiser were assigned to the (Mediterranean Division) in response to the Balkan Wars. After evading British warships in the Mediterranean to reach Constantinople, and were transferred to the Ottoman Empire in August 1914, to entice the Ottomans to join the Central Powers in World War I. The two ships, along with several other Ottoman vessels, raided Russian ports in October 1914, prompting a Russian declaration of war. The ships were renamed and , respectively, and saw extensive service with the Ottoman fleet, primarily in the Black Sea against the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
was active in laying minefields off the Russian coast, bombarding Russian ports and installations and, because of a shortage of Ottoman merchant ships, transporting troops and supplies to the Black Sea ports supplying Ottoman troops fighting in the Caucasus Campaign. She was lightly damaged several times by Russian ships, but the most serious damage was inflicted by a mine in 1915, which kept her out of service for half of a year. The ship was sunk by mines in January 1918 during the Battle of Imbros, with the loss of the vast majority of her crew.
Design
The s were designed in response to the development of the British s, which were faster than all existing German light cruisers. As a result, speed of the new ships had to be increased. To accomplish this, more powerful engines were fitted and their hulls were lengthened to improve their hydrodynamic efficiency. These changes increased top speed from over the preceding s. To save weight, longitudinal framing was adopted for the first time in a major German warship design. In addition, the s were the first cruisers to carry belt armor, which was necessitated by the adoption of more powerful guns in the latest British cruisers.
was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced normally and up to at full load. The ship had a short forecastle deck and a minimal superstructure that consisted primarily of a conning tower located on the forecastle. She was fitted with two pole masts with platforms for searchlights. had a crew of 18 officers and 336 enlisted men.
Her propulsion system consisted of two sets of AEG-Vulcan steam turbines driving four propellers. They were designed to give , but reached in service. These were powered by sixteen coal-fired Marine-type water-tube boilers, although they were later altered to use fuel oil that was sprayed on the coal to increase its burn rate. The boilers were vented through four funnels located amidships. These gave the ship a top speed of . carried of coal, and an additional of oil that gave her a range of approximately at .
The ship was armed with a main battery of twelve SK L/45 guns in single pedestal mounts. Two were placed side by side forward on the forecastle, eight were located on the broadside, four on either side, and two were side by side aft. The guns had a maximum elevation of 30 degrees, which allowed them to engage targets out to . They were supplied with 1,800 rounds of ammunition, for 150 shells per gun. By 1917, the 10.5 cm guns were replaced with eight SK L/45 guns, one fore and aft and three on each broadside. She was also equipped with a pair of torpedo tubes with five torpedoes; the tubes were submerged in the hull on the broadside. She could also carry 120 mines.
was protected by a waterline armor belt and a curved armor deck. The deck was flat across most of the hull, but angled downward at the sides and connected to the bottom edge of the belt. The belt and deck were both thick. The conning tower had thick sides.
Service history Early career
was ordered under the contract name " ", and was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin in early 1910. At her launching ceremony on 16 May 1911, she was christened by the mayor of Breslau, the ship's namesake. After her launching, fitting-out work commenced and lasted until mid-1912. On 10 May, she was commissioned to begin sea trials, which were interrupted to escort —Kaiser Wilhelm II's yacht—first to the Kiel Week sailing regatta and then for the Kaiser's annual summer cruise to Norwegian waters. The ship's first commander was (FK—Frigate Captain) Lebrecht von Klitzing. Only on 23 August could Breslau return to her initial testing, which were interrupted again by the annual autumn maneuvers of the High Seas Fleet, held from 12 to 20 September, during which Breslau escorted Wilhlem II again. On 26 September, Breslau was assigned to the Scouting Unit.
The ship's stint in the main fleet's reconnaissance force proved short-lived; on 3 November, Klitzing received orders for to join the battlecruiser to form the (Mediterranean Division), under the command of (Rear Admiral) Wilhelm Souchon. The German Navy decided it needed a permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean following the outbreak of the First Balkan War on 8 October 1912. Breslau sailed from Wilhelmshaven on 5 November, steaming at top speed for the eastern Mediterranean. After arriving in Alexandria in Ottoman Egypt, Breslau met with the unprotected cruiser and the protected cruiser . Breslau then sailed on to visit a series of ports in Greece and the Ottoman Empire, ultimately arriving in the Ottoman capital at Constantinople. By 25 March 1913, the ship had sailed west to Brindisi, Italy, where Ernst August, the Kaiser's son-in-law, came aboard. From there, the ship sailed to Corfu, where she embarked Prince Heinrich, the Kaiser's brother. She then carried both men to Piraeus, Greece, for the funeral of King George I of Greece, who had been assassinated on 18 March.
In April, the Great Powers decided to implement a blockade of Montenegro to force the government to end the Siege of Scutari and allow the city to fall under the control of Albania. Breslau joined an international naval force in the Adriatic Sea that included warships from Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia. After the Montenegrin government withdrew from the city, the international force sent landing parties ashore at the mouth of the Bojana and then move overland to Scutari. The landing parties were to take temporary control with a provisional international government. Breslau contributed 100 men to the occupation force. The Powers agreed to place Klitzing in the role of civil commissioner over the interim government. The crew aboard Breslau was having difficulty keeping the ship operational with their reduced number, and so Germany sent the so-called Scutari Detachment to Pola, Austria-Hungary, which Breslau embarked on 30 June. She took them to the mouth of the Bojana and exchanged the soldiers for her landing party on 6 July. The ship remained in the Gulf of Drin until 6 August, when she departed to return to Constantinople, arriving there four days later.
Breslau remained in Constantinople from mid-August until 27 October. During this period of rest, her crew and that of the German station ship helped to suppress a major fire in the French embassy in the city, and then assist with cleanup of the flood damage. Also in October, FK arrived to relieve Klitzing as the ship's captain. After getting underway again in late October, Breslau initially cruised in the eastern Mediterranean, and then in early January 1914, she returned to the mouth of the Bojana. From there, she steamed north to Trieste, Austria-Hungary, where she underwent an overhaul that lasted until 18 March. She thereafter joined Goeben to escort Hohenzollern on the Kaiser's Mediterranean cruise; the three vessels steamed together from Venice, Italy, to Corfu. Breslau then departed to return to her patrol area off the Levant. The ship returned to the Adriatic and anchored at Durazzo, Albania, on 20 June in response to domestic unrest in the country. Breslau was to protect the Albanian king, Prince Wilhelm. After the situation calmed, the Germans left behind a detachment of ten men to guard the German embassy. From there, Breslau steamed to Corfu, where she rendezvoused with Goeben on 8 July. Souchon gave instructions to both vessels' crews in the event that the tensions created over the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand led to war in Europe. On 1 August, as the July Crisis spiraled out of control, Breslau returned to Durazzo to pick up the ten men who had been left at the embassy. She then rejoined Goeben; the two ships received the mobilization order on the night of 2 August.
World War I
At the outbreak of World War I, and were to interdict French transports transferring troops from Algeria to France. On 3 August 1914, Souchon's two ships were steaming off Algeria; shortly after 06:00, bombarded the embarkation port of Bône while attacked Philippeville. The attacks caused minimal damage, however, and Souchon quickly broke off and returned to Messina to replenish his coal stocks. Although the British were not yet at war with Germany, the two British battlecruisers and shadowed the German ships while en route to Messina. After partially replenishing s coal on the 5th, Souchon arranged to meet a collier in the Aegean. and left port the following morning bound for Constantinople, pursued by the British Mediterranean Fleet. That evening, the 1st Cruiser Squadron, commanded by Rear Admiral Ernest Troubridge, intercepted the Germans; briefly exchanged fire with the light cruiser before Troubridge broke off the attack, fearing s powerful guns.
On 8 August, and met the collier off the island of Donoussa near Naxos, and two days later they entered the Dardanelles, under escort of an Ottoman torpedo boat. To circumvent neutrality requirements, Germany transferred the two ships to the Ottoman Navy on 16 August, and officially the Ottomans purchased the two ships as replacement for the battleships and , which had been confiscated by the British Royal Navy shortly before they were completed at British shipyards. The supposed sale was simply a ruse, as only a small number of Ottoman naval personnel came aboard the ships, and on 23 September, Souchon accepted an offer to command the Ottoman fleet. was renamed after the Ottoman name for Lesbos, while was renamed ; their German crews remained with the ships and donned Ottoman uniforms and fezzes. The British did not accept the sale of the ships to the Ottoman Empire and stationed a blockading force outside the Dardanelles with orders to attack the ships if they appeared, regardless of the flag they flew.
Over the following month, the German and Ottoman governments negotiated the terms of the agreement that would bring the Ottomans into the war on the side of the Central Powers. By 22 October, the situation was resolved, and the Ottoman war minister, Enver Pasha, ordered the fleet to mobilize and prepare for offensive operations against Russia. There would be no declaration of war first, however.
Ottoman service
1914 On the evening of 27 October 1914, and the rest of the Ottoman fleet left the Bosporus and steamed into the Black Sea, ostensibly to conduct maneuvers. Instead, the fleet split into four groups to attack Russian bases on the other side of the Black Sea; and another cruiser were tasked with mining the Strait of Kerch and then attacking the port of Novorossisk. laid sixty mines in the Strait, which later claimed two Russian merchant ships, and then joined the other ship in bombarding Novorossisk. They set the port's oil tanks on fire, damaged seven merchant ships, and sank of . Although the damage inflicted on the Russians was relatively light, it forced the Russians to declare war on the Ottoman Empire, bringing the country into the war on the side of Germany.