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SMS ''Posen'' was one of four battleships in the , the first dreadnoughts built for the German Imperial Navy (''Kaiserliche Marine''). The ship was laid down at the Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel on 11 June 1907, launched on 13 December 1908, and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 31 May 1910. She was equipped with a main battery of twelve guns in six twin turrets in an unusual hexagonal arrangement. The ship served with her three sister ships for the majority of World War I. She saw extensive service in the North Sea, where she took part in several fleet sorties. These culminated in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, where ''Posen'' was heavily engaged in night-fighting against British light forces. In the confusion, the ship accidentally rammed the light cruiser , which suffered serious damage and was scuttled later in the night. The ship also conducted several deployments to the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy. In the first of these, ''Posen'' supported a German naval assault in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga. The ship was sent back to the Baltic in 1918 to support the White Finns in the Finnish Civil War. At the end of the war, ''Posen'' remained in Germany while the majority of the fleet was interned in Scapa Flow. In 1919, following the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow, she was ceded to the British as a replacement for the ships that had been sunk. She was then sent to ship-breakers in the Netherlands and scrapped in 1922. == Construction == (詳細はGermaniawerft shipyard in Kiel. As with her sister , construction proceeded under absolute secrecy; detachments of soldiers guarded the shipyard and also guarded contractors that supplied building materials, such as Krupp. The ship was launched a year and a half later, on 12 December 1908. Wilhelm August Hans von Waldow-Reitzenstein gave a speech at her launching, and ''Posen'' was christened by Johanna von Radolin, the wife of Hugo Fürst von Radolin, a German diplomat who hailed from the ship's namesake province. Initial trials were conducted through April 1910, followed by final fitting-out in May. The ship was commissioned into the fleet on 31 May. Sea trials were conducted afterward and completed by 27 August. In total, her construction cost the German government 36,920,000 marks. ''Posen'' was long, wide, and had a draft of . She displaced with a standard load, and fully laden. The ship had a crew of 40 officers and 968 enlisted men. ''Posen'' retained three-shafted triple expansion engines with coal-fired boilers instead of more advanced turbine engines. Her propulsion system was rated at and provided a top speed of . She had a cruising radius of at a speed of . This type of machinery was chosen at the request of both Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and the Navy's construction department; the latter stated in 1905 that the "use of turbines in heavy warships does not recommend itself." This decision was based solely on cost: at the time, Parsons held a monopoly on steam turbines and required a 1 million gold mark royalty fee for every turbine engine. German firms were not ready to begin production of turbines on a large scale until 1910. ''Posen'' carried twelve guns in an unusual hexagonal configuration. Her secondary armament consisted of twelve and sixteen , all of which were mounted in casemates. Later in her career, two of the 8.8 cm guns were replaced with high-angle Flak mountings of the same caliber for defense against aircraft. The ship was also armed with six submerged torpedo tubes. One tube was mounted in the bow, another in the stern, and two on each broadside, on either ends of the torpedo bulkhead. The ship's belt armor was thick in the central portion of the hull, and the armored deck was thick. The main battery turrets had thick sides, and the conning tower was protected with of armor plating. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「SMS Posen」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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