SMS Oldenburg (1884)
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A painting of SMS Oldenburg
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| History | |
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 German Empire
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| Name: | SMS Oldenburg |
| Namesake: | Oldenburg (German state) |
| Builder: | A.G. Vulcan in Stettin |
| Laid down: | 1883 |
| Launched: | 20 December 1884 |
| Commissioned: | 8 April 1886 |
| Decommissioned: | 1912 |
| Reclassified: | target ship |
| Fate: | scrapped 1919 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Oldenburg class coast defense ship |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 79.80 m (261.8 ft) |
| Beam: | 18 m (59 ft) |
| Draft: | 6.28 m (20.6 ft) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 13.8 kn (25.6 km/h; 15.9 mph) |
| Range: | 1,770 nmi (3,280 km; 2,040 mi) at 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph) |
| Complement: |
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| Armament: |
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SMS Oldenburg was an armored warship of the German Imperial Navy. Laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin in 1883, the ship was launched in December 1884 and commissioned into the Navy in April 1886. Oldenburg was intended to have been a fifth member of the Sachsen class of sortie corvettes, but budgetary limitations and dissatisfaction with the Sachsen class prompted a redesign that bore little resemblance to the earlier vessels. Oldenburg mounted her main battery of eight 24 cm (9.4 in) guns amidships, six in a central casemate on the main deck and two directly above them on the broadside. She was the first German capital ship constructed entirely from German-made steel.
Oldenburg did not see significant service with the German Navy. She participated in fleet training maneuvers in the late-1880s and early 1890s, but she spent the majority of the 1890s in reserve. Her only major deployment came in 1897–1898 when she joined an international naval demonstration to protest the Greek annexation of Crete. In 1900, she was withdrawn from active duty and used as a harbor defense ship. From 1912 to 1919, she was used by the High Seas Fleet as a target ship; she was sold for scrapping in 1919 and broken up that year.
Oldenburg was intended to be a fifth member of the Sachsen class of sortie corvettes. The design for the ship was radically altered, between 1879 and 1881, for a variety of reasons. The German Navy was largely dissatisfied with the Sachsen class ships, and a number of design faults required correction. Budgetary constraints also limited the design of the ship, forcing the design staff to work within a displacement some 2,000 t (2,000 long tons; 2,200 short tons) lower than that of the Sachsens.
Assessment of the design is mixed; naval historian Erich Gröner states that Oldenburg was an "experimental design, of no real value in combat."Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships concurs, stating that Oldenburg was "considered to be of little fighting value by the time she was completed." The 1889 edition of the Brassey's Naval Annual reported a contradictory opinion, however, stating that "The majority of German naval critics are dissatisfied to a greater or less extent with all of these vessels, the König Wilhelm, Kaiser, Deutschland, and Oldenburg excepted."
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