SMS Schwaben

SMS Schwaben's sister ship Wittlesbach
History
German Empire
Name:	Schwaben
Namesake:	House of Swabia
Builder:	Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven
Laid down:	15 September 1900
Launched:	19 August 1901
Christened:	Queen Charlotte of Württemberg
Commissioned:	13 April 1904
Struck:	8 March 1921
Fate:	Scrapped in 1921
General characteristics
Class and type:	Wittelsbach-class pre-dreadnought battleship
Displacement:	12,798 t (12,596 long tons)
Length:	126.8 m (416 ft 0 in)
Beam:	22.8 m (74 ft 10 in)
Draft:	7.95 m (26 ft 1 in)
Installed power:	14,000 PS (13,808 ihp; 10,297 kW)
Propulsion:	3 shafts, triple expansion engines
Speed:	18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Range:	5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km; 5,800 mi); 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:	30 officers 650 enlisted men
Armament:	4 × 24 cm (9.4 in) guns (40 cal.) 18 × 15 cm (5.9 in) guns 12 × 8.8 cm (3.5 in) guns 6 × 45 cm (18 in) torpedo tubes
Armor:	Belt: 100 to 225 mm (3.9 to 8.9 in) Turrets: 250 mm (9.8 in) Deck: 50 mm (2.0 in)

SMS Schwaben ("His Majesty's Ship Swabia") was the fourth ship of the Wittelsbach class of pre-dreadnought battleships of the German Imperial Navy. Schwaben was built at the Imperial Dockyard in Wilhelmshaven. She was laid down in 1900, and completed in April 1904, at the cost of 21,678,000 marks. Her sister ships were Wittelsbach, Zähringen, Wettin and Mecklenburg; they were the first capital ships built under the Navy Law of 1898, championed by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Schwaben was armed with a main battery of four 24-centimeter (9.4 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph).

Schwaben spent most of her career as a gunnery training ship from 1904 to 1914, though she frequently participated in the large scale fleet exercises during this period. After the start of World War I in August 1914, the ship was mobilized with her sisters as the IV Battle Squadron. She saw limited duty in the North Sea as a guard ship and in the Baltic Sea against Russian forces. The threat from British submarines forced the ship to withdraw from the Baltic in 1916. For the remainder of the war, Schwaben served as an engineering training ship for navy cadets. She was retained by the Reichsmarine after the war and reactivated from 1919 until June 1920, serving as a depot ship for F-type minesweepers in the Baltic. The ship was stricken from the navy list in March 1921 and sold for scrapping in that year.