The
massive 25,800 tons König class battleship Kronprinz Wilhelm was built by
Germaniaweft in Kiel and launched on 21 February 1914. This dreadnought
and her sister vessels König and Markgraf were so big that the Kiel Canal had to
be specially widened to let them through after completion.At 575 feet long she was the length of two football pitches her beam 97' and her draught of over 30 feet. With ten 12 inch main guns set in five twin turrets and fourteen 5.9 inch casemate guns and five submerged torpedo tubes she was an immensely powerful fighting island/machine. She was also very heavily defended by a 13.8 inch thick main armour belt, her deck had a 3.8 inch layer of armour plating on it also. Her 46,000 horsepower turbines drove three huge propellers capable of pushing her to speeds of 21.3 knots, making her the fastest in her class.
She was manned by a crew of 1,136 officers and men and formed part of the Third Battleship Squadron of the High Seas Fleet which fought the British Fleet at the famous Battle of Jutland, being the fourth in line of seven battlships. She came through the battle relatively unscathed and was able to keep up a murderous hail of fire on the British warships. In November 1916 she took part in a daring operation to rescue the crew of a stranded u-boat, the commander of which Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger had been responsible for one of World War I's most infamous events, the torpedoing of the Lusitania off southern Ireland with the loss of 1,198 men, women and children.
The mighty
Kronprinz Wilhelm now lies in 35 metres on water upside down and heeled over
onto her starboard side allowing easy access on the port side to her
superstructure and allowing sight of her massive guns and turrets, the last guns
to have fired at the Battle of Jutland visible today.The history, sinking and dive details of the Kronprinz Wilhelm are described in much greater detail in the books Dive Scapa Flow and Dive Scotland's Greatest Wrecks.
Photograph courtesy of the Imperial War Museum