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# SMS Helgoland (1909) ## Overview SMS Helgoland was a German dreadnought battleship, the lead ship of her class. Her design was an improvement over the previous Nassau class, including an increase in the main gun bore size from 28 cm to 30.5 cm. The keel was laid down on 11 November 1908 at the H...

# SMS Helgoland (1909) ## Overview SMS Helgoland was a German dreadnought battleship, the lead ship of her class. Her design was an improvement over the previous Nassau class, including an increase in the main gun bore size from 28 cm to 30.5 cm. The keel was laid down on 11 November 1908 at the Howaldtswerke shipyards in Kiel, launched on 25 September 1909 and commissioned on 23 August 1911. ## Combat History SMS Helgoland saw limited action during World War I. She served as part of the covering force for battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group and was present at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May - 1 June 1916, but was less heavily engaged than the Koenig- and Kaiser-class ships. She was ceded to Great Britain at the end of the war and broken up for scrap in the early 1920s. Her coat of arms is in the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr in Dresden. ## Design The ship was 167.2 m (548 ft 7 in) long, with a beam of 28.5 m (93 ft 6 in) and a draft of 8.94 m (29 ft 4 in). It displaced 24,700 tons. The design staff experimented with various gun turret arrangements including superfiring layouts like the American South Carolina class, but ultimately settled on the same hexagonal arrangement as the Nassaus. The design was driven by the German Kaiserliche Marine's desire to incorporate 30.5 cm guns into their next battleship after recognizing that the Nassau-class battleships, armed with 28 cm guns, were inferior British counterparts. This change, however, drove up costs, resulting in a delay of the next major qualitative improvement until the 1908 budget year.