List of Battleships of Germany - Nassau Class

Nassau Class

The Nassau class, which was composed of Nassau, Westfalen, Rheinland, and Posen, was the German response to the arrival of HMS Dreadnought, the first "all-big-gun" battleship, in 1906. The ships were unique in their main-armament configuration, which was hexagonal. They retained triple-expansion engines instead of more powerful turbine engines, and as a result, were slower than their British contemporaries.

After their commissioning into the German fleet, all four ships served in the II Division of I Battle Squadron. Two of the ships, Nassau and Posen, took part in the inconclusive Battle of the Gulf of Riga in 1915, during which they engaged the Russian pre-dreadnought Slava. The four Nassau class ships took part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916; they suffered only a handful of secondary battery hits and limited casualties. In early 1918 Rheinland and Westfalen were sent to Finland to support the White Finns in their civil war, but Rheinland ran aground off the Åland Islands in April and was severely damaged. At the end of World War I, the four ships were seized as war prizes by the victorious Allied powers and sold for scrapping.