SMS Baden - Service History - British Service

British Service

After the ship arrived in Invergordon, Baden was carefully examined by Royal Navy technicians. Naval engineers inspected the hull, including the screws, bilge keels, and rudders, to determine the water resistance of the hull form. The ship was found to have been approximately as efficient as the British Revenge-class battleships. The ship's armor system was extensively investigated; the British team concluded that the ship had not been modified to incorporate the lessons from the Battle of Jutland of 31 May – 1 June 1916.

The main battery turrets and ammunition magazines were also the subject of intense scrutiny; among the tests conducted was a trial to see how fast the magazines could be flooded—the result was 12 minutes. The gunnery school HMS Excellent ran loading trials on the main battery guns. It was found that the guns could be prepared to fire in 23 seconds, 13 seconds faster than in the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships. The ship's watertight bulkhead and underwater protection systems also particularly interested the inspection team; they paid close attention to the ship's pumping and counter-flooding equipment. Commander W M Phipps Hornby, who lived on board Baden for weeks during the examination, wrote to the naval historian Arthur Marder in 1969 that it was his "considered opinion—which I know coincided with that of others engaged on the same job—that, considered as a fighting machine, anyhow on balance the Baden was markedly in advance of any comparable ship of the Royal Navy".

After the inspection was concluded, it was determined to expend Baden as a gunnery target. In January 1921 the first round of gunnery tests was ordered. The gunners at HMS Excellent fired the new armor-piercing (AP) shells that had been introduced after the Battle of Jutland. This round of tests was used to determine the most efficient ratio of explosives in the detonator caps; the shells fired at Jutland had a tendency to fragment when striking heavy armor rather than penetrate. The monitor HMS Terror moored some 500 yd (460 m) away from Baden to fire her 15 in (38 cm) guns from point-blank range. Baden was made to list to starboard by the removal of coal and armor from the port side, to simulate the effect of a shell striking armor from a plunging angle. The forward-most gun turret had by this time been removed. Terror fired 17 shells of various types into the ship. The Royal Navy concluded after these tests that the new shells were sufficiently powerful to penetrate heavy armor, and were much more effective than the previous versions that had been employed at Jutland. Following the tests, heavy seas caused the ship to sink in the shallow water; after three months she was again raised and docked for repairs. The ship was readied for a second round of testing by August 1921.

The second series of tests was scheduled for 16 August 1921. The monitor HMS Erebus fired a mix of shell types into Baden with her 15 in guns. This time, the shells did not perform as well against Baden's heavy armor; one of the AP shells failed to explode and two semi-AP shells appear to have broken up on impact. Six aerial bombs were also detonated on the ship, though they had been placed on board and were detonated remotely. The bombs did not perform as well as had been expected. Immediately following the second round of gunnery trials, Baden was scuttled. The ship sank in Hurd Deep in a depth of approximately 180 m (600 ft).

The most important finding of the trials on Baden was that the 7-inch (18 cm) thick medium armor was completely useless against large-caliber shells. As a result, the British navy adopted the "all or nothing" armor pioneered by the United States Navy. The "all or nothing" armor theory consisted of protecting the ship's vitals with extremely heavy armor, while leaving the rest of the ship completely unprotected. This system was used on Britain's first post-war class of battleships, the Nelson class.