SMS Mecklenburg - Service History

Service History

Following her commissioning in 1903, Mecklenburg was assigned to the II Division of the I Squadron, alongside the battleships Kaiser Karl der Große and Kaiser Wilhelm II. By 1905, the German Navy had been increased to four squadrons of three battleships each, with two squadrons per division. This was supported by a cruiser division, composed of two armored cruisers and six protected cruisers. In 1909, Mecklenburg and the newer battleship Lothringen won the annual Kaiser's Prize for accurate shooting. Mecklenburg had by this time been transferred to the I Division of the I Squadron. The latest Deutschland-class battleships had entered service, which provided enough ships to increase the size of the fleet to four divisions of four vessels each.

After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Mecklenburg and the rest of her class were mobilized to serve in the IV Battle Squadron, under the command of Vice Admiral Ehrhard Schmidt. Starting on 3 September, the IV Squadron, assisted by the armored cruiser Blücher, conducted a sweep into the Baltic. The operation lasted until 9 September and failed to bring Russian naval units to battle. In May 1915, IV Squadron, including Mecklenburg, was transferred to support the German Army in the Baltic Sea area. Mecklenburg and her sisters were then based in Kiel.

On 6 May, the IV Squadron ships were tasked with providing support to the assault on Libau. Mecklenburg and the other ships stood off Gotland in order to intercept any Russian cruisers that might try to intervene in the landings, which the Russians did not attempt. On 10 May, after the invasion force had entered Libau, the British submarines HMS E1 and HMS E9 spotted the IV Squadron, but were too far away to make an attack. Mecklenburg and her sisters were not included in the German fleet that assaulted the Gulf of Riga in August 1915, due to the scarcity of escorts. The increasingly active British submarines forced the Germans to employ more destroyers to protect the capital ships.

By 1916, the increasing threat from British submarines in the Baltic convinced the German navy to withdraw the elderly Wittelsbach-class ships from active service. She and her sisters were subsequently disarmed and used in secondary roles. Mecklenburg was initially based in Kiel and used as a floating prison. In 1918, she became a barracks ship for U-boat crews stationed in Kiel. The ship was briefly retained after the German defeat at the end of World War I, but on 25 January 1920, Mecklenburg was stricken from the naval register. She was sold to Deutsche-Werke, a ship-breaking firm based in Kiel, on 16 August 1921 for 1,750,000 Marks. The ship was broken up for scrap metal that year in Kiel-Nordmole.