Mackensen Class Battlecruiser - Construction and Cancellation

Construction and Cancellation

Four ships were planned in the class: Mackensen, Graf Spee, Prinz Eitel Friedrich, and Fürst Bismarck. Mackensen—ordered under the provisional name Ersatz Victoria Louise—was named after Field Marshal August von Mackensen. The ship was laid down 30 January 1915 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, under construction number 240. She was launched on 21 April 1917, but construction was halted about 15 months before she would have been completed. Mackensen was stricken from the German navy, according to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, on 17 November 1919. She was sold for scrap and eventually broken up in 1922 at Kiel-Nordmole. Graf Spee was named for Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee, the commander of the German East Asia Squadron; he was killed when his squadron was annihilated at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914. Graf Spee was laid down 30 November 1915 in the Schichau yards in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), under the provisional name Ersatz Blücher. She was launched on 15 September 1917. Construction stopped about 12 months away from completion; Graf Spee was the furthest along of all four ships when work was halted. She too was struck on 17 November 1919; on 28 October 1921 the unfinished hull was sold for 4.4 million Marks and broken up in Kiel-Nordmole.

Prinz Eitel Friedrich, ordered as Ersatz Freya—a replacement for SMS Freya, was named for one of Kaiser Wilhelm II's sons, Eitel Friedrich. She was laid down on 1 May 1915 at Blohm & Voss under construction number 241. She was 21 months away from completion when she was launched to clear the slip on 13 March 1920 and was broken up at Hamburg in 1921. At the launching ceremony, dockyard workers named the ship Noske. Fürst Bismarck, ordered as Ersatz A, was named for the famous German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The ship was laid down on 3 November 1915 at the Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven under construction number 25. She was about 26 months from completion when work ended. She was never launched; instead, the vessel was broken up on the slip in 1922.

The primary reason construction halted on the four ships was the shifting of ship building priorities from capital ships to U-boats. In the last two years of the war, what little resources were available to the navy were directed towards U-boat construction; this caused a shortage of construction materials and slower build times for large warships. The RMA filed a report dated 1 February 1918, which stated that capital ship construction had ground to a halt, primarily due to the shifting priorities to the U-boat war.