Warrior1354
ax - hole
Another one of these cool photographs came into my collection. But this time it shows a Marine detachment of the SMS Yorck armed with the more modern Gew98 rifles.
Yorck was a member of the Roon class of armored cruisers, and was named after Ludwig Yorck van Wartenburg a Prussian field marshal. Yorck was not a light ship by no means either. Yorck fully loaded weighed well over 10,000 tons, with a crew of 35 officers and 598 enlisted men. Plus the armored cruiser were a class of ships designed to take on most ships for the time period, besides a battleship. They could not defeat a battleship, but could out run them. They were faster, at full steam Yorck could push well over 24 knots. She was laid down in 1903, and commissioned into service by 1905. But by 1907, the Battle cruiser HMS Invincible rendered all armored cruisers that had been built by the world's navies obsolescent. Most of Yorck's pre WW1 career was basically reconnaissance, training, and peacekeeping. Yorck did win the Kaiser's Schießpreis for excellent shooting among armored cruisers for the 1907–1908 training year. Yorck won the same price again for the year of 1909-1910 as well.
Now this is where the ships history starts to go south, and I mean really bad. In March 1911 while the ship was being maintenance there was a benzene explosion in the ship's aft-most boiler room. One man was killed, and several injured. And not two years later Yorck was involved in a collision with a torpedo boat S178. The boat S178 sank within in a few minutes with the loss of 69 men. Later that year she was decommissioned, but with the outbreak of WW1 was quickly put back in service with the High seas fleet. In November 1914 Yorck was sailing through heavy fog, and could not see the defensive minefields outside of the Wilhelmshaven port. She struck two mines, and sank quickly. Only 127 out of a crew of 629 were rescued from the waters. Yorck's commander was later tried in a court-martial. He was convicted, and sentenced to two years imprisonment for negligence, disobedience of orders, and homicide through negligence. The wreckage was later scrapped and partially cleared in 1926, but was not fully removed into the 1980s!
A sad fate for a proud ship of the Kaiserliche.
Yorck was a member of the Roon class of armored cruisers, and was named after Ludwig Yorck van Wartenburg a Prussian field marshal. Yorck was not a light ship by no means either. Yorck fully loaded weighed well over 10,000 tons, with a crew of 35 officers and 598 enlisted men. Plus the armored cruiser were a class of ships designed to take on most ships for the time period, besides a battleship. They could not defeat a battleship, but could out run them. They were faster, at full steam Yorck could push well over 24 knots. She was laid down in 1903, and commissioned into service by 1905. But by 1907, the Battle cruiser HMS Invincible rendered all armored cruisers that had been built by the world's navies obsolescent. Most of Yorck's pre WW1 career was basically reconnaissance, training, and peacekeeping. Yorck did win the Kaiser's Schießpreis for excellent shooting among armored cruisers for the 1907–1908 training year. Yorck won the same price again for the year of 1909-1910 as well.
Now this is where the ships history starts to go south, and I mean really bad. In March 1911 while the ship was being maintenance there was a benzene explosion in the ship's aft-most boiler room. One man was killed, and several injured. And not two years later Yorck was involved in a collision with a torpedo boat S178. The boat S178 sank within in a few minutes with the loss of 69 men. Later that year she was decommissioned, but with the outbreak of WW1 was quickly put back in service with the High seas fleet. In November 1914 Yorck was sailing through heavy fog, and could not see the defensive minefields outside of the Wilhelmshaven port. She struck two mines, and sank quickly. Only 127 out of a crew of 629 were rescued from the waters. Yorck's commander was later tried in a court-martial. He was convicted, and sentenced to two years imprisonment for negligence, disobedience of orders, and homicide through negligence. The wreckage was later scrapped and partially cleared in 1926, but was not fully removed into the 1980s!
A sad fate for a proud ship of the Kaiserliche.
