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Dresden 1908

Ships

Name	No	Yard No	Builder	Laid down	Launched	Comp	Fate
Dresden		195	Blohm & Voss, Hamburg	1906	5.10.1907	14.11.1908	scuttled 14.3.1915
Emden			KW Danzig	1906	26.5.1908	10.7.1909	sunk 9.11.1914

Technical data

Displacement normal, t	3664
Displacement full, t	4268
Length, m	118.3 oa 117.9 wl
Breadth, m	13.5
Draught, m	5.53 deep load
No of shafts	Dresden: 4 Emden: 2
Machinery	Dresden: 4 Parsons steam turbines, 12 Marine boilers Emden: 2 VTE, 12 Marine boilers
Power, h. p.	Dresden: 15000 Emden: 13500
Max speed, kts	Dresden: 24 Emden: 23.5
Fuel, t	Dresden: coal 860 Emden: coal 790
Endurance, nm(kts)	Dresen: 3600(14) Emden: 3760(12)
Armour, mm	steel / Krupp steel - deck: 30 - 20, slopes: 80 - 50, glacises: 100, CT: 100, shields: 50
Armament	10 x 1 - 105/37 SK L/40 C/04, 8 x 1 - 52/52 SK L/55 C/03, 2 - 450 TT (beam)
Complement	361

Standard scale images

Graphics

Project history

These two cruisers belonged to the 1905-06 programme and had comparative machinery.

Ship protection

30mm protective deck with 80mm slopes protected machinery, outside machine spaces deck had turtleback form with 20mm flat and 50mm slopes. Engines had 100mm glacises. CT had 100mm sides and 20mm roof, guns had 50mm shields.

Modernizations

None.

Naval service

Dresden formed part of the international force which intervened in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. She was in the West Indies when war broke out: to commence her commence raiding activities she passed into the Pacific via the Magellan Straits, joined the Leipzig and finally met Admiral Graf Spee's German East Asian Squadron at Easter Island. Operating with Spee she managed to survive the Battle of the Falklands, escaped once more to the Pacific and was finally trapped by the British cruisers Kent and Glasgow and the AMC Orama at the Chilean island of Mas a Fuera, and shelled into submission on 14 March 1915. She was scuttled to avoid capture.

The famous Emden had been in Chinese and Pacific waters since 1909, playing an important role in subduing a rebellion in the German colony of Ponape (in the Carolines). When war broke out she was station ship at the German China colony of Tsingtao. To avoid being trapped there she left immediately and, on the orders of Von Spee, started independent commerce raiding. In this role she operated very succesfully in the Indian Ocean until caught by Australian cruiser Sydney in the Cocos Islands. Following a gun battle on 9 November 1914 she was beached on the reefs of North Keeling Island; the wreck was partially dismantled by a Japanese firm in the 1950s. The survivors managed to capture a schooner and a steamer and reached Mecca. After an adventurous journey across Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey they reached Constantinople and returned to Germany.