The German battleship that survived the Battle of Jutland only to be scuttled

Wars & Conflicts · Published 9 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Commissioned in 1912, the SMS Friedrich der Grosse served as the flagship for the German High Seas Fleet for five years. Despite participating in major naval engagements throughout World War I, including the Battle of Jutland, she remained unscathed, only to meet her end at the bottom of Scapa Flow.

As the second ship of the Kaiser class, the Friedrich der Grosse represented a significant leap in German naval engineering. Launched in 1911 and commissioned in 1912, she featured ten 30.5-centimeter guns arranged in a more efficient layout than her predecessors. Her design prioritized defensive strength, utilizing Krupp cemented armor that was superior to British counterparts of the era, though she lagged in raw firepower. Powered by three AEG Curtis turbines, the vessel could reach speeds of over 22 knots, supported by a crew of 1,084 personnel.

During the Battle of Jutland in 1916, the ship served as the flagship for Admiral Reinhard Scheer. While the battle was a massive clash of dreadnoughts, the Friedrich der Grosse occupied a central position in the German line and emerged without a single hit. Her service record included various North Sea sorties and the 1917 Baltic operation to capture the island of Ösel. However, internal unrest also marked her history; in July 1917, her crew staged a hunger strike over poor rations, leading to the execution of a stoker named Max Reichpietsch for his role in the subsequent insubordination.

Following the 1918 Armistice, the ship was interned at Scapa Flow under British supervision. To prevent the Allied powers from seizing the German fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter ordered the ships to be scuttled on 21 June 1919. The Friedrich der Grosse rested on the seabed for nearly two decades before being raised in 1936 to be broken up for scrap. Today, only her bell remains, housed at the Fleet Headquarters in Glücksburg, serving as a final relic of a vessel that survived the greatest naval battles of the Great War only to be destroyed by her own command.

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