SMS was a minelaying light cruiser of the German ; she was the lead ship of her class. Her sister ship was . was laid down at AG Vulcan's shipyard in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland) on 24 April 1915 and launched on 11 December 1915 and completed on 2 April 1916. Armed with a main battery of four guns in single mounts, she carried 400 mines.
Despite being designed as a minelayer, the German Navy never operated her as such. She and her sister were used to raid a British convoy to Norway in October 1917. The two cruisers sank two escorting destroyers and nine of the twelve merchant ships of the convoy. The considered sending the two ships to attack convoys in the Atlantic Ocean, but the difficulties associated with refueling at sea convinced the Germans to abandon the plan. was included in the list of ships interned at Scapa Flow following the Armistice. On 21 June 1919, the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the scuttling of the fleet. was successfully scuttled, and unlike most of the other wrecks, she was never raised for scrapping.
Design
was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced as designed and up to at full load. Her propulsion system consisted of two sets of steam turbines powered by two coal-fired and four oil-fired Marine-type water-tube boilers, which were ducted into three funnels. These provided a top speed of and a range of at . In service however, the ship reached .
The ship was armed with four SK L/45 guns in single pedestal mounts; two were arranged forward on the centerline, forward and aft of the conning tower, and two were placed in a superfiring pair aft. These guns fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of . The guns had a maximum elevation of 30 degrees, which allowed them to engage targets out to . They were supplied with 600 rounds of ammunition, for 150 shells per gun. also carried two SK L/45 anti-aircraft guns mounted on the centerline astern of the funnels. She was also equipped with a pair of torpedo tubes with four torpedoes in a swivel mount amidships. Designed as a minelayer, she carried 400 mines. The ship was protected by a waterline armored belt that was thick amidships. The conning tower had thick sides, and the deck was covered with thick armor plate.
Service
was ordered under the contract name Mine Steamer C and was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin on 24 April 1915. She was launched on 11 December 1915, after which fitting-out work commenced. Completed in less than four months, she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 2 April 1916. was ready for service with the fleet by May 1916, though she did not steam with the rest of the High Seas Fleet for the Battle of Jutland at the end of the month.
In the autumn of 1917, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the chief of the , decided to supplement the U-boat campaign with surface raiders to attack the British convoys to Scandinavia. In addition to damaging British shipping, Scheer sought to divert escorts from the Atlantic theater, where his U-boats were concentrated. , commanded by Leonhardi, and , commanded by Westerkamp, were selected for the first such operation. Their high speed and large radius of action, coupled with their resemblance to British light cruisers, made them suited to the task. In preparation for the raid, their crews painted the ships dark gray to further camouflage them as British vessels.
Half an hour after dawn on the morning of 17 October, and attacked a westbound convoy about east of Lerwick. The convoy consisted of twelve merchantmen and was escorted by the destroyers and and a pair of armed trawlers. The German ruse worked, and the British destroyers initially thought they were friendly ships. They flashed recognition signals until the Germans opened fire at a range of . Strongbow was quickly destroyed, and as Mary Rose rushed to engage, she too was sunk. The Germans then quickly sank nine of the merchant vessels; the two trawlers and three merchant ships managed to escape. The British Admiralty was not informed of the attack until and were on the return leg of the voyage. Kaiser Wilhelm II celebrated the results of the attack with champagne. The success of the two ships and the commitment of heavier British convoy escorts led Scheer to attempt to attack one of the heavily defended convoys with the entire High Seas Fleet in April 1918, though this ended without success.