SMS Hummel
SMS Hummel was an ironclad gunboat of the built for the German Kaiserliche Marine in the 1870s. The ships, which were armed with a single MRK L/22 gun, were intended to serve as part of a coastal defense fleet. Because Hummel was a purely defensive vessel, she saw little active use, apart from brief stints in active service for sea trials in 1882 and a short training period in 1884. The ship remained in the reserve fleet for the next twenty-five years before being struck from the naval register in 1910. Hummel was used in a variety of subsidiary roles, ending up as a floating anti-aircraft battery during World War II. She was sunk by Allied in May 1945, in the final days of the war.
Design
Development of the of ironclad gunboats began in the 1850s, after the first ironclads were introduced during the Crimean War. Through the 1860s, the Federal Convention examined various proposals, ranging from plans to build eight to as many as eighteen armored warships. The decision was finalized based on the fleet plan conceived by General Albrecht von Stosch, the new Chief of the Kaiserliche Admiralität, in the early 1870s. He envisioned a fleet oriented on defense of Germany's Baltic and North Sea coasts, which would be led by the ironclad corvettes of the. These were to be supported by larger numbers of small, armored gunboats, which became the Wespe class.Hummel was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of. She displaced as designed and increasing to at full load. The ship's crew consisted of 3 officers and 73 to 85 enlisted men. She was powered by a pair of double-expansion steam engines that drove a pair of 4-bladed screw propellers, with steam provided by four coal-fired cylindrical fire-tube boilers, which gave her a top speed of at. At a cruising speed of, she could steam for.
The ship was armed with one MRK L/22 gun in a barbette mount that had a limited arc of traverse. In practice, the gun was aimed by turning the ship in the direction of fire. The Wespes were intended to beach themselves on the sandbars along the German coastline to serve as semi-mobile coastal artillery batteries. The armored barbette was protected by of wrought iron, backed with of teak. The ship was fitted with a waterline armor belt that was thick, with the thickest section protecting the propulsion machinery spaces and ammunition magazine. The belt was backed with 210 mm of teak. An armor deck that consisted of two layers of of iron on of teak provided additional protection against enemy fire.
Service history
Hummel was built at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen. Her keel was laid down in July 1879, under the provisional designation "L". She was launched on 12 February 1881. The ship was named after the German word for bumblebee. Work on the ship was completed later that year, and she was commissioned into active service on 22 May 1882, the last member of the class to join the fleet. At that time, she was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Erich von Dresky. She was moved from Wilhelmshaven to Kiel, where she was decommissioned on 10 June.By 1883, the ship had been refitted with an additional L/24 built-up guns, a pair of Hotchkiss revolver cannon, and two torpedo tubes in her bow, both of which were below the waterline. On 22 April 1884, Hummel recommissioned under the command of KL Max Piraly. She joined the Armored Gunboat Flotilla, which included three of her sister ships and was led by the aviso, the flagship of Kapitän zur See Karl August Deinhard. The ships conducted training exercises in the western Baltic, near the island of Rügen. The ships thereafter participated in the annual fleet exercises with the main units of the German navy in the North Sea. On 30 September, Hummel was decommissioned and placed back in reserve at Kiel.
Hummel saw no further active service, though she remained in the fleet's inventory for another twenty-five years. The ship was struck from the naval register on 27 September 1910 and then converted into a floating workshop. In 1923, she was reduced to a storage hulk based in Swinemünde. During World War II, she was converted into a stationary anti-aircraft battery, still stationed in Swinemünde. She was eventually sunk there on 4 May 1945 by an Allied bombing raid, in the final days of the conflict.