SMS König: Shipwreck Map, Location & Facts

Name	SMS König	Wikidata label
Ship type	battleship	Wikidata P31 instance of
Cause of loss	Scuttled	Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence
Nationality / flag	German Reich	Wikidata P8047 country of registry
Operator	Imperial German Navy	Wikidata P137 operator
Conflict	World War I	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	North Atlantic Ocean	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coast	Scotland	Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 4 km from land
Position	58.8867, -3.1535	Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0)

About the wreck

SMS König was the first of four König-class dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) during World War I. König (English: King) was named in honor of King William II of Württemberg. The battleship was armed with ten 30.5-centimeter (12 in) guns in five twin turrets and could steam at a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph). Laid down in October 1911, the ship was launched on 1 March 1913. The construction of König was completed shortly after the outbreak of World War I; she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 9 August 1914.

Along with her three sister ships, Grosser Kurfürst, Markgraf, and Kronprinz, König took part in most of the fleet actions during the war. As the leading ship in the German line on 31 May 1916 in the Battle of Jutland, König was heavily engaged by several British battleships and suffered ten large-caliber shell hits. In October 1917, she forced the Russian pre-dreadnought battleship Slava to scuttle herself in the Battle of Moon Sound, which followed Germany's successful Operation Albion.

König was interned, along with the majority of the High Seas Fleet, at Scapa Flow in November 1918 following the Armistice.

Location

Recorded position: 58.8867, -3.1535 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: North Atlantic Ocean
Nearest coast: Scotland

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article SMS König (revision 1374717274), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.