SMS Moltke 1919
Marker: recorded wreck position (Interwar).
Key facts
| Name | SMS Moltke | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1919 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Interwar | derived from year |
| Ship type | battlecruiser | 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. 5 km from land |
| Position | 58.8726, -3.1873 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
SMS Moltke was the lead ship of the Moltke-class battlecruisers of the German Imperial Navy, named after the 19th-century German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. Commissioned on 30 September 1911, the ship was the second battlecruiser of the Imperial Navy. Moltke, along with her sister ship Goeben, was an enlarged version of the previous German battlecruiser design, Von der Tann, with increased armor protection and two more main guns in an additional turret. Compared to her British rivals—the Indefatigable class—Moltke and her sister Goeben were significantly larger and better armored.
The ship participated in most of the major fleet actions conducted by the German Navy during the First World War, including the Battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland in the North Sea in 1915 and 1916, respectively. She also took part in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in 1915 and Operation Albion in 1917 in the Baltic. Moltke was damaged several times during the war: the ship was hit by heavy-caliber gunfire at Jutland, and torpedoed twice by British submarines while on fleet advances.
After the war ended in 1918, Moltke, along with most of the High Seas Fleet, was interned at Scapa Flow pending a decision by the Allies as to the fate of the fleet.
Location
- Recorded position: 58.8726, -3.1873 (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.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article SMS Moltke (revision 1378301975), 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.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- SMS Hindenburg 1919 · 0 km
- SMS Seydlitz 1919 · 0 km
- SMS Von der Tann 1 km
- SMS G102 1921 · 1 km
- SMS Nürnberg 1922 · 1 km
- SMS S36 1919 · 1 km
Other wrecks of the World War I
- SM UC-4 1918
- SM UC-70 1918
- SMS Geier 1918
- SMS Viribus Unitis 1918
- USS California 1918
- SMS Derfflinger 1919
- SMS Dresden 1919
- SMS Hindenburg 1919
- SMS Markgraf 1919
- SMS S51 1919
All 163 wrecks of the World War I →
Browse more: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off Scotland · North Atlantic Ocean · Interwar