SMS KRONPRIZ
SMS CROWN PRINCE
The history. The ship was initially named Kronprinz, becoming Kronprinz Wilhelm in 1918 in honor of Crown Prince Wilhelm. The ship was one of the four battleship of the König class. The others were the König, Grosser Kurfürst and Markgraf.
The battleship participated in the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the First World War, which was fought on May 31 and June 1, 1916. Despite being part of the vanguard of the fleet, the Kronprinz did not suffer damage or loss of life.As part of III Squadron, he assisted in the rescue of two German submarines, the U-20 and U-30, stranded off the Danish coast. On the return trip to the Baltic, she was attacked by the British submarine J1, spending a month in the Wilhelmshaven dry dock for repairs.
The battleship was accidentally rammed by the ship Grosser Kurfürst in March 1917, causing 600 tons of water to enter its hull, it had to return to the shipyard's dry dock in Wilhelmshaven for further repairs.
By October of that year, El Kronprinz was participating in Operation Albion, planned to eliminate Russian naval forces in the Gulf of Riga in the Baltic Sea. He engaged the Russian battleship Graschdanin, managing to hit it twice, without any damage to the Kronprinz
On November 19, he left Germany for the last time for Great Britain and his final resting place, Scapa Flow.
Surprisingly, half of the ship's 12 ”guns are still visible and accessible - they offer a unique opportunity to see the main armament of a battleship in what was the battleship era. There are few other places in the world where this is accessible to recreational divers.
The trio of battleships made up of the Kronprinz Wilhelm, König and Markgraf, are usually the most interesting among divers visiting Scapa, but due to their size, complexity and orientation, they require more than one dive to decipher without disappointing.