Naval – German destroyers

[Jonathan Gingerich]

I’ve discovered WTJ model ships, and am looking at a dusty project for Jutland. WTJ 3D prints their ships which means the “molds” are digital and opens the door to constant variation to match, what in real life was, well constant variation.

In particular, I’ve been looking at German fleet torpedo boats. There is a good, but dated post on TMP covering what was available a decade ago or so. The first order of business is figuring out the classes of the boats. Germany numbered their torpedo boats consecutively by shipyard in the procurement budget, with each number prefixed by the shipyard designation (G,S,V and later B and H). The shipyards usually, but not always, launched and completed the boats in order. And when they were done, they began working on the next allotment, which might skip over quite a few numbers assigned to others. So the boats being build among the several shipyards at any pone time might be quite spread apart in designated number.

Just before the Great War, the Germans moved to larger boats, and restarted the number sequence. Older boats up to G113 were renamed Txxx, so T113. As the new series began to catch up, more and more of the older boats were renamed until the last, G197 was renamed T197 in Feb. 1918. So a high numbered boat might indicate an older model at the beginning of the war, and a new model in later years.

Looking at the surprisingly detailed (and hopefully correct) Wikipedia pages and John Campbell’s Jutland An analysis of the fighting I get the following:

1910 type: V186, V189, V190, G192, G193, G195, G196, G197

The V189 fought at Jutland. The V186 returned with engine trouble. The last 7 were part of the 1st Flotilla, but were not mobilized.

The 1911 type:V1-6, G8-11, S15-20, S23, S24 all fought.

The “V25 type” – this encompasses the 1913 and 1914 orders, but there were running changes in the production. I’ve used Campbell’s groupings.

V25 original: V26-30, S32-36, G37-40, S49-52 all but S49, in the dockyard, fought.
The boats from G37 up were somewhat heavier.

V43–improved V25: V43-46 The V43 was in the dockyard, but the others fought.
Campbell has these a little heavier and faster.

V47–improved V25: V48, S53-55?, V67-74? The V48, S53, S54, V69, V71, and V73 fought. The V47 sank after completion. Presumably S56 and S57 had been completed, but Campbell has only the S55 present but unavailable. The V67, V68, V70, V75, and V77 were built in Hamburg. Campbell lists only the V70 as present but unavailable. The V74 was present but unavailable, the V78 completed but unlisted.

G85–improved V25: G41, G42, G85-88 The G85 was present but unavailable. I’ve listed it as “G85” as that seems to be how it is known.

Larger boats were considered destroyers.

B97 class: B97, B98, B109-112 All fought.

G101 class: G101-104 All fought.

V105 class: V105, V106, V108 Contemporaries of the V25’s and under armed. Served in Baltic and then relegated to training.

Available Models

V189 (have to use similar V1)

V1 GHQ Panzerschiffe

V25 GHQ Panzerschiffe

V43 (have to use similar V25)

V47 GHQ(V67) GHQ(S53)

G85 WJT

B97 CinC (B110) GHQ(B109) WJT

G101 Viking Forge WJT

[Deleted User]

The naming convention you described really helped me understand the progression of German designs. I figured they probably restarted the numbering at some point but never knew about assigning older boats “T”.

[Jonathan Gingerich]

I said they went to bigger boats, but really they went to fleet boats and their first thought was that they needed to be more maneuverable. The V1’s were actually a little smaller than the V186’s and poor sailors.

[Deleted User]

Yeah that’s part of what was confusing me when i was looking at all the clases. Their size and hull number didn’t really follow a pattern.

[Robert Dunlop]

The WTJ 3D printed models are very good. Here is an example of Turgut Reis, a German Brandenburg Class battleship, formerly SMS Weissenburg. She was purchased by the Ottoman navy in 1910, along with her sister ship Hayreddin Barbarossa (formerly SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm). Both ships provided naval gunfire support for the Ottoman amphibious assault at Şarköy during the Balkan Wars. This model is 1/1250 scale.

Robert

[Jonathan Gingerich]

Is pretty!
I once ran into a guy who preferred CinC ships because the smoother surfaces allowed him to customize by addeing the tripods, etc. that distinguished individual ships in a class! 3D printing could make that an easy reality…

[AdmiralHawke]

I missed this post because of the awkward split between the ‘WWI’ board and the ‘Naval’ board. I don’t look at this one so often.

You are right that War Times Journal currently has a big gap in its First World War German torpedo boat range:

• There’s V162, which is representatative of most of the older torpedo boats classes of the S138 class built in the 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909 and 1910 programmes. Only V189 made it to Jutland.
• There’s no V1 class for the 1911 and 1912 programmes.
• There’s no V25 class for the 1913, 1914 and mobilization building programmes. This is a big gap because these classes were the majority of the German torpedo boats at Jutland.
• There’s G85, which gives you G86, G87 and G88 which were all at Jutland. G85 was refitting.
• There are the B97 and G101 classes. As you note, these larger destroyers all fought at Jutland with II. Torpedoboots Flottille escorting Hipper’s battlecruisers.
• There’s G96, but that was completed after Jutland.
• There’s S113, but that class was also completed after Jutland.

Note that WTJ has been steadily adding to the British and German destroyers it offers, adding the Tribal, K, Lightfoot, Broke and S113 classes in the past couple of years (http://www.wtj.com/release_history.html).

If you asked nicely, you might persuade Jim (at WTJ) to add a new model or two.

[AdmiralHawke]

I don’t know the etiquette of cross-posting links between the WWI and Naval forums, so please forgive me if this is either crass or forbidden.

I just posted some pictures of my own WTJ German ships here that might be of interest to readers of this topic: https://www.thewargameswebsite.com/forums/topic/german-high-seas-fleet-1914-16-in-1-3000-scale/.

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