page_title: SMS Prinz Heinrich
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: SMS Prinz Heinrich / Design
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: S.M. Grosser Kreuzer Fürst Bismarck.
context_page_description: SMS Prinz Heinrich was a unique German armored cruiser built at the turn of the 20th century for the German Kaiserliche Marine, named after Kaiser Wilhelm II's younger brother Prince Heinrich. The second vessel of that type built in Germany, Prinz Heinrich was constructed at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel, being laid down in December 1898, launched in March 1900, and commissioned in March 1902. Prinz Heinrich's design was a modification of the previous armored cruiser, Fürst Bismarck, and traded a smaller main battery and thinner armor for higher speed. All subsequent German armored cruisers were incremental developments of Prinz Heinrich.
  Prinz Heinrich served with the German fleet in home waters for just four years, from 1902 to 1906, when she was withdrawn from front-line service. During this period, she served as the flagship of the fleet's scouting forces, and she was primarily occupied with fleet training. The ship was out of service from early 1906 to mid-1908, when she was reactivated for use as a gunnery training ship, a role she filled until late 1912.
context_section_description: Prinz Heinrich, the second armored cruiser built in Germany, was authorized under the 1898 Naval Law, the first naval construction program begun under the direction of Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Naval Office). The design for Prinz Heinrich was prepared in the late 1890s while construction of the first vessel, Fürst Bismarck, was still underway. Some older naval historians, including Hugh Lyon and John Taylor, writing in 1979 and 1969, respectively, have stated that Prinz Heinrich was intended for overseas service, but Aidan Dodson points out that the ship's hull was not sheathed with wood and copper or zinc layers, which would have been necessary for any ship deployed overseas where shipyard facilities would not be readily available. Dodson also noted that the ship never actually went abroad on an extended deployment.
  The design staff based the new vessel on the basic design of Fürst Bismarck, but for budgetary reasons the new ship's size was reduced by about 1,500 metric tons (1,500 long tons). Weight reduction was achieved in part by thinning the ship's armor layout, though advances in steel technology meant this was not actually a compromise and her armor layout was in fact significantly more effective than Fürst Bismarck's. Krupp had recently developed cemented armor plate, which was considerably stronger than earlier Harvey armor, so less of it could be used to achieve the same level of protection. In addition, the belt could be made taller, extending up to the main deck level, which protected more of the ship's interior. The ship's deck armor sloped down on the sides, where it was connected to the lower edge of the belt, which considerably strengthened the protection system by providing another layer of armor that would need to be penetrated before the ship's vitals could be damaged.
  The armament was also significantly reduced to save weight and cost, from four heavy guns in two twin-gun turrets to two guns, each in single turrets; she also received two fewer secondary guns compared to Fürst Bismarck. But rather than spreading the secondary battery along the length of the hull in casemates and sponsons, they were concentrated in a battery amidships, which reduced the amount of the hull that needed to be protected with armor, further saving weight and allowing thicker armor to be concentrated in the battery. Further weight savings were achieved by adopting a smaller superstructure and discarding heavy military masts in favor of lighter pole masts. Her engines, however, were some 2,000 metric horsepower (2,000 ihp) more powerful, which produced a faster vessel. 
  The ship proved to be an influential design, and all subsequent German armored cruisers were developments of Prinz Heinrich. In fact, the armor layout pioneered in Prinz Heinrich provided the basis of all German capital ships designed over the next forty years, including the final battleships of the Bismarck and H-classes. Nevertheless, she was not without critics; Vizeadmiral (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Albert Hopman referred to the ship as "cheap, but bad" in his memoirs Logbuch eines Seeoffiziers (Log of a Sea Officer). The naval historians Hans Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, and Hans-Otto Steinmetz regard Hopman's criticism as an exaggeration, pointing out that Prinz Heinrich compared well to foreign contemporaries like the French Desaix, the Russian Bayan, and the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, though she was inferior to British designs. She nevertheless spent only four years in active service in peacetime before being replaced with newer, more powerful cruisers.
caption: Fürst Bismarck, Germany's first armored cruiser; note the heavy military masts and dispersed secondary battery guns, both not repeated for Prinz Heinrich
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