SMS Seydlitz was a 25,000 ton battlecruiser of the Imperial German Navy, built at Hamburg, Germany, and commissioned in May 1913.

At the battle of Dogger Bank, 24 January 1915, in World War I she was the flagship of Admiral Franz von Hipper. In heavy fighting two gun turrets were destroyed and 160 sailors were killed.

At the battle of Jutland she fought in Hipper's battlecruiser squadron where she destroyed HMS Queen Mary with her accurate shellfire. In the battle she was heavily damaged, being hit by twenty-one heavy shells and one torpedo, and suffering 98 men killed and 55 injured. Four turrets were destroyed and she shipped 5,000 tons of water, reducing her freeboard almost to nothing. She made it back to port with great difficulty.

After the armistice she was escorted to Scapa Flow where she was scuttled with the rest of the High Seas Fleet on 21 June 1919. She was salvaged in 1928 and scrapped.

External links

• Photos of the Seydlitz

Accounts of the battle of Jutland:

• by Moritz von Egidy, captain of SMS Seydlitz
• by Richard Foerster, gunnery officer on the Seydlitz