SMS Drache (1865)
SMS Drache was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy (later the Imperial German Navy) that was launched in 1860. Budgetary problems delayed her completion until 1869, and she first entered service during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, though she saw no significant action against the French Navy. Drache spent most of her career, between 1872 and 1887, conducting survey work in the North Sea, which later proved to be instrumental to the operations of German U-boats and minelayers during World War I. Drache was ultimately decommissioned in 1887, reduced to a coal hulk, and then expended as a target for the torpedo boat D5 in 1889. Her wreck was later raised and broken up.
Illustration of Drache's sister ship Meteor | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name | Drache |
| Laid down | 27 July 1861 |
| Launched | 3 August 1865 |
| Commissioned | July 1870 |
| Decommissioned | 30 September 1887 |
| Stricken | 13 December 1887 |
| Fate | Sunk in torpedo tests, 1889 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Camäleon-class gunboat |
| Displacement | 422 t (415 long tons) |
| Length | 43.28 m (142 ft) |
| Beam | 6.96 m (22 ft 10 in) |
| Draft | 2.67 m (8 ft 9 in) |
| Installed power | 320 PS (320 ihp) |
| Propulsion | 1 × Marine steam engine |
| Speed | 9.1 knots (16.9 km/h; 10.5 mph) |
| Complement | 71 |
| Armament |
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