SMS Szent István

SMS "Szent István" was an Austro-Hungarian dreadnought battleship, the only one operated wholly by the Hungarian part of the empire. Hungary got her battleship in return for agreeing to the immense funding of the "Tegetthoff" class, and named her after Hungary's first Christian king, Saint Stephen ("Szent István" in Hungarian).

Building

"Szent István" was laid down on January 29, 1912 at Ganz & Company's Danubius yard at Fiume, (the only large Hungarian shipyard), was launched on January 17, 1914, and not named "Szent Istvan" until December 13, 1915. This involved great expense, as the yard had hitherto only built relatively smaller merchant ships for, amongst others, Austrian Lloyd, and therefore had to be itself re-fitted for the building of larger vessels.

She differed from her three sister-ships in that she had a platform built around the fore funnel which extended from the bridge to the after funnel and on which several searchlights were installed. A further distinguishing feature was the modified ventilator trunk in front of the mainmast. She was the only ship of her class not to be fitted with torpedo nets.

Based at Pola she engaged in the usual patrols and bombardments along the Italian coast.

Sinking

At 3.30 a.m. on the morning of June 10, 1918, in the company of SMS "Tegetthoff" and seven other ships en route to attack the Otranto Barrage, "Szent Istvan" was hit by two 45 cm torpedoes launched from the Italian MAS-15 Motor Torpedo Boat under Corvette Captain Luigi Rizzo. Many of the 1,087 crew were asleep, getting rested for the battle expected in a few hours. Immediate chaos soon changed into frantic efforts to save the vessel which was rapidly shipping water. The "Tegetthoff", which had at first sped away from the vicinity of the torpedo attack, returned and took the "Szent Istvan" in tow, in an attempt to reach the massive dry dock at Pula. However the pumps were unequal to the task before them and the ship continued to slowly list, sinking at 6.12 a.m. It is said she sank easily due to faults in the "Tegetthoff" class design: relatively low displacement and high centre of gravity, together with the tremendous weight of 12 × 305 mm main artillery. There were, however, only 89 dead, partly attributed to the fact that all sailors with the KuK had to learn to swim before entering active service.

There is film footage of the last half-hour of the "Szent Istvan", taken by Lieutenant Mensburger from the "Tegetthoff". The "Szent István" is one of only three battleships whose sinking was filmed, together with HMS "Barham" and USS "Arizona". The "Szent István" film was later used to raise money for the Red Cross.

ee also

* Tegetthoff class battleship
* List of ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy
* List of ship launches in 1914
* List of ship commissionings in 1915
* List of shipwrecks in 1918
* detailed color pictures of model http://smsszentistvan.com/photo/Szent%20Istvan%20model/index.html

References

* Wagner, Dr.Walter, & Gabriel, Dr.Erich, "Die 'Tegetthoff' Klasse", Vienna, January 1979, pps: 7-9 (technical details), 96-97 (10 stills from sinking footage with comment).

* Kennedy, Paul, "The Sinking of the Szent Istvan", in "The History of the First World War", BPC Publishing Ltd., Bristol, England, 1971, vol.7, no.14, pps:3072 - 3075.

External links

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilPvSYd_-Es Sinking of Szent István (Video)]
* [http://www.geocities.com/tegetthoff66/main.html Tegetthoff class drednoughts - the primary online source for this topic since 1998]
* [http://www.naval-history.net/WW1NavyAustrian.htm Austro-Hungarian Navy]