 One of the Roon-class cruisers
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name | Roon |
| Builders | |
| Operators |  Imperial German Navy |
| Preceded by | Prinz Adalbert class |
| Succeeded by | Scharnhorst class |
| Built | 1902–1906 |
| In commission | 1905–1916 |
| Completed | 2 |
| Lost | 1 |
| Scrapped | 1 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Armored cruiser |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 127.8 m (419 ft) |
| Beam | 20.2 m (66 ft 3 in) |
| Draft | 7.76 m (25 ft 6 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion |
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| Speed | 21.1 knots (39.1 km/h; 24.3 mph) |
| Range | 4,200 nmi (7,800 km; 4,800 mi) at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Crew |
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| Armament |
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| Armor | |
The Roon class was a pair of armored cruisers built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the 1900s. The two ships of the class, Roon and Yorck, closely resembled the earlier Prinz Adalbert-class cruisers upon which they were based. The Roon class incorporated slight incremental improvements, including a pair of extra boilers. The ships were easily distinguished from their predecessors by the addition of a fourth funnel. Though the additional boilers were meant to increase the ships' speed, both vessels failed to reach their designed top speed. In addition, the ships had comparatively light armament and thin armor protection, so they compared poorly with their foreign contemporaries, particularly the armored cruisers of their primary opponent, the British Royal Navy.
The two ships served in I Scouting Group, the reconnaissance force of the High Seas Fleet, after they entered service in 1905–1906. During this period, Yorck and Roon served stints as the group flagship and the deputy commander flagship, respectively. By the early 1910s, the first German battlecruisers had begun to enter service and Roon was decommissioned in 1911 and placed in reserve; Yorck joined her in 1913. Both ships were reactivated after World War I broke out in July 1914. They were assigned to III Scouting Group, with Roon as its flagship, and tasked with screening for the main body of the German fleet. In November, the German fleet made the raid on Yarmouth, but on return to port at Wilhelmshaven, the fleet encountered heavy fog and had to stop off Schillig. Yorck's commander decided that visibility had improved so he ordered his ship to get underway again, but she quickly struck two German mines and sank with heavy loss of life.
Roon was transferred to the Baltic in April 1915 and participated in a series of offensive operations against Russian forces, including the attack on Libau in May, the Battle of the Åland Islands in July, and the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August. The threat of British submarines led to her decommissioning in 1916, after which she was employed as a training ship and an accommodation vessel. Plans to convert her into a seaplane tender late in the war came to nothing owing to Germany's defeat in 1918, and she was stricken from the naval register in 1920 and broken up the following year.