In March 1909, STT issued a selection of 5 designs, all with double turrets. In October 1908, the Naval Office of the Admiralty offered an award to the architects and engineers of the empire, planning 6 months to study carefully the plans thus collected. The decisive factor to motivate the parliament in this direction was the launch by the Italians of Dante Alighieri and the construction of four other units. While the Radetzky (photo above), excellent classic battleships, were started, she decided to plan for a dreadnought as a new standard: On February 20, 1908, Admiral Monteccucoli already affirmed the necessity to develop new battleships of more than 18 000 tons. Well armed despite limited dimensions they were formidable adversaries for the Italian Ships but stayed mostly inactive at Pola for the duration of the war, until a 1918 ill-fated sortie which saw Szent Istvan sunk by Italian MAS-boats, while another was sunk at anchor by frogmen.
The class was named after Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, National hero after the battle of Lissa.įour ships were built, completed just when the war started or soon after. They succeeded to the Radetzky, arguably ones of the finest pre-dreadnoughts ever built, laid down and started without approval of the parliament. In 1908, the Admiralty was aware of its backwardness on foreign navies, all of which had followed Great Britain in the race towards all-big guns fast battleships of the next generation. The Tegetthof was also by far the most impressive and the most famous battleship class of the small Austro-Hungarian Navy. None the less due to some Hungarian and Italian Naval enthusiasts as well as sheer luck I was able to collect as much info as I could.Tegetthoff, Viribus Unitis, Prinz Eugen, Szent Istvan (1911)įirst Dreadnoughts and last Austro-Hungarian battleships: SMS Tegetthoff at anchor Meaning while most of the documents were held in Vienna (Austria), some documents could be found in Budapest (Hungary), Pola and Zagreb (Croatia), Venezia (Italy) or might be even in Prague (Czech Republic). Not only because the troubled history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its successor states (Ships designed by Vienna and the various shipyards of Croatia and parts of nowadays Italy, Armour produced by Vitkovice in Silesia and Main guns produced and developed by Skoda in Bohemia (today Czech Republic), while engines and smaller calibre guns produced by Ganz-Danubius, Budapest, Hungary) in the past 100 years, but the documents of the ships might ended up in various parts of the old Monarch due to their contribution of the development and construction of the ships. While the Ersatz Monarch class battleships is mostly likely the most well-known never-were project of the Austro-Hungarian Navy (Kaiserlich und Königlich Kriegsmarine), the history of the class and the other design variants considered are rather difficult to get knowledge of.
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