Oldenburg ' s keel was laid in March at the Schichau-Werke dockyard in Danzig. She was launched on 30 June and was commissioned into the fleet on 1 May The ship was equipped with twelve She was present during the unsuccessful first incursion into the Gulf of Riga in August , though she saw no combat during the operation. After the German collapse in November , most of the High Seas Fleet was interned and then scuttled in Scapa Flow during the peace negotiations.
The four Helgoland -class ships were allowed to remain in Germany but eventually ceded to the victorious Allied powers as war reparations ; Oldenburg was given to Japan, which sold the vessel to a British ship breaking firm in She was broken up for scrap in Dordrecht in Many senior officers in the German Kaiserliche Marine Imperial Navy acknowledged that the Nassau -class battleships , armed with 28 cm 11 in guns, were inferior to their British counterparts that carried They sought to incorporate guns of the latter caliber in the next battleship design, though the significant increase in cost from the pre-dreadnought Deutschland -class battleships to the dreadnought Nassau class precluded another major qualitative increase until the budget year, two years after the first Nassau s were ordered.
The design staff experimented with a variety of gun turret arrangements, including superfiring layouts like the American South Carolina class , but they ultimately settled on the same hexagonal arrangement of the Nassau s. The ship was Oldenburg had a flush deck and minimal superstructure that consisted primarily of a large, armored conning tower forward and a smaller, secondary conning position further aft.
The ship was fitted with a pair of pole masts , which held spotting tops and positions for searchlights. She had a crew of 42 officers and 1, enlisted men. She was powered by three triple-expansion steam engines. Steam was provided by fifteen water-tube boilers , which were vented through three closely spaced funnels placed amidships. The engines were rated at 28, metric horsepower 27, ihp ; 20, kW and were capable of producing a top speed of After the boilers were modified to burn oil, which would be sprayed on the coal to increase its burn rate; [ b ] the ship could carry up to metric tons long tons.
Oldenburg was armed with a main battery of twelve For defense against torpedo boats , she carried fourteen 8. This brought the total number of 8. Her main armored belt was mm Her main battery gun turrets were protected by the same thickness of KCA on the sides and faces, as well as the barbettes that supported the turrets.
