SMS Blitz (1862)
Illustration of Blitz's sister ship Meteor | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name | Blitz |
| Operator | |
| Builder | Königliche Werft, Danzig |
| Laid down | 26 July 1861 |
| Launched | 27 August 1862 |
| Decommissioned | October 1875 |
| Stricken | 28 December 1876 |
| Fate | Broken up, 1878 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class & 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 | 250 to 320 PS (250 to 320 ihp) |
| Propulsion | 1 × marine steam engine |
| Speed | 9.1 to 9.3 kn (16.9 to 17.2 km/h; 10.5 to 10.7 mph) |
| Complement | 71 |
| Armament |
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SMS Blitz was a Camäleon-class steam gunboat of the Prussian Navy (later the Imperial German Navy) that was launched in 1862. The ship was ordered as part of a program to strengthen Prussia's coastal defense forces, then oriented against neighboring Denmark. A small vessel, armed with a battery of only three light guns, Blitz served during all three wars of German unification in the 1860s and early 1870s. The ship was present during the Battle of Heligoland in May 1864 during the Second Schleswig War, but was too slow to engage the Danish squadron. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, she operated against the Kingdom of Hanover in the North Sea, but did not see extensive action. In August 1870, Blitz and three other light vessels attacked the French blockade force in the Baltic Sea during the Franco-Prussian War, but they withdrew without either side scoring any hits. During her peacetime career, Blitz was sent to the Mediterranean Sea twice, in 1863 and 1867–1868. She was employed as a fisheries protection ship, a guard ship, and a survey vessel in the early 1870s, before being decommissioned in 1875 and broken up for scrap in 1878. Parts of her machinery were reused in the gunboat Wolf.