SMS König was the first of four dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy () during World War I. König () was named in honor of King William II of Württemberg. Laid down in October 1911, the ship was launched on 1 March 1913. Final construction on König was completed shortly after the outbreak of World War I; she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 9 August 1914. Along with her three sister ships, , , and , König took part in most of the fleet actions during the war. As the leading ship in the German line on 31 May 1916 in the Battle of Jutland, König was heavily engaged by several British battleships and suffered ten large-caliber shell hits. In October 1917, she forced the Russian pre-dreadnought battleship to scuttle herself in the Battle of Moon Sound, which followed Germany's successful Operation Albion. König was interned, along with the majority of the High Seas Fleet, at Scapa Flow in November 1918 following the Armistice. On 21 June 1919, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter gave the order to scuttle the fleet, including König, while the British guard ships were out of the harbor on exercises. Unlike most of the scuttled ships, König was never raised for scrapping; the wreck is still on the bottom of the bay. Design The four s were ordered as part of the Anglo-German naval arms race; they were the fourth generation of German dreadnought battleships, and they were built in response to the British that had been ordered in 1909. The Königs represented a development of the earlier , with the primary improvement being a more efficient arrangement of the main battery. The ships had also been intended to use a diesel engine on the center propeller shaft to increase their cruising range, but development of the diesels proved to be more complicated than expected, so an all-steam turbine powerplant was retained. König displaced as built and fully loaded, with a length of , a beam of and a draft of . She was powered by three Parsons steam turbines, with steam provided by three oil-fired and twelve coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft water-tube boilers, which developed a total of and yielded a maximum speed of . The ship had a range of at a cruising speed of . Her crew numbered 41 officers and 1,095 enlisted men. She was armed with ten SK L/50