for the 1908 and 1909 building years; was the first, followed by . was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of fully loaded. The ship displaced normally, and at full load. was powered by four Parsons steam turbines, with steam provided by twenty-four coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft water-tube boilers. The propulsion system was rated at and a top speed of , though she exceeded this speed significantly on her trials. At , the ship had a range of . Her crew consisted on 43 officers and 1,010 enlisted men. The ship was armed with a main battery of ten SK L/50 guns mounted in five twin-gun turrets; of these, one was placed forward, two were en echelon amidships, and the other two were in a superfiring pair aft. Her secondary armament consisted of twelve SK L/45 guns placed in individual casemates in the central portion of the ship. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried twelve SK L/45 guns, also in individual mounts in the bow, the stern, and around the forward conning tower. She was also equipped with four submerged torpedo tubes, one in the bow, one in the stern, and one on each broadside. The ship's armor consisted of Krupp cemented steel. The belt was thick in the citadel where it covered the ship's ammunition magazines and propulsion machinery spaces. The belt tapered down to on either end. The deck was thick, sloping downward at the side to connect to the bottom edge of the belt. The main battery gun turrets had faces, and they sat atop barbettes that were equally thick. Service history The Imperial Navy ordered , the third German battlecruiser, on 8 April 1909 under the provisional name "H" from the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, under construction number 201. Her keel was laid on 19 August; the hull was completed and the ship was launched on 28 March 1911. Fitting-out work followed, and she was commissioned into the German Navy on 2 July 1912. When the First Balkan War broke out in October 1912, the German General Staff determined that a naval Mediterranean Division () was needed to project German power in the Mediterranean, and thus dispatched and the light cruiser to Constantinople. The two ships left Kiel on 4 November and arrived on 15 November 1912. Beginning in April 1913, visited many Mediterranean ports including Venice, Pola, and Naples, before sailing