Imperial Dockyard in Wilhelmshaven on 29 May, two days before the rest of the fleet departed for the Battle of Jutland. Work on the ship was not completed until 15 June, and as a result, König Albert was the only German dreadnought in active service to miss the battle. On 18 August 1916, König Albert took part in an operation to bombard Sunderland. Admiral Scheer attempted a repeat of the original 31 May plan: the two serviceable German battlecruisers— and —augmented by three faster dreadnoughts, were to bombard the coastal town of Sunderland in an attempt to draw out and destroy Vice Admiral David Beatty's battlecruisers. Scheer would trail behind with the rest of the fleet and provide support. During the action of 19 August 1916, Scheer turned north after receiving a false report from a zeppelin about a British unit in the area. As a result, the bombardment was not carried out, and by 14:35, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and so turned his forces around and retreated to German ports. Another fleet operation took place on 18–19 October, though it ended without encountering any British units. Unit training in the Baltic was then conducted, and on the return voyage III Squadron was diverted to assist in the recovery of a pair of U-boats stranded on the Danish coast. The fleet was reorganized on 1 December; the four König-class battleships remained in III Squadron, along with the newly commissioned , while the five Kaiser-class ships, including König Albert, were transferred to IV Squadron. König Albert saw no major operations in the first half of 1917, and on 18 August she went into drydock at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel for periodic maintenance, which lasted until 23 September. Operation Albion In early September 1917, following the German conquest of the Russian port of Riga, the German naval command decided to eliminate the Russian naval forces that still held the Gulf of Riga. On 18 September, the Admiralstab (the Navy High Command) issued the order for a joint operation with the army to capture Ösel and Moon Islands. The naval component, organized as a Special Unit (Sonderverband), was to comprise the flagship, Moltke, along with III and IV Battle Squadrons of the High Seas Fleet. Along with nine light cruisers, three torpedo boat flotillas, and dozens of mine warfare ships, the entire force numbered some 300 ships,