SMS Helgoland, the lead ship of her class, was a dreadnought battleship of the German Imperial Navy. Helgolands design represented an incremental improvement over the preceding , including an increase in the bore diameter of the main guns, from 28 cm (11 in) to . Her keel was laid down on 11 November 1908 at the Howaldtswerke shipyards in Kiel. Helgoland was launched on 25 September 1909 and was commissioned on 23 August 1911. Like most battleships of the High Seas Fleet, Helgoland saw limited action against Britain's Royal Navy during World War I. The ship participated in several fruitless sweeps into the North Sea as the covering force for the battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group. She saw some limited duty in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy, including serving as part of a support force during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915. Helgoland was present at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, though she was located in the center of the German line of battle and not as heavily engaged as the - and ships in the lead. Helgoland was ceded to Great Britain at the end of the war and broken up for scrap in the early 1920s. Her coat of arms is preserved in the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr in Dresden. Design The ship was long, had a beam of and a draft of , and displaced at full load. She was powered by three triple-expansion steam engines, which produced a top speed of . Helgoland stored up to of coal, which allowed her to steam for at a speed of . After 1915 the boilers were modified to burn oil; the ship could carry up to of fuel oil. She had a crew of 42 officers and 1,071 enlisted men. Helgoland was armed with a main battery of twelve SK L/50 guns in six twin gun turrets, with one turret fore, one aft, and two on each flank of the ship. The ship's secondary battery consisted of fourteen SK L/45 guns, all of which were mounted in casemates in the side of the upper deck. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried fourteen SK L/45 guns. After 1914, two of the 8.8 cm guns were removed and replaced by 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns. Helgoland was also armed with six submerged torpedo tubes; one