Vintage photographs of battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers.

To go directly to photos of a specific ship, simply enter her name in the search window (little white space) at the upper left. Ditto for a type of warship, country, year, etc..., e.g. battlecruiser. You can click on an individual photograph to view it alone against a dark background. When you want to go back to the page, just click outside the picture. Please note that I resize, denoise/despeckle/descratch and generally crop the photos to show mostly the ship itself in the space available.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Forward turret of a German predreadnought battleship (either SMS Schleswig-Holstein or SMS Elsass).

Schleswig-Holstein's 11" guns are often said to have fired the first shots of World War II (on the Westerplatte military transit depot at Danzig) but the Luftwaffe had attacked the Polish town of Wieluń five minutes earlier.

Ship details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Schleswig-Holstein

However, although generally attributed to the Schleswig-Holstein, the same image is identified as SMS Elsaß on this German postcard (seemingly from the same company) dated April 22nd 1915.