The Baden was categorized as a "dreadnought" battleship which placed her in a specific modernized steel warship class of the period. The Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought appeared in 1906 and rewrote the battleship specification considerably, applying the perfect blend of armor protection, speed and firepower. It was the first vessel to adopt a unified "all big gun" approach in her design coupled to turbine propulsion. The arrival of the Dreadnought immediately rendered all previous battleship types obsolete to which the name of "pre-dreadnought" was forever assigned them. The HMS Dreadnought was hugely responsible for the British-German naval arms race that followed.
After her requisite sea trials, the SMS Baden was commissioned and assigned to the German "High Seas Fleet" as flagship (her primary enemy force would become the British "Grand Fleet"). In the latter part of 1917, the vessel was called to action against British cargo vessels attempting to reach Norway to which the Baden was able to put her main guns to good use. In April of 1918, under the command of Admiral Hipper, the Baden and the High Seas Fleet set sail along the established convoy lines looking for potential targets though none were found. On a May 24th sail, the vessel delivered Admiral Reinhard Scheer and the Grand Duke Friedrich von Baden himself to visit Helgoland archipelago along the Northwest coast of Germany.
The end of the line for Baden came when the German Empire lay near imminent collapse in 1918. The war had dragged on for over three long years by now and morale was at an all time low across German cities and military branches as conditions worsened. Several high profile mutinies arose across capital and lesser ships that threatened collapse of the Empire from within. On November 9th, the Baden fell victim to its own mutiny and put an end to one last major military naval action being planned by Admiral Hipper and Scheer. World War 1 ended with the November 11th, 1918 Armistice which saw the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. The German Empire was equally dismantled and neutered of its war-making capacity.
The SMS Baden was handed over to British authorities in place of the incomplete SMS Mackensen under the terms of the November Armistice. The Baden fell under the watch of the High Seas Fleet which left for Scapa Flow on November 21st, 1918. With the Peace Treaty signing deadline set for 12PM, June 21st, 1919, Rear Admiral von Reuter ordered a fleet-wide scuttling of all German ships lest they come under permanent British control. The scuttling action managed to sink many ships though the Baden was saved by British forces before she could be lost in full at Gutter Sound. Salvaged in July of 1919, the Baden was towed across the English Channel to Invergordon Naval Base in Scotland to undergo a battery of tests on her guns and armor before being sunk as a target herself on August 16th, 1921.
Of the four Bayern-class vessels planned, only the SMS Bayern and SMS Baden were ever completed before the end of the World War 1. The SMS Schsen and SMS Wurtemberg were both incomplete at the end of the war and ultimately scrapped under the terms of the Armistice. The SMS Bayern, scuttled on the June 21st, 1919 action, was then raised, towed to Scotland and ultimately broken up in 1935 just prior to World War 2.
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