Th e Construction of the Radetzky Class

After the reconciliation of Franz Joseph with the Hungarian coalition in April 1906, in June and July the delegations voted for the budgets of 1905 and 1906. On 4 July 1906, the Slovene Ivan Šusteršič member of the Austrian delegation demanded that Austria-Hungary should dominate the Adriatic and should execute the fi fteen battleships program of Tegetthoff . 85 At the next session of the delegations in December 1906 and January 1907 they discussed the budget proposals for 1907. Montecuccoli feared that the new Hungarian coalition government (the former opposition) led by Prime Minister Sándor Wekerle would reject the new battleships. But his fears were baseless the new Hungarian government was content with the April 1906 corroboration of the 1904 agreement on sharing the industrial orders of the Navy. On 21 December 1906, the Hungarian delegation after a short debate on the industrial orders of the Navy voted the expenses of the three battleships, the 3,500 ton cruiser and the new fl oating dock of 22,000 tons lifting capacity. Only one member of the Hungarian delegation, Count Miklós Zichy voted against the Navy’s budget.86

Th e Austrian delegation voted for the battleships on 7 January 1907. During the debate some delegation members blamed the high Austro-Hungarian steel prices. Th e Hungarian wish to give a Hungarian name to one of the battleships caused great hue and cry in the Austrian delegation. Delegation member Leopold Steiner criticized Montecuccoli’s pro-Hungarian policy saying: “… we shall come to see that on a fi ne day one of the Navy’s ship will be named Kossuth!”87

Th e Radetzky class was the last Austro-Hungarian battleship class consisting of three units and the last which was built from the ordinary budget of the Navy. Th e expenses of the next battleship classes were now covered from so called extraordinary credits. To secure these extraordinary credits the Navy needed much more struggle with the politicians, especially with the Hungarian ones. So the Radetzkys were the last battleships which were built by the “easy” way.

Th e Construction of the Radetzky Class

Immediately after that both delegations voted for the new battleships the Navy started the preparatory works for the construction. Th e Navy signed the contracts with the main suppliers: the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino (STT) shipyard in Trieste (hull and machinery), the Witkowitz Ironorks in Witkowitz (armor plates) and Škoda Works in Pilsen (guns and gun turrets). Th e fi rst orders for steel material was given in February 1907 and in August 1907 all the steel material needed for the Schlachtschiff I was gathered in Trieste. As the material transports from the subcontractors arrived the shipyard started to prepare one of the two great slipways for the keel laying.88

On 12 September 1907, the keel of the Schlachtschiff I was laid down in Trieste. Two and half months later, on 26 November 1907 the keel of the Schlachtschiff II was laid down on the second great slipway of the shipyard. Because the STT had only two large slipways, laying down the keel of the third battleship was only possible after the launch of one of the battleships. From October 1907 to July 1908, the STT increased the number of the workers from 919 to 1945 in the San Marco yard where the battleships were under construction. Th e STT planned further increases but the lack of skilled workers made it impossible.89 Th e STT focused on the building of the fi rst unit of the class and succeeded to break the fourteen month record of the previous class: the much bigger Schlachtschiff I was launched after twelve and a half months on 30 September 1908. On 27 February 1908, Montecuccoli said before the Austrian delegation that the new battleships were the strongest in the Mediterranean.90 Th is statement was not true because the French Dantons which were larger and more powerful were also under construction. In Austria-Hungary, the procedure of choosing the name for a new warship usually started a few months prior to the launch. At that time, this procedure was regulated by a regulation sanctioned by the Emperor in May 1898. Th e Emperor had the right to approve the proposals of the Navy, but on rare occasions he made his own proposals. Th e fi rst proposal written by the Präsidialkanzlei (Naval Chancellery) was presented to the Military Chancellery of Franz Joseph (MKSM) in February 1908. Th is memorandum included name proposals for the three battleships,91 for the Kreuzer F and for the six destroyers and ten torpedo boats under construction in Fiume. Th e writer of the memorandum also mentioned the long standing Hun-

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garian wish for giving a Hungarian name to one of the battleships.92 Th e memorandum made the following proposal for the battleships: I Radetzky, II Hunyadi, III Prinz Eugen. Th is original proposal was modifi ed by handwriting in the document to: I Radetzky, II Prinz Eugen, III Zrínyi. 93

One month later on 24 March 1908, Montecuccoli presented a new proposal to the Military Chancellery of Franz Joseph. With a clever tactical move the Marinekommandant proposed to name the fi rst unit of the class after the Heir of the Th rone Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand. Montecuccoli supported his proposal with the following arguments: Franz Ferdinand was on the top of the Navy list, he was the great supporter and patron of the Navy, so it would be a great honor to the Navy if its newest and most powerful battleship would bear the name of the Heir of the Th rone. For the second and for the third units of the class he proposed the names Radetzky and Zrínyi. 94 On 31 March 1908, Franz Joseph approved the proposal.95 Despite the fi rst unit being named after the Heir of the Th rone contrary to the earlier habit of the Navy, the class was offi cially named after its second unit (Radetzky class, Typ Radetzky in the original documents) for an unknown reason.

Undoubtedly, naming the fi rst battleship of the class after the Heir of the Th rone was a clever move. Th e bond between the Navy and the Archduke became even stronger. Franz Ferdinand was very glad when Franz Joseph approved the Navy’s proposal naming a battleship after him. When the Emperor approved the name proposal Montecuccoli sent a telegram to the Heir of the Th rone in which informed him about the approval and added: “Th e whole Navy is pervaded by the deep sense of gratitude that in a few months its most excellent ship will bear the name of your Royal Highness, our most Honorable Patron.” On 4 April 1908, Franz Ferdinand sent a telegram from his castle of Konopište to Montecuccoli in which he expressed his gratitude and wrote: “… my whole heart beats for the Navy.”96 Franz Ferdinand’s joy was even greater when the Emperor allowed to his morganatic wife Princess Sophie von Hohenberg (Chotek) to be the sponsor (Taufpatin), while offi cially the sponsor of a battleship could only be an archduchess of the Habsburg family. Eventually, the sponsor of the Schlachtshiff I was Archduchess Maria Annunziata, the daughter of Franz Ferdinand’s stepmother, Archduchess Maria Th eresa,97 because Princess Sophie was in the last weeks of pregnancy.

Th e launch of the Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand caused panic in Rome because the Italians had nothing comparable. Upon the completion of the 14,500 ton battleships, the Dual Monarchy arguably would enjoy a material naval advantage over

20 Zrínyi getting one of her 30.5 cm/45 guns installed

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Italy for the fi rst time since the 1870s. While the budget of the Italian Navy for the fi scal year 19071908 included a modest sum to start a dreadnought program, little was done before the Bosnian Crisis. At the end of 1908, panicky Italian admirals called for a twofold superiority over the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Th e Italian government for fi nancial reasons rejected this goal.98 Th e Italians had to recognize that such a ratio of material superiority which the Italian Navy had been enjoyed over the Austro-Hungarian Navy before would be unsustainable in the future. It had been easy to maintain it in the past when the budget of the Austro-Hungarian Navy had not reached 10 percent of the total budget of the Habsburg armed forces. When the Austro-Hungarian Navy’s budget began to rise steeply after 1904, Italy’s economic and fi scal state did not allow for a similar increase of the naval budget.

Th e construction of the Schlachtschiff II was much slower, partly due to the lack of steel material, partly because the STT focused on Schlachtschiff I and the greater part of the workers worked on her. In the summer of 1908 only 63 percent of the material needed for the second battleship was delivered.99 On 29 September 1908, Kontreadmiral Chemlarž, the commander of District of Trieste reported to the Marinesektion that the works on the second battleship had stopped because the greater part of the material ordered in Hungary had not been delivered in time and the STT was planning dismissals.100

On 3 October 1908, Chemlarž sent to the Marinesektion a detailed report on the material orders. On the basis of the agreement between the Hungarian government and the Navy renewed in 1906 the STT as an Austrian shipyard had to order one third of the steel material from Hungarian ironworks as a compensation101 for the Hungarian industry. In the case of the Schlachtschiff I, 14 percent of the orders went to the Hungarian ironworks while in the case of the Schlachtschiff II, this proportion reached 35 percent. Hungarian ironworks delivered the ordered material with enormous, seven to ten months delays.102 Th e second battleship, the Radetzky was launched on 3 July 1909; nineteen months after her keel had been laid down. Th e keel of the third battleship was laid down on 20 January 1909. In her case, 30 percent of the steel material was ordered from Hungarian ironworks.103 Th e last battleship of the class, the Zrínyi was launched on 12 April 1910.

Th e new fl agship of the fl eet the Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand was commissioned on 15 July 1910. Her construction was somewhat slowed by an accident: returning to Trieste from the mandatory docking after the launch in a strong gale slipped her moorings and ran aground. Eighty damaged plates of her underwater hull had to be replaced. On her trials her machinery produced 20,600 SHP and she attained a maximum speed of 20.58 knots. Th e Radetzky was commissioned on 15 January 1911. On her trials her machinery produced 19,437 SHP and she attained a maximum speed of 20.16 knots. Th e Zrínyi was commissioned on 15 September 1911. On her trials her machinery produced 20,000 SHP and she attained a maximum speed of 20.97 knots. With this speed she was the fastest Austro-Hungarian battleship of all times. An interesting fact: despite their obsolete reciprocating steam engines the battleships of the Radetzky class were somewhat faster than their successors fi tted with steam turbines.

Th e three units of the Radetzky class were not entirely identical. Th e most apparent visible diff erence between them was the diff ering position of their two large boat cranes. For example Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand’s starboard crane was pointing to the bow while her port crane was pointing to the stern. Each of the three battleships was fi tted in 1915 with six 7 cm/50 AA guns (BAG – Ballon-abwehr Geschütz) which were mounted on the 30.5 cm and 24 cm turret roofs. During the war, like on the dreadnoughts the three part metal lids of the 30.5 cm and 24 cm gun turret’s gunports were substituted with blast bags. In 1917 the torpedo nets and their booms were removed from the Radetzkys. Th is was done because German experiences of the Battle of Jutland/Skagerrak showed that a hit on the net could detach it which posed a threat to the screws. On the evidence of wartime photographs, these ships were not fi tted with bomb nets over their funnel caps, these were provided only for the Tegetthoffs. Prior to the outbreak of the war the Austro-Hungarian battleships were painted in the so called “Montecuccoligrün” (Montecuccoli green, olive green) livery. As the primary role intended for the Navy at that time was coastal defense, this livery served to fade into the background of the mountainous Dalmatian coasts. As the naval convention of the Triple Alliance went into ef-

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