SMS Iltis was the lead ship of the of gunboats built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The ships were built to modernize the German gunboat force used to patrol the German colonial empire. They were ordered in three groups of two ships, each pair incorporating design improvements. Iltis, along with , was armed with a main battery of four guns, had a top speed of , and could cruise for more than .
After entering service in 1899, Iltis was deployed to the East Asia Squadron based in Qingdao, China. The following year, the Boxer Uprising broke out in China, and Iltis was heavily involved in the initial operations by the Eight Nation Alliance to suppress the Boxers, and then fight Qing troops supporting them. Iltis contributed soldiers to landing parties to secure Tientsin, and in June 1900, she saw significant fighting at the Battle of the Taku Forts, leading the naval assault on the forts guarding the entrance to the Hai River. During the action, Iltis received numerous hits and suffered relatively heavy casualties, including the first German naval officer killed in action. The ship's captain, Wilhelm von Lans, was seriously wounded during the battle and received the Pour le Merite for his actions. Iltis was similarly decorated.
Iltis saw no further action for the remainder of her time in East Asian waters, though her crew remained on alert during the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing government in 1911 and 1912. After the start of World War I in July 1914, Iltis was disarmed; some of her weapons and crew were sent to convert a captured Russian merchant vessel into the auxiliary cruiser , while the rest were used to strengthen the defenses of Qingdao. After the British and Japanese besieged Qingdao later that year, Iltis was scuttled on the night of 28–29 September to prevent her capture.
Design
The German (Imperial Navy) abandoned gunboat construction for more a decade after , launched in 1887, instead focusing on larger unprotected cruisers beginning with the . By the mid-1890s, the navy began planning replacements for the older vessels of the and es. The new ships were scheduled to begin construction by 1900, but the loss of the gunboat in a storm necessitated an immediate replacement, which was added to the 1898 naval budget. The new ship was planned to patrol the German colonial empire; requirements included engines powerful enough for the ship to steam up the Yangtze in China, where the new gunboat was intended to be deployed. Six ships were built in three identical pairs; each pair incorporated incremental improvements over the preceding set, and Iltis was one of the first pair, along with .
Iltis was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced as designed and at full load. The ship had a raised forecastle deck and a pronounced ram bow. Her superstructure consisted primarily of a conning tower with an open bridge atop it. She had a crew of nine officers and 121 enlisted men.
Her propulsion system consisted of a pair of horizontal triple-expansion steam engines each driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by four coal-fired Thornycroft boilers. Exhaust was vented through two funnels located amidships. Iltis was rated to steam at a top speed of at , though she exceeded these figures in service. The ship had a cruising radius of about at a speed of .
Iltis was armed with a main battery of four SK L/30 guns, with 1,124 rounds of ammunition. Two guns were placed side-by-side on the forecastle and the other pair side-by-side near the stern. She also carried six Maxim guns. The only armor protection carried by the ship was of steel plate on the conning tower.
Service history
The order for the new gunboat was placed in March 1897 with the Schichau-Werke shipyard in Danzig, under the contract name . The keel for the ship, which was named for the earlier gunboat Iltis of 1878 (and which had been in turn named after the German word for polecat), was laid down on 27 November that year. She was launched on 4 August 1898 and the director of the (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig, (KzS—Captain at Sea) Friedrich von Weitersheim, gave a speech at the ceremony. A shipyard crew transferred the unfinished ship to Kiel, where her artillery was installed at the there. She was commissioned into the German fleet on 1 December to begin sea trials, which were completed in January 1899. Her first commander was (KL—Captain Lieutenant) Wilhelm von Lans.
East Asia Squadron
After entering service, Iltis was sent abroad to Germany's main naval force in Asia, the East Asia Squadron, in part because there were no other warships in the region that could easily enter Chinese rivers. She departed Germany on 6 February and sailed through the Mediterranean, stopping in Singapore on 27 April, and ultimately arriving in Qingdao on 18 May. On 1 June, Iltis stopped at the Promontory Lighthouse, where her namesake vessel had been wrecked, to participate in a memorial service for those who had died in the sinking. The ship then continued north to visit Russian ports including Port Arthur. From there, she stopped in Hakodate, Japan, before returning to Qingdao to join the East Asia Squadron. Iltis remained stationed at Qingdao for the next year, until the Boxer Uprising broke out in mid-May 1900. At the time, the East Asia Squadron also included the protected cruisers , , , and , the unprotected cruiser , and the gunboat . Felix von Bendemann commanded the squadron aboard Hertha. In response to the Boxer Uprising, the six major European colonial powers, along with Japan and the United States, formed the Eight Nation Alliance. The countries all gathered significant forces to combat the Boxers.
Battle of the Taku Forts
On 29 May, Bendemann ordered Iltis to sail to the mouth of the Hai River; she arrived there two days later. The German consul in Tientsin requested the ship send a detachment to guard the consulate there, and Lans sent KL Robert Kühne (the ship's executive officer), another officer, and thirty men ashore on 4 June. Five days later, Irene arrived and sent a replacement party to Tientsin, though Kühne remained with the men from Irene; this was because Iltis was the only vessel capable of entering the Hai, which necessitated that her crew be ready for combat. By this time, the British Admiral Edward Seymour had assembled an expedition to relieve the Siege of the International Legations in Beijing, as the situation there had worsened. Bendemann, who had joined the forces gathered at the mouth of the Hai, observed that the Taku Forts guarding the entrance to the river threatened the rear of Seymour's expedition and the lines of communications with the European consulates in Tientsin. He ordered Lans to take Iltis into the river in company with the British sloop to observe the forts—which consisted of a north, northwest, south, and southwest fort, along with a so-called "beach battery"—and to suppress their guns if necessary.
Bendemann discussed potential courses of action with the other naval officers in the roadstead, but he could not persuade a majority to agree to attack the forts during a meeting on 14 June. The following day, word arrived that Chinese reinforcements were on the way, and that Europeans had been attacked in Tientsin. Bendemann sent landing parties from Hansa, Hertha, and Gefion, to reinforce the men in Tientsin, under the command of KzS Hugo von Pohl. By that time, the commanders concluded an attack on the forts was necessary, but they faced a number of constraints: the shallow depth of the Hai prevented larger ships from approaching the forts; the distance from the forts to the outer roadstead was too great for the larger ships providing gunfire support; some of the smaller gunboats were weakly armed and could not be used to directly attack the fortifications; most of the ships had their crews depleted either by the Seymour expedition or by the reinforcements sent to Tientsin. Lans nevertheless argued the forts could be captured with the forces available, so on the evening of 16 June, the Europeans issued an ultimatum demanding the Chinese temporarily abandon the forts by 02:00 on the 17th.
The Europeans planned to use Iltis and Algerine to lead the attack on the northwest fort and suppress its defenders, which the landing parties from Tientsin were to storm. The four other available gunboats would engage the remaining forts and the beach battery to occupy their defenders during the assault on the northwest fort. The Chinese disrupted the plan by opening fire at 00:50 on 17 June, more than an hour before the ultimatum was to expire, and before the Europeans had reached their intended positions. Iltis was targeted particularly heavily, in large part because the Chinese viewed her as the most dangerous warship, owing to her modern appearance. At 04:26, she received her first hit, which struck the aft funnel. Four more shells struck the ship soon thereafter, but she remained in action. By about 04:45, she and Algerine had disabled most of the Chinese guns in the northwest fort, which allowed Iltis to signal the ground forces to begin their assault. Pohl's men quickly secured the northwest fort and then immediately launched a surprise attack on the north fort, which was also successful. There they captured a pair of guns that had not been damaged in the bombardment, and they used those to support the gunboats in subsequent attacks on southern forts and the beach battery.
While Pohl's men were attacking the northwest and then north forts, Iltis, Algerine, the French gunboat , and the Russian gunboats and moved to their second bombardment positions to engage the southern forts; the Russian gunboat had been badly damaged and was unable to move. Iltis and Algerine briefly fired on the northern fort during this period, but quickly shifted fire to the southern fort. The Chinese defenders soon returned fire with good accuracy; beginning at about 05:45, Iltis received a series of hits, the first of which struck the base of the conning tower and killed an officer. Further hits inflicted further damage on the tower and seriously wounded Lans. Command on the ship temporarily broke down, causing her to sail past Algerine, which had already anchored at her intended bombardment position. Lans turned over command to (Lieutenant at Sea) Hoffmann Lamatsch Edler von Waffenstein, the deputy executive officer (as Kühne was still ashore). Waffenstein anchored the ship, but she was in front of Algerine, partially obstructing her field of fire, so Iltis had to move about further up. She continued to take hits from the Chinese gunners, including one that struck the stairs leading down from the conning tower roof; Lans, a doctor, and a medic were attempting to descend the stairs at the time, and were thrown to the deck when the stairs collapsed. Lans was evacuated to a steam pinnace positioned on the disengaged side of the ship, where he remained for the rest of the battle.