SMS Luchs

SMS Luchs was the fourth member of the Iltis-class gunboat of gunboats built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Other ships of the class are SMS Iltis, SMS Tiger, SMS Eber, SMS Jaguar and SMS Panther.

Design
Luchs was 65.2 m long overall and had a beam of 9.1 m and a draft of 3.56 m forward. She displaced 1108 MT at full load. Her propulsion system consisted of a pair of vertical triple-expansion steam engines each driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by four coal-fired Thornycroft boilers. Luchs could steam at a top speed of 13.9 kn at 1345 PS. The ship had a cruising radius of about 2580 nmi at a speed of 9 kn. She had a crew of 9 officers and 121 enlisted men. Luchs was armed with a main battery of two 10.5 cm SK L/40 guns, with 482 rounds of ammunition. She also carried six machine guns.

Service history
Luchs was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig in 1898. She was launched on 18 October 1899 and commissioned into the German fleet on 15 May 1900. She was initially assigned to the American Station, along with the protected cruiser SMS Vineta (1897) and the unprotected cruiser SMS Geier.

In August 1904, the badly damaged Russian battleship Tsesarevich and three destroyers sought refuge in the German naval base at Qingdao following the Russian defeat in the Battle of the Yellow Sea. As Germany was neutral, the East Asia Squadron interned Tsesarevich and the destroyers. On 13 August, the Russian ships restocked their coal supplies from three British steamers, but the armored cruiser SMS Fürst Bismarck (1897) and the protected cruiser SMS Hansa (1898) cleared for action to prevent them from leaving the port. The two cruisers were then reinforced by Luchs and her sister SMS Tiger and the cruisers SMS Hertha and SMS Geier.

Luchs spent December 1909 and early January 1910 in Hong Kong for the Christmas and New Year's festivities in company with the armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst and the light cruiser SMS Leipzig (1905). In January, Scharnhorst, Leipzig, and Luchs went on a tour of East Asian ports, including Bangkok, Manila, and stops in Sumatra and North Borneo. By 22 March, Scharnhorst and Leipzig had returned to the German port at Qingdao.

Luchs was scuttled on 28 September 1914 at the German colony in the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory during the Siege of Qingdao. Three of her sisters were also scuttled during the siege, including SMS Iltis, which was scuttled the same day as Luchs.