Talk:SMS Seydlitz

Motto
About the ship's motto: From my understanding, as native german speaker with only a minor understanding of English, "AlleN voran" should be translated as "ahead of all". Not as "all ahead" which to me seams to be a suitable translation of "AlleS voran". So my point is about the difference between "Allen" and "Alles". 86.56.43.209 (talk) 23:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If "Allen voran" is an idiomatic German phrase, perhaps it should be translated at an English idiomatic phrase such as "First in line" or "First of all"? Xatsmann (talk) 19:10, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I can only second the statement made here - "Allen voran" indeed expresses a location in front of anybody else. The suggested "First in line" would be a great fit if this was a ship of the line, which I think it is not and I also fear that "First in line" might be interpreted as pretence which the German phrase does not contain. I does not claim to come first but simply states the readiness or fact that the ship would be a leader. "All ahead" would be a completely wrong interpretation/translation. JB. --92.193.146.62 (talk) 22:56, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Unique or modified Moltke class?
I have several books on German warships of the period, including Staff's German Battlecruisers: 1914–1918, and Gröner's excellent German Warships: 1815–1945, and they all treat the ship as its own design. Seydlitz was some 20 meters longer than Moltke, some 3,000 tonnes heavier, and had an entirely different propulsion system. Of course Seydlitz is a design that improved on the Moltke design, just as Moltke was an improvement over the Von der Tann design, but stating that Seydlitz was a "modified Moltke class battlecruiser" is overstating the relationship. Parsecboy (talk) 21:44, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Style note
Is there a reason "Kaiser" is italicised? I'd have thought this was a common enough word in English writing that we could leave it as normal... Shimgray | talk | 13:01, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I suppose so. I wasn't sure when I did it, but I guess you're right. I'll remove the italics. Parsecboy (talk) 13:04, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Wilhelm Heidkamp
Just a thought, but the sailor Wilhelm Heidkamp is credited with saving Seydlitz at Dogger Bank. I think this should be mentioned (with a link) in the article. Is he the executive officer mentioned.--Jackyd101 (talk) 09:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I've heard the story, but I haven't actually seen it in any of the sources I have, which is why I didn't include it. Wilhelm was a Maat (the equivalent of a petty officer) at the time, so he was not the executive officer mentioned. Parsecboy (talk) 13:01, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, Staff's book mentions him, so I'll add a line for him. Parsecboy (talk) 13:07, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

24 "However"s
I removed these from the article; overuse of words like this without real thought as to their meaning is a pet hate of mine. I hope you agree the article has lost nothing as a result and may read a little easier now. --John (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That's fine by me, although I'm fairly sure I know what the word means. Thanks for your edits. Parsecboy (talk) 15:42, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * You are welcome. Here's a neat resource if you haven't already seen it.--John (talk) 19:22, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Conversion problems
Ordinarily, I would regard this as a minor edit and let it go without comment, but there is a problem with the Wikipedia convert algorithm. The ship's beam is stated twice, first 28.5 meters, then, after the addition of torpedo protection, 28.8 meters. The trouble is that both figures were converted to 94 feet, despite the difference of 30 centimeters. I have fixed this in the text by converting the two beams by hand, to 93.5 and 94.5 feet, respectively, so there is no problem so far as this article is concerned, but editors of other articles should be aware.
 * Also, there is something in the section on the Battle of Jutland that I do not understand. Among the motions of the German fleet are two successive turns of 16 points, which would put the ships back on their original course. Is that really what happened?

PKKloeppel (talk) 16:55, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for fixing that problem, I hadn't noticed it myself. I seem to think you can specify if you want the template to just round the figures to one/two/however many decimal places, but I'd have to look at the template page to remember how. And it's not really necessary in this case.
 * Yes, Scheer turned his ships away and then back towards the British line (which was intentional). The German official history states that:
 * Hardly had Scheer regained his freedom of action [by the first Gefechtskehrtwendung], when, far from being inclined to break off the battle...he decided to make a second attack. (Tarrant, p. 165–167)
 * Parsecboy (talk) 17:11, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of conversion problems, I noticed that the section on torpedo armament suddenly switched from giving range in Meters to giving range in KILO-Meters! The article says initially she carried 19.7" G6 torpedoes with some 5000m range at 27 knots and 2200m range at 35 knots. The article then stated an upgrade to G7 torpedoes increased the range to 17,200 KM and 7,400 KM respectively...The problem is that this range is thousands of KM greater than even modern torpedoes.  The article also originally got to these figures through the conversion of a number in miles, while the G6 torpedo was given directly in meters.  I have kept the numbers, 7,400 and 17,200, but changed the unit of measure to more reasonable meters rather than kilometers.  However these ranges are STILL greatly in excess of the figures given for the 19.7" G7 in my won sources so I'm not quire sure what's going on here. Perhaps there are different numbers floating around, or perhaps the wrong G7 (There was a WW2 era G7, a 21" weapon) was referenced?
 * 98.213.170.3 (talk) 01:11, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Great work
Rightfully one of the best wikipedia's article. Greetings to all.


 * Thanks, I really appreciate that. Parsecboy (talk) 01:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Tiny change regarding Gunnery
I've made a tiny change to the end of the Jutland sections, changing the fragment "Seydlitz herself fired 376 main battery shells, but only scored approximately 10 hits" to "Seydlitz herself fired 376 main battery shells and scored approximately 10 hits" The first version implies that Seydlitz's gunnery was of a poor standard, whereas actually she was one of the better shooting ships during the battlecruiser action. Her overall performance of about 2.7% is not spectacular by any means, but the hit a raio of 3-5% was the norm using period fire control and some of the fighting was carried out in very unfavourable visability conditions. I think in this case the original version misrepresents the situation and we should allow the facts to speak for themelves. Getztashida (talk) 17:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)