page_title: Bayern-class battleship
section_title: Fleet sortie of 23–24 April 1918
hierarchical_section_title: Bayern-class battleship / Service history / Fleet sortie of 23–24 April 1918
caption_attribution_description: English: A recognition drawing of the German battleship Bayern prepared by the Royal Navy's Intelligence department that was distributed to the fleet in 1918.
context_page_description: The Bayern class was a class of four super-dreadnought battleships built by the German Kaiserliche Marine. The class comprised Bayern, Baden, Sachsen, and Württemberg. Construction started on the ships shortly before World War I; Baden was laid down in 1913, Bayern and Sachsen followed in 1914, and Württemberg, the final ship, was laid down in 1915. Only Baden and Bayern were completed, due to shipbuilding priorities changing as the war dragged on. It was determined that U-boats were more valuable to the war effort, and so work on new battleships was slowed and ultimately stopped altogether. As a result, Bayern and Baden were the last German battleships completed by the Kaiserliche Marine.
  Bayern and Baden were commissioned into the fleet in July 1916 and March 1917, respectively. This was too late for either ship to take part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916. Bayern was assigned to the naval force that drove the Imperial Russian Navy from the Gulf of Riga during Operation Albion in October 1917, though the ship was severely damaged by a mine and had to be withdrawn to Kiel for repairs.
context_section_description: In late 1917, the High Seas Fleet began to conduct anti-convoy raids with light craft in the North Sea between Britain and Norway. On 17 October, the German light cruisers Brummer and Bremse intercepted a convoy of twelve ships escorted by a pair of destroyers and destroyed it; only three transports managed to escape. On 12 December, four German destroyers intercepted and annihilated another convoy of five ships and two escorting destroyers. This prompted Admiral David Beatty, the Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, to detach several battleships and battlecruisers to protect the convoys in the North Sea. This presented to Admiral Scheer the opportunity for which he had been waiting the entire war: the chance to isolate and eliminate a portion of the Grand Fleet.
  At 05:00 on 23 April 1918, the entire High Seas Fleet, including Bayern and Baden, left harbor with the intention of intercepting one of the heavily escorted convoys. Wireless radio traffic was kept to a minimum to prevent the British from learning of the operation. At 05:10 on 24 April, the battlecruiser Moltke suffered severe mechanical problems and had to be towed back to Wilhelmshaven. By 14:10, the convoy had still not yet been located, and so Scheer turned the High Seas Fleet back towards German waters. In fact, there was no convoy sailing on 24 April; German naval intelligence had miscalculated the sailing date by one day.
caption: Recognition drawing of Baden underway
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