SMS Roon SMS " Roon " was the lead ship of her class of armored cruiser s of the Imperial German Navy . The ship was authorized under the second Naval Law in 1902 , and built at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel at the cost of 15 . 3 million marks . The ship was named after Albrecht von Roon , a Prussian general and politician . She displaced up to and was armed with a main battery of four guns . Her top speed was . The ship participated in several actions during the First World War , including the raid on Scarborough , Hartlepool and Whitby , were she acted as a scout for the High Seas Fleet . " Roon " also saw duty in the Baltic Sea , including a battle in July 1915 against Russian cruisers and shore bombardment missions . After 1916 , " Roon " was used as a training and barracks ship in Kiel until the end of the war . It was intended to convert the ship into a seaplane tender , but the plan was eventually abandoned . The ship was struck from the naval register in 1920 and scrapped thereafter . Construction . " Roon " was ordered under the provisional name " Ersatz Kaiser " and built at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel under construction number 28 . Her keel was laid in 1902 and she was launched on 27 June 1903 . Fitting - out work was lengthy , but was completed by 5 April 1906 , being commissioned into the Imperial German Navy the same day . She had cost the Imperial German Government 15 , 345 , 000 " Goldmarks " . " Roon " displaced as built and fully loaded , with a length of , a beam of and a draft of forward . She was powered by three vertical triple expansion engines , which developed a total of and yielded a maximum speed of on trials . She carried up to of coal , which enabled a maximum range of up to at a cruising speed of . She was armed with four guns arranged in two twin gun turret s , one on either end of the superstructure . Her secondary armament consisted of ten 15 cm ( 5 . 9 in ) guns , fourteen guns and four underwater torpedo tubes , one in the bow , one in the stern , and one on both beams . Service history . " Roon " was laid down in August 1902 at the Kiel dockyard , and launched in June 1903 , during which the inspector general Alfred von Waldersee was made patron of the ship . The ship was completed in April 1906 , at a cost of 15 , 345 , 000 Marks . In April 1907 , " Roon " and the light cruiser sailed to the United States to participate in a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the arrival of colonists in Chesapeake Bay on 26 April . In addition to the German delegation , the international fleet consisted of warships from Great Britain , Japan , Austria - Hungary , France , Italy , and several other nations . In 1908 , " Roon " was serving as the flagship for Rear Admiral Jacobsen , in the Second Group of the Scouting Division of the High Seas Fleet , along with her sister ship . After being replaced as the flagship of the Scouting Group on 30 September by the new battlecruiser , " Roon " was decommissioned in 1911 ; however , she was recommissioned three years later at the outbreak of World War I . At the start of hostilities , " Roon " was serving as the flagship of the III Scouting Group . On 3 November 1914 , she participated in the operation to bombard Yarmouth . Bombardment of Scarborough , Hartlepool and Whitby . A month later , on 15 – 16 December , she participated in the bombardment of Scarborough , Hartlepool and Whitby . Along with the armored cruiser , " Roon " was assigned to the van of the High Seas Fleet , which was providing distant cover to Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper ' s battlecruisers while they were conducting the bombardment . During the operation , " Roon " and her attached destroyer s encountered the British screening forces ; at 06 : 16 , " Roon " came in contact with and , but no gunfire was exchanged and the ships turned away . Following reports of British destroyers from " Roon " as well as from , Admiral von Ingenohl ordered the High Seas Fleet to turn to port and head for Germany . At this point , " Roon " and her destroyers became the rearguard for the High Seas Fleet . At 06 : 59 , " Roon " , by this time joined by the light cruisers and " Hamburg " , encountered Commander Jones ' destroyers . Jones shadowed " Roon " until 07 : 40 , at which point " Stuttgart " and " Hamburg " were detached to sink their pursuers . At 08 : 02 , " Roon " signaled the two light cruisers and ordered them to abandon the pursuit and retreat along with the rest of the High Seas Fleet . At 07 : 55 , Beatty received word of " Roon " s location , and in an attempt to intercept the German cruisers , detached to hunt the German ships down , while his other three battlecruisers followed from a distance . By 09 : 00 , Beatty had become aware that the German battlecruisers were shelling Hartlepool , so he decided to break off the pursuit of " Roon " and turn towards the German battlecruisers . Operations in the Baltic . Admiral Reinhard Scheer decided that because " Roon " and the other armored cruisers of the III Scouting Group were slow and lacked thick enough armor , they were unsuitable for service in the North Sea . Therefore , after April 1915 , she operated in the Baltic Sea , participating in several bombardment missions . On 11 May , the British submarine spotted " Roon " and several other ships en route to Libau , which had been recently captured by the German army . " E9 " fired five torpedoes at the German flotilla ; two passed closely astern of " Roon " while the other three missed their targets as well . On 2 July 1915 , " Roon " participated in a battle with Russian cruisers off the shores of Gotland , Sweden . The light cruiser " Augsburg " and three destroyers were escorting the minelaying cruiser when they were attacked by four Russian cruisers — the armored cruisers , , and light cruisers and . " Augsburg " escaped while the destroyers covered the retreat of the " Albatross " , which was severely damaged and forced to seek refuge in neutral Swedish waters . " Roon " and the light cruiser " Lübeck " sortied to relieve the beleaguered German destroyers . Upon arriving at the scene , " Roon " engaged " Bayan " , and " Lübeck " opened fire on " Oleg " . Shortly thereafter , the Russian cruiser , along with a destroyer , arrived to reinforce the Russian flotilla . In the following artillery duel , " Roon " was hit several times , and the German ships were forced to retreat . On 10 August , " Roon " and shelled Russian positions at Zerel on the Sworbe Peninsula . There were several Russian destroyers anchored off Zerel ; the German cruisers caught them by surprise and damaged one of them . Later service . The fog of war led to several instances where the Royal Navy misidentified several vessels as " Roon " in 1916 . On 16 February 1916 , " Roon " was mistakenly reported as having been captured by a British cruiser in the North Atlantic . The ship was also mistakenly reported to have taken part in the Battle of Jutland as the flagship of the screening force for the main body of the High Seas Fleet . This mistake appeared in historical works published shortly after the First World War , but later works have corrected it . In November 1916 , " Roon " was disarmed and converted into a training and accommodation ship . Stationed at Kiel , she served in this capacity until 1918 . The German Navy had previously experimented with seaplane carriers , including the conversion of the old light cruiser early in 1918 for service with the fleet . " Stuttgart " could carry only two aircraft , however , which was deemed insufficient for fleet support . As a result , plans were drawn up to convert " Roon " into a seaplane carrier , with a capacity for four aircraft . The ship ' s main battery would have been removed and replaced with only six 15 cm guns and six 8 . 8 cm anti - aircraft guns ; the large hangar for the seaplanes was to have been installed aft of the main superstructure The plan did not come to fruition , primarily because the German Navy relied on zeppelin s for aerial reconnaissance , not seaplanes . " Roon " was struck from the naval register on 25 November 1920 and scrapped the following year , in Kiel - Nordmole .