Jutland: The Baltic Sea
Sweden’s Fleet, Part One
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
February 2025

Jutland: Baltic Sea is an expansion book for Great War at Sea: Jutland, adding German, Swedish and Russian ships planned but not completed. It’s all brand new, making use of those Swedish and Russian ships in Jutland 2e plus 80 new pieces.

Sweden built a coast-defense navy around the turn of the century, but with the end of the Swedish-Norwegian Union in 1905 the Swedes scaled back their naval efforts. They entered the era of the Great War with a collection of aging coast-defense ships, and only with the beginning of the war did the Swedes consider supplementing or replacing them.

The new “armored ships,” as the Swedish Navy called their coast-defense ships, would have to carry guns large enough to penetrate the armor of modern enemy (Russian, or possibly German) battleships. That meant that the ships would have to be larger than the previous vessels. Cost considerations, and the desire for a shallow draft to allow them to operate in coastal waters where an enemy dreadnought could not follow, meant that the ships could not be too large, either.

This project would eventually result in the Sverige class coast defense battleships, which appear in Jutland. One was laid down in 1915, paid for with public subscriptions, and two more in 1917 and 1918, on the public kröne. The projected and deeply desired fourth unit of the class could never be fit into the naval budget and would never be built.

In Jutland: Baltic Sea, the Swedes get their battleships. Let’s have a look at them.

The 1911 Design, First Version

A radical proposal for a low-freeboard ship powered by diesel engines, with a minimal silhouette. This ship would be expected to use her shallow draft to ambush enemy battleships, and carry six 305mm (12-inch) guns to match the armament of a German or Russian dreadnought (in caliber, of not in number).

The ship would be expected to make 20 knots on her diesels’ 14,000-horsepower, and carry but minimal armor on her displacement of 6,250 tons. She rounded out her armament with six 105mm (4-inch) guns (in open mounts in the draft; we gave them shields in our version). Plus, two torpedo tubes along the waterline.

That seems like a lot to jam onto 6,250 tons (the displacement of a middling cruiser); even so, she would have been the largest warship ever built in Sweden up to that time. The diesels were expected to save a lot of weight, and the armor was painfully thin with a maximum of 200mm, or eight inches. That was more than adequate against an enemy cruiser, but the Swedish ship was not protected against the equivalent of her own armament. Sverige, with a similar armor scheme but far lighter armament (four 280mm guns), displaced almost 1,000 tons more than this ship (and made more speed, 22 knots, off 20,000 horsepower).

We’ve therefore made some alterations. German designed tried to equip dreadnoughts with diesel cruising engines for the sake of fuel efficiency, but the manufacturers could not deliver the big marine diesels required. The diesels would be of local manufacture, to an improved design by Jonas Hesselman (who had developed the first diesel able to switch direction, and therefore suitable for use aboard ships).

But Hesselman’s employer, AB Diesel, had never built machinery to this scale. The Swedes would go with more conventional turbine propulsion for the Sverige class as well. So, we’ve given this class turbines and coal fuel (that’s why our drawing has a smokestack, and the draft does not). She’s a much bigger ship, coming in at about 10,000 tons (and would probably still be cramped at that displacement).

The 1911 Design, Second Version

The Swedish admirals thought that the first draft of the coastal battleship, while packing a lot of heavy firepower, might be potentially vulnerable against smaller, cruiser-sized opponents. Another version of the ship deleted one 305mm turret in favor or four turrets for 152mm (6-inch) guns. The weight saved by removing the turret would allow a larger power plant, raising output to 18,000 horsepower and speed to 22 knots. The ship would be slightly lighter, at 6,100 tons’ displacement.

She would retain the same hull and armor scheme as the previous design, along with the torpedo tubes, but delete the 105mm battery. She would also carry Hesselman diesels, which allowed for a far smaller crew complement without the large number of trimmers and stokers required for a coal-powered ships, thereby also saving space allotted to crew quarters.

Like her near-sister, this ship’s design appears wildly over-optimistic. Her capabilities are still much to great for her displacement, even given the miraculous weight and space savings of the Hesselman diesels. We’ve altered her in similar fashion to the first alternative, drastically expanding her displacement and replacing the diesels with turbines. She’s still a very fine ship, no match for a tie dreadnought, but she was never expected to fight an enemy dreadnought one-on-one.

The Sverige Class

Gustav V of the Sverige class. The proposed ships would have had a similar look.

The ships actually built for Sweden, the Sverige class, appear in Jutland 2e: all three ships actually built, plus the projected fourth member of the class. Sverige carried a lighter main armament than the two alternative designs, with four 280mm guns rather than the 305mm weapons. The 280mm gun was considered the smallest possible main armament that could still penetrate the armor of an enemy dreadnought; the 305mm gun was much preferred but could not be made to fit on Sverige’s 7,100-ton hull.

With the eight new coast-defense ships included in Jutland: Baltic Sea, that gives Sweden a fleet core of a dozen modern, very capable coast-defense ships. While the older coast-defense ships had been modernized, between their light armament and painfully slow speed (all balanced with weak protection), they’re no more useful in a fight with modern enemy vessels than the tin-clad German coast-defense ships.

The Swedes aren’t going to sweep the Germans or the Russians from the Baltic, but they have the ships to defend their rocky coast and put up a serious fight with careful play.

You can order Jutland: Baltic Sea right here.
Please allow an extra six weeks for delivery.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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