List of battleships of Austria-Hungary
To defend its Adriatic coast in wartime, Austria-Hungary had previously built a series of smaller ironclad warships, including coastal defense ships, and armored cruisers.
[Note 1] The appointment of Admiral Hermann von Spaun to the post of State Secretary of the Navy in 1897 accelerated naval construction and under the command of Franz Joseph I of Austria, the k.u.k.
[1] Montecuccoli immediately pursued the efforts championed by his predecessor and pushed to greatly expand and modernize the Austro-Hungarian Navy.
[2] Seven months after Montecuccoli's appointment, the last of three ships of the Erzherzog Karl class, all of which were pre-dreadnoughts, was launched at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino in Trieste.
Following the defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I, the empire was dismantled and all of the battleships were handed over to France, Great Britain, the United States, and Italy.
The construction of the Habsburg-class battleships marked the beginning of the naval expansion program by the Austro-Hungarian Navy.
[7][9] At the outbreak of World War I in late July 1914, Habsburg was serving as the flagship of the III Battleship Division of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, under the command of Captain Miklós Horthy, alongside her two sisters.
While both Babenberg and Árpád participated in the bombardment of the Italian port city of Ancona in 1915, the class was largely inactive for the remainder of the war, serving as coastal defense ships.
[13] At the beginning of World War I, the members of the Erzherzog Karl class formed the III Division of the Austro-Hungarian battle-fleet.
[13] The ships also took part in suppressing a major mutiny among the crew members of several armored cruisers stationed in Cattaro between 1 and 3 February 1918.
However, in October 1914, the three ships bombarded French positions on Mount Lovćen during the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Montenegro.
[16] After Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1915, the Radetzky-class battleships participated in the bombardment of the Italian city of Ancona.
During the war, the ships had limited service due to the Otranto Barrage, which prevented the battleships from leaving the Adriatic Sea.
During the journey to the strait of Otranto, the battleship Szent István was torpedoed and sunk on 10 June 1918, resulting in the operation being called off.
[22][23] Viribus Unitis was also sunk prior to the end of the war on 1 November 1918 when a team of Italian frogmen sank the battleship with mines while she was moored at port in Pula.
[26] They were essentially an enlarged version of the Tegetthoff class and were meant to replace the aging Monarch-class coastal defense ships.
While the battleships were never laid down, four of the main guns were constructed and later transferred to the Austro-Hungarian Army for use on the Italian Front.
