In the closing stages of the war, she was the last monitor to withdraw towards Budapest, but was captured by the Serbs when she grounded on a sandbank downstream from Belgrade.

After the war, she was transferred to the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and renamed Sava.

Due to high river levels and low bridges, navigation was difficult, and Sava was scuttled on 11 April.

In 2005, the government of Serbia granted her limited heritage protection after citizens demanded that she be preserved as a floating museum, but little else was done to restore her at the time.

A Temes-class river monitor, the ship was built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy by H. Schönichen, and designed by Austrian naval architect Josef Thiel.

[1][3] These were positioned forward on either side of the conning tower, which greatly reduced their firing arcs from the gun arrangement on previous Austro-Hungarian river monitors.

Bodrog continued in action against Serbia and her allies at Belgrade until December, when her base was withdrawn to Petrovaradin, near Novi Sad, for the winter.

[13] The Germans and Austro-Hungarians wanted to transport munitions down the Danube to the Ottoman Empire, so on 24 December 1914, Bodrog and the minesweeper Almos escorted the steamer Trinitas loaded with munitions, the patrol boat b and two tugs from Zemun pas Belgrade towards the Iron Gates gorge on the Serbian–Romanian border.

[1][14] The convoy ran the gauntlet of the Belgrade defences unharmed, but when it reached Smederevo it received information that the Russians had established a minefield and log barrier just south of the Iron Gates.

Bodrog returned to base, and the monitor SMS Inn was sent to guard the munitions and escort the convoy back to Petrovaradin.

[14] In January 1915, British artillery arrived in Belgrade, further bolstering its defences,[15] and Bodrog spent the first months of the year at Zemun.

[14] On 22 April 1915, a British picket boat that had been brought overland by rail from Salonika was used to attack the Danube Flotilla anchorage at Zemun, firing two torpedoes without success.

[16] In September 1915, the Central Powers were joined by Bulgaria, and the Serbian Army soon faced an overwhelming Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian ground invasion.

[18] The Central Powers were aware that the Romanians were negotiating to enter the war on the side of the Entente, so the flotilla established a sheltered base in the Belene Canal to protect the 480-kilometre (300 mi) Danube border between Romania and Bulgaria.

[1] Bodrog herself received five hits from the Romanian artillery during the engagement and had to retreat behind the Taban Island to repair her damaged turret.

[2] In 1925–26, Sava was refitted, but by the following year only two of the four river monitors of the KSCS Navy were being retained in full commission at any time.

[29] In 1932, the British naval attaché reported that Yugoslav ships were engaging in little gunnery training, and few exercises or manoeuvres, due to reduced budgets.

[3] On that day, Sava and her fellow monitor Vardar fought off several attacks by individual Luftwaffe aircraft on their base.

The three captains conferred, and decided to scuttle their vessels due to the high water levels in the rivers and low bridges, which meant there was insufficient clearance for the monitors to navigate freely.

Armed only with personal weapons and some machine guns stripped from the scuttled vessels, the crews started towards the Bay of Kotor in the southern Adriatic in two groups.

[40] Sava was raised and repaired by the navy of the Axis puppet state the Independent State of Croatia,[38] at the railway rolling stock factory at Slavonski Brod,[3] and served alongside her fellow monitor Morava, which was also raised, repaired, and was renamed Bosna.

Along with six captured motorboats and ten auxiliary vessels, they made up the riverine police force of the Croatian state.

In 2005, the government of Serbia granted her limited heritage protection after citizens demanded that she be preserved as a floating museum, though little else had been done to restore her as of 2014, by which time she was serving as a gravel barge.

[24] In December 2015, Sava was acquired by the Serbian Ministry of Defence and Belgrade's Military Museum, which planned on restoring her.

[46] The other is SMS Leitha, a much older monitor, which has been a museum ship anchored alongside the Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest since 2014.