20th August State Foundation Day Bernd 08/20/2025 (Wed) 11:18 No.54569 del
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(1.71 MB 3924x2527 szent-istván-makett.jpg)
Since it's the day of Saint Stephen, I'll write about Saint Stephen.
That is the Tegetthoff-class battleship.

Austria-Hungary - despite her illustrious colonies such as the Franz Joseph Land or a 1 sqKm os suburbs in China - wasn't really a seafaring oriented state, but we did built our own battleships. Always lagging in design, a bit too small, bit undergunned compared to the most modern ones, but we did.
In the 20th century, prior to WWI they designed three battleship classes, the Erzherzog, the Radetzky and the Tegetthoff. The latter followed a real dreadnought design, the others were the "pre-" types which we call "casemate ships". These represented quite strong firepower, even the Radetzky's got relatively large caliber guns, but the Tegetthoffs were the first dreadnoughts with 3 barrels in their turrets. Furthermore they invested in a whole new fleet, with cruisers, destroyers, submarines, various torpedo boats and whatnot. The budget of the navy growth to 264% and effectively doubled the crew, from ~7700 sailors to ~16000. Comparison of the budget growth: Italy 151%, Germany 99%, France 66%, Great Britain 48%, Russia 36%. But you can grow the most where you had nothing much really. In general this shipbuilding program was a type of investment into local industry on behalf if the Court, both in and outside of our Kingdom. And of course their aim was to catch up with the main contestant: Italy. Tho have to note: just before the war, the two countries aimed to defeat the French navy together.
Hungary herself, or at least Hungarian shipbuilding and other factories, also produced some of these, and we participated in the production of the largest units too. In fact the last of these, the Saint Stephen - launched on 1941 January 15 or 17 or 18 (my sources conflict) - was built almost exclusively from Hungarian materials and by Hungarian companies.

picrel
#1 The Tegetthoffs
#2 The Saint Stephen