SMS Goeben was the second of two Moltke-class battle cruisers of the Imperial German Navy, launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War veteran General August Karl von Goeben. Along with her sister ship, Goeben was similar to the previous German battle cruiser design, Von der Tann, but larger, with increased armor protection and two more main guns in an additional turret. Goeben and Moltke were significantly larger and better armored than the comparable British Indefatigable class.
Goeben was 186.6 meters (612 ft 2 in) long, 29.4 m (96 ft) wide, and had a draft of 9.19 m (30 ft 2 in) fully loaded. The ship displaced 22,616 t (22,259 long tons) normally, and 25,300 t (24,900 long tons) fully loaded. Goeben was powered by four-shaft Parsons steam turbines in two sets and 24 coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft water-tube boilers, which provided a rated 52,000 shp (39,000 kW) and a top speed of 25.5 knots (47.2 km/h; 29.3 mph). At 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph), the ship had a range of 4,120 nautical miles (7,630 km; 4,740 mi).
The ship was armed with a main battery of ten 28 cm SK L/50 guns in five twin gun turrets. Her secondary armament consisted of twelve 15 cm SK L/45 guns in casemates in the central portion of the ship and twelve 8.8 cm SK L/45 guns in the bow, in the stern, and around the forward conning tower. She was also equipped with four 50 cm (20 in) submerged torpedo tubes.
Several months after her commissioning in 1912, Goeben, with the light cruiser Breslau, formed the German Mediterranean Division and patrolled there during the Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of World War I on 28 July1914, Goeben and Breslau evaded British naval forces in the Mediterranean and reached Constantinople. The two ships were transferred to the Ottoman Empire on 16 August 1914, and Goeben became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy as Yavuz Sultan Selim, usually shortened to Yavuz. By bombarding Russian facilities in the Black Sea, she brought Turkey into World War I on the German side. In 1936 she was officially renamed TCG Yavuz ("Ship of the
Turkish Republic Yavuz"); she carried the remains of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from Istanbul to İzmit in 1938. Yavuz remained the flagship of the Turkish Navy until she was decommissioned in 1950.
She was scrapped in 1973, after the West German government declined an invitation to buy her back from Turkey. She was the last surviving ship built by the Imperial German Navy, and the longest-serving dreadnought-type ship in any navy. [1]