| SMS Goeben was the second Moltke-class battlecruiser of the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy), launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War veteran General August von Goeben. Goeben, along with her sister ship Moltke, was an enlarged version of the previous German battlecruiser design, Von der Tann. The ship was very similar to Von der Tann, but had increased armor protection and two more main guns in an additional turret. Compared to her British rivals—the Indefatigable class—Goeben and her sister Moltke were significantly larger and better armored. Following her commissioning in 1912, Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau formed the German Mediterranean Division (German: Mittelmeer-Division) later that year to secure a German presence in the area during the Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of World War I on July 28, 1914, Goeben and Breslau evaded British naval forces in the Mediterranean and reached Constantinople. The two ships were transferred to the Ottoman Empire on August 16, 1914, and renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli, respectively. Yavuz Sultan Selim, frequently referred to as Yavuz for short, became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy. In 1936 she was officially renamed TCG 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. The last surviving ship of the Imperial German Navy, Goeben was scrapped in 1973, after the ... |
