SMS Goeben was the second of two Moltke-class battlecruisers of the Imperial Ger

man Navy, launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War vetera
n General August Karl von Goeben. Compared to their British rivals in the Indefa
tigable class, Goeben and her sister ship were significantly larger and better a
rmored. After her commissioning, Goeben, with the light cruiser Breslau, patroll
ed the Mediterranean during the Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of World War I o
n 28 July 1914, Goeben and Breslau evaded British naval forces and reached Const
antinople. The two ships were transferred to the Ottoman Empire on 16 August 191
4, and Goeben became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy as Yavuz Sultan Selim. By
bombarding Russian facilities in the Black Sea, she brought Turkey into World Wa
r I on the German side. In later service, she carried the remains of Mustafa Kem
al Atatrk from Istanbul to Izmit in 1938. She was decommissioned in 1950 and scra
pped in 1973, after the West German government declined to buy her back. She was
the last surviving ship built by the Imperial German Navy, and the longest-serv
ing battlecruiser or dreadnought-type ship in any navy