They followed a series of small coastal defense ships, and though in retrospect they anticipated the buildup that created the High Seas Fleet, they were ordered as part of a construction program that reflected the strategic and tactical confusion that affected many navies in the 1880s.

During this period, they conducted routine training exercises and visited foreign countries, frequently in company with Kaiser Wilhelm II aboard his yacht.

The now-Ottoman ships saw extensive service during the First Balkan War, providing fire support to Ottoman ground forces fighting in Thrace, as well as engaging the Greek fleet at the Battles of Elli and Lemnos in December 1912 and January 1913, respectively.

The plan governed the size and composition of the German fleet, calling for fourteen ocean-going ironclad warships, a total that was reached with the launching of the casemate ship Oldenburg in 1884.

The nominal completion of the 1873 plan further restrained Caprivi, as in the view of many members of the Reichstag, naval budgets could be reduced, since no new ships would be needed until the oldest ironclads began to reach thirty years of age in the mid-1890s.

At the January council meeting, Caprivi emphasized the need for careful consideration of new designs, noting that the navy could not afford "the luxury of failed experiments", owing to parliamentary refusal to authorize funding for new ships.

He also pointed out that at the time, shell designers and armor manufacturers were competing to defeat each other, which necessitated spiraling costs for navies that attempted to keep pace with the latest technological developments.

As a result of these considerations, Caprivi recommended building a large number of smaller coastal defense ships and torpedo boats to defend Germany's coastline in the event of war.

Indeed, the 1870s and 1880s marked a period of tactical and strategic confusion in naval thinking in the world's major navies for the same reasons that Caprivi had highlighted in his memorandum.

[2] Despite the memorandum submitted to the Reichstag that eschewed capital ship construction, Caprivi secretly discussed new ironclads at length with senior naval officers.

In his first memorandum on the project, he noted that the Oldenburg design would have to be enlarged to provide room for more powerful propulsion machinery and increased coal storage, and armor would have to be strengthened, among other changes.

[11][12] As Dietrich continued to work on the plans, he examined other foreign contemporaries, including the French Amiral Baudin-class ironclad battleships that carried three main battery guns in individual barbette mounts, all on the centerline.

The Brandenburg class was significantly smaller and less powerful than the contemporary British Royal Sovereign class, but roughly equal with the series of French battleships begun with Charles Martel and with the Russian Navarin (the French ships being faster but much less heavily armed and the Russian ship being slower but armed with heavier main guns).

[16] Though they were the first modern battleships built in Germany, presaging the Tirpitz-era High Seas Fleet, the authorization for the ships came as part of a construction program that reflected the strategic and tactical confusion of the 1880s caused by theories like the Jeune École.

[20] The ships' propulsion system consisted of two 3-cylinder triple-expansion engines with steam provided by twelve coal-fired, transverse Scotch marine boilers.

[18][22] The Brandenburg class's secondary armament initially consisted of six 10.5 cm (4.1 in) SK L/35 quick-firing guns in individual casemates arranged in an armored battery below the forward superstructure.

The plans had initially called for the center 28 cm turret to be replaced with an armored battery of medium-caliber guns, but this proved to be prohibitively expensive.

The ships were involved in a number of accidents: Brandenburg collided with the aviso Jagd in August 1896 and in November 1899, Wörth struck a submerged rock and was badly damaged.

As the largest warships of the German fleet, they frequently escorted Wilhelm II's yacht Hohenzollern on state visits or to sailing regattas, most notably Cowes Week in Britain.

[45][46][47] During the Boxer Uprising in 1900, Chinese nationalists laid siege to the foreign embassies in Beijing and murdered Baron Clemens von Ketteler, the German minister.

By the time the German fleet had arrived in late August 1900, the siege of Beijing had already been lifted by forces from other members of the Eight-Nation Alliance that had formed to deal with the Boxers.

By this time, the Kaiser Friedrich III and Wittelsbach classes of battleships had begun to enter service, so the four Brandenburgs were decommissioned to be modernized.

V Squadron was moved to the Baltic in September to support an amphibious assault against Russian forces in Windau, but a shortage of transports led to the cancellation of the operation.

After entering service with the Ottoman fleet, the ships suffered from chronic machinery problems, as their crews were not trained to properly maintain their propulsion systems, which reduced their speed to 8 to 10 knots (15 to 19 km/h; 9 to 12 mph).

At the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War in September 1911, the Ottoman fleet withdrew into the safety of the Dardanelles to avoid confrontation with the much stronger Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy).

Having been neglected by their crews during the conflict, they were in even worse condition by the end of the war in October 1912, with their telephone systems out of service and many of their watertight doors unable to close.

In December, the fleet was reorganized to challenge the Greek Royal Hellenic Navy in the Aegean Sea; Barbaros Hayreddin was the flagship of the armored division.

The British submarine HMS E11 torpedoed and sank Barbaros Hayreddin on 8 August as she moved into position to bombard Allied forces fighting at Gallipoli.

The sinking caused the Ottomans to withdraw Turgut Reis, and she remained out of service until January 1918 when she was reactivated to tow the battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim, which had run aground after the Battle of Imbros.

[62][63] Turgut Reis was again decommissioned in October and remained out of service until she underwent a refit in 1924–1925, thereafter serving as a training ship, by this time with only one of her main battery turrets aboard the vessel.