Gotha's initial submission to meet this requirement, the WD.7, was built to train torpedo delivery tactics and was evaluated as not suitable for combat duties.

[4] In service the German pilots found the WD.11's structure too weak for the heavy weights that it needed to carry, specially while taking off or landing.

The 45-centimeter (17.7 in) Whitehead G/125 torpedo was carried semi-recessed in a trough mounted on the aircraft's fuselage between the floats at a nose-down angle of 5 degrees.

To give pilots a method by which all of these conditions could be judged, some of the WD.11s were fitted with an Anschütz gyroscopic inclinometer to assess their flight attitude.

[4] After passing the lightvessel at Outer Gabbard on the morning of 15 June, the formation of three WD.11s and two Friedrichshafen FF.33 floatplanes[9] spotted the British 3,718-gross register ton (GRT) freighter SS Kankakee.

[10] On the afternoon of 9 July a pair of WD.11s surprised two cargo ships approaching the Thames estuary, but both torpedoes started jumping through the waves and missed.

Five aircraft attempted to repeat the mission near Kentish Knock Shoal on 8 August, but mechanical failures aboard two of the bombers caused the flight to be aborted before they could lay their mines.

The pilot made an emergency landing on the beach at Nieuwpoort, Belgium, and the crew was able to set fire to the bomber and evade the local Belgian garrison before reaching nearby German-held territory.

Two days later, a flight of three WD.11s detected a small convoy and torpedoed[12] a 440-GRT freighter, SS Storm, which sank with the loss of three crewmen.

The following day a WD.11 was forced to make an emergency landing in fog off the Dutch coast and a two-aircraft rescue mission was launched to find the torpedo bomber.

After the death of its commander when his Friedrichshafen FF.39 caught fire and crashed on 1 October, the 2nd Squadron was taken off operations for a lack of crews and serviceable aircraft, although it was not transferred to Flensburg until 16 November.

[14] The 1st Front Squadron became operational on 1 October with the mission of attacking ships of the Imperial Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet and received 10 G/125 torpedoes.

The unit was ordered into action on 4 October when two small minelayers were spotted off the coast of the Sõrve Peninsula on Ösel Island (modern Saaremaa).

When Operation Albion began on 12 October, German troops landed on Ösel, capturing the Russian seaplane base at Arensburg (modern Kuressaare) the following day.

[16] The squadron continued to attack Russian targets for the next several days without much success and one aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing when one of its engines was disabled by a bullet.

The weather was generally not suitable for the WD.11s during this time and they only flew a pair of unsuccessful anti-shipping missions in December before the squadron commander decided to replace them with more capable WD.14s.