V187 was still in service at the start of the First World War, but was sunk by British cruisers and destroyers at the Battle of Heligoland Bight on 28 August 1914.

The Imperial German Navy ordered 12 large torpedo boats (Große Torpedoboote) as part of the fiscal year 1910 shipbuilding programme, with one half-flotilla of six ships (V186–V191) ordered from AG Vulcan and the other six ships from Germaniawerft.

[2] V187 was laid down at AG Vulcan's Stettin shipyard as Yard number 305 and was launched on 11 January 1911 and completed on 4 May 1911.

[9][10] On 28 August 1914, the British Harwich Force, supported by light cruisers and battlecruisers of the Grand Fleet, carried out a raid towards Heligoland with the intention of destroying patrolling German torpedo boats.

[11] The German defensive patrols around Heligoland consisted of one flotilla (I Torpedo Flotilla) of 12 modern torpedo boats forming an outer patrol line about 25 nautical miles (29 mi; 46 km) North and West of Heligoland, with an inner line of older torpedo boats of the 3rd Minesweeping Division at about 12 nautical miles (14 mi; 22 km).

The boats of the British destroyers started to pick up V187's crew, but these rescue operations were interrupted by the arrival of the German cruiser Stettin.

She took off the British sailors and three of the Germans, but had no room for the remaining members of V187's crew, and so gave them food and water and a course for Heligoland.