Along with her sister ship, Goeben was similar to the previous German battlecruiser design, Von der Tann, but larger, with increased armor protection and two more main guns in an additional turret.

After the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, Goeben and Breslau bombarded French positions in North Africa and then evaded British naval forces in the Mediterranean and reached Constantinople.

She made a sortie into the Aegean in January 1918 that resulted in the Battle of Imbros, where Yavuz sank a pair of British monitors but was herself badly damaged by mines.

[3] The ship was armed with a main battery of ten 28 cm (11 in) SK L/50 guns mounted in five twin-gun turrets; of these, one was placed forward, two were en echelon amidships, and the other two were in a superfiring pair aft.

For defense against torpedo boats, she carried twelve 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 guns, also in individual mounts in the bow, the stern, and around the forward conning tower.

[5] The Imperial Navy ordered Goeben, the third German battlecruiser, on 8 April 1909 under the provisional name "H" from the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, under construction number 201.

After the assassination, Souchon assessed that war was imminent between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente, and ordered his ships to make for Pola for repairs.

Goeben bombarded Philippeville, French Algeria, for about 10 minutes early on 3 August while Breslau shelled nearby Bône, in accordance with the Kaiser's order.

[12] Despite the additional time, Goeben's fuel stocks were not sufficient to permit the voyage to Constantinople, so Souchon arranged to rendezvous with another collier in the Aegean Sea.

[21] From this engagement, the Russians drew the conclusion that the entire Black Sea Fleet would have to remain consolidated so it could not be defeated in detail (one ship at a time) by Yavuz.

[24] Yavuz, escorted by Midilli, intercepted the Russian Black Sea Fleet 17 nautical miles (31 km; 20 mi) off the Crimean coastline on 18 November as it returned from a bombardment of Trebizond.

While returning from another transport escort operation on 26 December, Yavuz struck a mine that exploded beneath the conning tower, on the starboard side, about one nautical mile outside the Bosphorus.

Two minutes later, Yavuz struck a second mine on the port side, just forward of the main battery wing barbette; this tore open a 64-square-meter (690 sq ft) hole.

[21] There was no dock in the Ottoman Empire large enough to service Yavuz, so temporary repairs were effected inside steel cofferdams, which were pumped out to create a dry work area around the damaged hull.

[29] On 1 April, with repairs incomplete, Yavuz left the Bosphorus in company with Midilli to cover the withdrawal of Hamidiye and the protected cruiser Mecidiye, which had been sent to bombard Odessa.

[30] After Yavuz and Midilli appeared off Sevastopol and sank two cargo steamers, the Russian fleet chased them all day, and detached several destroyers after dusk to attempt a torpedo attack.

Two days later Yavuz Sultan Selim headed south to the Dardanelles to bombard Allied troops at Gallipoli, accompanied by the pre-dreadnought battleship Turgut Reis.

[36] On 18 July, Midilli struck a mine; the ship took on some 600 long tons (610 t) of water and was no longer able to escort coal convoys from Zonguldak to the Bosphorus.

Hamidiye's 15 cm (5.9 in) guns broke down during combat, and the Turks summoned Yavuz, but she arrived too late: the Turkish colliers had already been beached to avoid capture by the Russian destroyers.

In its stead, only those ships fast enough to make the journey from Zonguldak to Constantinople in a single night were permitted; outside the Bosphorus they would be met by torpedo boats to defend them against the lurking submarines.

In an attempt to prevent further advances by the Russian army, Yavuz rushed 429 officers and men, a mountain artillery battery, machine gun and aviation units, 1,000 rifles, and 300 cases of munitions to Trebizond on 4 February.

[50] After an armistice between Russia and the Ottoman Empire was signed in December 1917 following the Bolshevik revolution, formalized in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, coal started to arrive again from eastern Turkey.

[51] On 20 January 1918, Yavuz and Midilli left the Dardanelles under the command of Vice Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz, who had replaced Souchon the previous September.

Rebeur-Paschwitz then decided to proceed to the port of Mudros; there the British pre-dreadnought battleship Agamemnon was raising steam to attack the Turkish ships.

[55] The submarine E14 was sent to destroy the damaged ship, but was too late;[56] the old ex-German pre-dreadnought Turgut Reis had towed Yavuz off and returned her to the safety of Constantinople.

[66] The French company Atelier et Chantiers de St. Nazaire-Penhöet was contracted in December 1926 to oversee the subsequent refit, which was carried out by the Gölcük Naval Shipyard.

The Turkish Government rejected this proposal, and claimed that the ship was intended to counter the growing strength of the Soviet Navy in the Black Sea.

[71] In response to Yavuz's return to service, the Soviet Union transferred the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna and light cruiser Profintern from the Baltic in late 1929 to ensure that the Black Sea Fleet retained parity with the Turkish Navy.

[63][64] She and the other ships of the navy were considered outdated by the British Naval Attache by 1937, partly due to their substandard anti-aircraft armament, but in 1938 the Turkish government began planning to expand the force.

[78] On 5 April 1946, the American battleship USS Missouri, light cruiser Providence, and destroyer Power arrived in Istanbul to return the remains of Turkish ambassador Münir Ertegün.