SMS Goeben was the second of two Moltke-class battlecruisers of the Imperial German Navy, launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War veteran General August Karl von Goeben. Compared to their British rivals in the Indefatigable class, Goeben and her sister ship were significantly larger and better armored. After her commissioning, Goeben, with the light cruiser Breslau, patrolled the Mediterranean during the Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, Goeben and Breslau evaded British naval forces and reached Constantinople. The two ships were transferred to the Ottoman Empire on 16 August 1914, 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 War I on the German side. In later service, she carried the remains of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from Istanbul to İzmit in 1938. She was decommissioned in 1950 and scrapped 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-serving battlecruiser or dreadnought-type ship in any navy. (Full article...)
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