T.C.G. Yavus

ax- SMS Goeben, ex- Yavus Sultan Salim

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T.C.G. Yavus (4 pages)

The T.C.G. Yavus was the only battlecruiser ever owned or operated by Turkey.

After escaping the British Mediterranean Fleet (see Goeben History), the SMS Goeben made for the Dardanelles. Arrived in Turkish waters on August 10, 1914, Admiral Souchan sent a collier ahead to make diplomatic arrangements.
Goeben and her consort, the light cruiser Breslau, anchored off Cape Helles on the afternoon of August 11. Under international law, the ships could stay three days in the waters of neutral Turkey, and then they had to be either interned for the duration of the war, or they had to sortie and face the British Fleet. When the three days had expired, Turkey shocked the British by announcing that they had purchased the vessels, as replacement for the two battleships building in British yards, which the Admiralty had taken over for British service.
On August 16, 1914, the Goeben was officially renamed Yavus Sultan Selim, and the Breslau was renamed Midilli, both entering Turkish service but retaining their German officers and crew. Without trained ratings, there was no way for the Turks to operate the vessels themselves.
On September 21 Yavus Sultan Selim sortied into the Black Sea. She made a second cruise on October 28, accompanied by two Turkish destroyers. The next morning the vessel opened fire on the Russian base at Sevastopol, receiving three hits from shore batteries in return. After breaking off the action, the battlecruiser made contact with a Russian minelayer, which scuttled itself, a Russian destroyer, which was damaged, and a Russian steamer, which was captured. The Russians, who were not at war with the Turks at the time, were outraged. They declared war on the Ottoman Empire November 2, 1914, two days after the Yavus Sultan Selim returned to her home port.
The battlecruiser again sortied on November 14, and on the 18th engaged a squadron of five Russian pre-dreadnought battleships. The Russian Evstafiy was struck 4 times, and Yavus was struck once, each suffering some casualties.
On December 26, 1914, Yavus Sultan Selim was escorting three transports to the eastern port of Trebizond and struck two Russian mines. Badly damaged, flooded and with no local dock large enough to take her, the battlecruiser was repaired with a concrete-filled cofferdam, but was not operational until May 1915.
April 1, 1915, the battlecruiser and sailed for Sevastopol, but the operation was called off when an escorting vessel struck a mine. On April 3, while returning to port, Yavus Sultan Selim sank two Russian merchantmen and damaged a cruiser.
In late April 1915, at the start of the Gallipoli landings, Russian pre-dreadnoughts bombarded the Turkish coast in the Bosphorus area. On May 10, Yavus Sultan Selim sortied to engage three Russian battleships, receiving minor damage from two 12" shells while scoring no hits of her own. When two more Russian pre-dreads arrived, the battlecruiser broke off action and returned to port.
On July 3-6, 1915, the battlecruiser sailed to bombard the port of Tuapse, sinking several Russian ships.
On January 8, 1916, she spared with the Russian pre-dreadnought Imperatritsa Ekaterna II, but no hits were scored by either side. On July 4, 1916, the battlecruiser was used to bombard Tuapse.
On January 19, 1918, Yavus Sultan Selim and Midilli sortied to attack Allied forces off the Dardanelles. Yavus struck a British mine the next day, but continued on her mission, destroying the British monitors 'Lord Raglan' and 'M.28' in Kusu Bay, Imbros Island. But as the two Turkish vessels rounded the island, the light cruiser struck a mine. Yavus Sultan Selim took her in tow, but struck a second mine herself. The Midilli detonated four more mines in rapid succession, sinking rapidly at 0900 with most of her crew. The battlecruiser broke off the action, but struck a third mine while returning home. With heavy flooding and a list, the ship ran hard aground off Nagara Point, just before noon, while attempting to pass the Dardanelles.
At this point the British gathered their forces in an attempt to destroy the battlecruiser once and for all. A reported 270 sortied were flown by British aircraft to bomb the vessel, and the British sub E-14 was dispatched from Corfu to torpedo the stranded giant.
However, the bombs were poorly aimed and only two struck home, and they were too small to cause any real damage. By the time the E-14 arrived of Nagara Point on the 27th Yavus Sultan Selim was gone. The Turkish pre-dreadnought Torgud Reiss had towed her away the day before, and the British sub was sunk for her efforts. Temporary repairs to the battlecruiser took 4 months.
On May 2, 1918, the battlecruiser entered drydock for the first time in over four years at the German-controlled port of Sevastopol. On June 28, 1918, she arrived at Novorossiisk to take control of the surrendered Russian Fleet, but found the vessels scuttled. She returned to Istanbul, and was laid up at Istinye until the end of the war.
On November 2, 1918, the vessel was finally turned over to an all-Turkish crew. But the Germans took all fire-control equipment, manuals, plans, etc. The vessel had not been properly repaired, and was inactive. The Treaty of Sevres ceded the vessel to Great Britain as war reparations, but the British returned the vessel to the new Turkish Government of Kemal Ataturk as part of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
The battlecruiser sat in reserve until the mid 1920s, when funds were authorized to refit her. However, political infighting over control of the Navy caused a two-year delay in signing the contract for the work. A floating drydock was ordered from Flenderwerft at Lubeck, and the Turkish T.C. Deniz Kuvetlari Golcuk Tersane at Golcuk performed the work under the supervision of the French company Penhoet of Loire. The contact was finally signed in December 1926, but work was delayed when the drydock was found to be too small. The refit continued slowly due to technical problems and rumors of impropriety. In 1927, the Minister of Marine was forced to resign, and the entire Ministry abolished, due to massive fraud on the Yavus Sultan Selim project. The reconstruction project was very nearly cancelled, but the ship was saved, ironically, by Turkey's main enemy, Greece. In September 1928, the Greek Navy held large-scale maneuvers off the Dardanelles, enraging President Ataturk and the Turkish parliament. In light of a possible conflict between the two nations, the rebuild was given maximum effort. The battlecruiser would form the heart of the reborn Turkish Navy, along with four modern destroyers and three new submarines.
The vessel returned to front-line service as the Yavuz Selim in 1930, almost five years later than originally expected, and her name was shortened to Yavus in 1936. Another refit followed in 1938, but the ship saw no further action as Turkey remained neutral in WWII. Also in 1938, the ship was used to transport the body of M. Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, to his funeral. The ship was painted a dazzling camouflage pattern during the World War Two years, and participated in neutrality patrols and fleet exercises. But the age of the vessel was starting to show, and there was little use for a coal-fired battlecruiser in the post-war world. The ship was used as a guardship at Golcuk starting in 1948, assigned NATO pendant number 370 when Turkey joined that organization in 1952, and was decommissioned to reserve in 1954. A 1963 offer to repatriate the vessel to Germany came to nothing, and she was put up for sale in 1966. M.K.E. Seaman bought her in 1971, and she was towed from her berth June 7, 1973. The last surviving battlecruiser was broken up from July 1973 to February 1976, after 61 years of service.

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