National Archives image 80-G-366179.
In early April 1946 the battleship USS Missouri (BB 63), at the center of this photo, arrived at Istanbul in Turkey to return the body of the Turkish ambassador Mehmet Munir Ertegun from the U.S. and to show U.S. support and willingness to defend Turkey. The famous Dolmabahce Mosque is in the foreground. Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, was aboard and the trip also reinforced to the Soviets that the U.S was keenly interested in Middle East politics.
The destroyer USS Power (DD 839) is at left, and the 25,000-ton Turkish battlecruiser Yavuz (formerly the German Moltke-class Goeben) is at right. Missouri, of course, was the brand new Iowa-class battleship that hosted the Japanese surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay that ended World War II.
Yavuz had her own interesting history at the beginning of the First World War.
Ordered in 1909, the SMS Goeben sailed to fame in 1914 as a “ship of destiny” when– commanded by Konteradmiral Wilhelm Souchon– she led the British and French around the Med until she was interred at Constantinople.
Still under German command and manned by her original crew (now wearing fezzes), she was officially renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim and served as the flag of the Ottoman Navy– but sailed without Turkish orders in October 1914 to plaster the Russian Black Sea fleet at harbor, bringing the Turks into the war. Wrecked by mines in 1918, the Germans left her a largely worn out vessel when they pulled out at the Armistice. Repaired in the 1920s, she was returned to service with an all-Turk crew in the new republic’s Navy. In 1936 she was renamed simply Yavuz.
Decommissioned in 1950, she was scrapped in 1973, after the West German government declined an invitation to buy her back from Turkey. As such, she was the last surviving ship built by the Imperial German Navy and the longest-serving dreadnought-type ship in any navy
