The Großes Torpedoboot 1916 was a radical change in design philosophy for German torpedoboats. They were the most powerful torpedoboats build by the German Navy at their time. In other navies, these ships would be called "destroyers", but the German Navy kept the traditional torpedo boat classification.

Since the existing German torpedo boats were too lightly armed to fight British torpedo boats or torpedo boat destroyers, the main focus on this new class was a much better artillery which lead to a significant enlarged ships. With over 2400 ts, they were about twice as big as the largest torpedo boat class build so far.

Armed with four 15 cm guns and the new 60 cm torpedoes, they were a serious threat to British destroyers, but because of the progress of the war, only two of the 12 boats laid down were ever completed. Those two boats had to be delivered to France and Italy after the war and were used in active service until the mid or late 1930s and proved that these ships had an excellent design.