Unlike the British Navy, the German Hochseeflotte favored small torpedo boats instead of the larger destroyers that were build in Britain. With the outbreak of the war, the German Navy wanted to test if a larger "Torpedoboot-Zerstörer" - a torpedo boat destroyer would fit into the naval construction program, therefore 8 boats of the Torpedoboot-Zerstörer class were ordered in the end of 1914.

As there was no design for such a ship available, a modified design of destroyers that were build for the Russian Navy in 1912 was used for this class of ships. The same shipyards (Blohm&Voss and Vulcan) that had build the destroyers for the Russian Navy were used to build these ships. Multiple parts that were used in the Torpedoboot-Zerstörer - like the turbines - were originally build for a class of Russian destroyers which were laid down in Russia, but because of the war, this material was not delivered to them anymore.

The boats were first completed with the usual 8,8 cm guns, but in 1916 they were refitted with the larger 10,5 cm ones. A quite remarkable feature of the V100 was the float plane which could be carried on the stern of the boat.

Only one of them was lost during the war. Most of them were scuttled in Scapa Flow in 1919 with the rest of the Hochseeflotte.