With their size of over 5000 ts, the three fleet tenders of the Wilhelm Bauer class were the largest ships of their kind in the German Kriegsmarine. In 1936 a class of eight new large escorts ships was planned to support the growing U-Boat fleet. Four of those ships were started to build at the Kriegsmarine Shipyard in Kiel, but only three of them were completed.

The second, Waldemar Kophamel , was commissioned in October 1940. The ship was sunk by bombs on 18.12.1944, but raised by the Soviets in 1950. Added to Soviet fleet lists on 30.7.1951 it was towed to the Neptun shipyard in Rostock one month later and repaired until October 1955. Renamed to Kuban , it served into the Northern Fleet until 17.09.1973 and was used as floating barrack PKZ-12 after that. On 09.02.1978 it was removed from the fleet lists and transferred for scrapping.