The S138 class was a group of sixty-five torpedo boats built for the German Kaiserliche Marine and the Ottoman Navy in the early 1900s. Almost all of the boats served with the German fleet, with only four being sold to the Ottoman Empire in 1910. The German and Ottoman boats saw action in World War I, and several were lost. One Ottoman boat successfully torpedoed and sank a British battleship in 1915. In 1917 and 1918, the German members of the class were all renamed to replace the builder prefix with a standardized "T" prefix. Following Germany's defeat, many of the members of the S138 class were scrapped, either after having been seized as war prizes by the victorious Allied powers or by Germany to comply with the naval disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. Some boats continued in German service through World War II, after which the surviving vessels were all seized as war prizes.

SMS V186 was a S-138-class large torpedo boat of the Imperial German Navy. She was built by the AG Vulcan shipyard at Stettin between 1910 and 1911 and launched on 8 February 1911.