"Kilkis" and "Lemnos" were built by the US Navy between 1904 and 1908, originally named and . They served with the US fleet until June 1914, when they were purchased by the Greek Navy as a stop-gap measure. They were needed to counter Ottoman naval expansion while the Greeks waited on their newly ordered dreadnoughts to be completed abroad. The two ships reached Greece in July 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I at the end of the month. As Greece remained neutral during the first three years of the war, the two ships saw little service. In October 1916, the French seized the Greek fleet and disarmed "Kilkis" and "Lemnos"; they were put back into service at the end of the war. Both ships saw service during the Greco–Turkish War in 1919–1922, with "Lemnos" also participating in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.