The seven S-Boats of the Schnellboot 1933 class were the oldest active S-Boats in the Germany navy at the outbreak of the war. Like all other German fast attack boats, they were mostly build from wood, reinforced with a metal structure.

When those boats were build, the preferred engines for German S-Boats were still under consideration, therefore half of the boats of this class were completed with MAN engines while the others were equipped with Daimler-Benz ones. Tests and operation in the active S-Boats groups showed that the MAN engines were very unreliable, so the Daimler Benz Engine was the primary choice for the large scale S-Boats classed build in the following years.

With only two torpedo tubes without any torpedo reloads and only a 2 cm gun as main defence , the Schnellboot 1933 was only of limited offensive use when World War II broke out. Because of this, those boats were moved form active S-Boat duty to other roles in 1940, some of them were converted in to fast submarine hunters, others were used as Patrol boats in the VP (Vorposten) flotillas.