Gangut-class battleship

Russian dreadnought class

For other uses, see Gangut (disambiguation).

Gangut during World War I
Class overview
Builders	Admiralty Shipyard Baltic Works
Operators	Imperial Russian Navy  Soviet Navy
Preceded by	Andrei Pervozvanny class
Succeeded by	Imperatritsa Mariya class
Built	1909–1914
In commission	1914–1956
Planned	4
Completed	4
Scrapped	4
General characteristics
Type	Dreadnought battleship
Displacement	24,800 t (24,400 long tons)
Length	181.2 m (594 ft 6 in)
Beam	26.9 m (88 ft 3 in)
Draft	8.99 m (29 ft 6 in)
Installed power	25 Yarrow boilers 52,000  kW ) (on trials)
Propulsion	4 shafts, 4 steam turbines
Speed	24.1 knots (44.6 km/h; 27.7 mph) (on trials)
Range	3,200 nmi (5,900 km; 3,700 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement	1,149
Armament	4 × triple 12 in (305 mm) guns 16 × single 4.7 in (120 mm) guns 1 × single AA gun 4 × 17.7 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor	Waterline belt: 125–225 mm (4.9–8.9 in) Deck: 12–50 mm (0.5–2.0 in) Turrets: 76–203 mm (3.0–8.0 in) Barbettes: 75–150 mm (3.0–5.9 in) Conning tower: 100–254 mm (3.9–10.0 in)

The Gangut class, also known as the Sevastopol class, were the first

Bolsheviks

the following year.

All of the dreadnoughts except for Petropavlovsk were

White Russians although she also helped to suppress a mutiny by the garrison of Fort Krasnaya Gorka in 1919. Her crew, and that of Sevastopol, joined the Kronstadt rebellion of March 1921. After the revolt was violently quashed, the two ships were given 'revolutionary' names, with Petropavlovsk being renamed Marat and Sevastopol renamed to Parizhskaya Kommuna. The other two serviceable vessels were recommissioned and renamed in 1925–1926. Gangut was renamed Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya and Poltava was renamed Frunze. Parizhskaya Kommuna was modified in 1928 to improve her sea-keeping abilities so that she could be transferred to the Black Sea Fleet. This proved to be the first of a series of modernizations where each ship of the class was progressively reconstructed and improved, with the exception of Frunze. A number of proposals were made in the 1930s to rebuild Frunze, but these came to naught and she was hulked preparatory to scrapping

.

The two ships of the Baltic Fleet did not play a prominent role in the

bow blown off and Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya was badly damaged by multiple bomb hits in September. The former was sunk, but later raised and became a floating battery for the duration of the Siege of Leningrad while the latter spent over a year under repair. Both ships bombarded German troops so long as they remained within reach, but Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya did not venture away from Kronstadt for the duration of the war. Parizhskaya Kommuna remained in Sevastopol until forced to evacuate by advancing German troops. She made one trip to besieged Sevastopol in December 1941 and made a number of bombardments in support of the Kerch Offensive

during January–March 1942. She was withdrawn from combat in April as German aerial supremacy had made it too dangerous to risk such a large target.

Parizhskaya Kommuna and Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya remained on the active list after the end of the war although little is known of their activities. Both were reclassified as 'school battleships' (uchebnyi lineinyi korabl) in 1954 and stricken in 1956 after which they were slowly scrapped. There were several plans to reconstruct Petropavlovsk using the bow of Frunze, but they were not accepted and were formally cancelled on 29 June 1948. She was renamed Volkhov in 1950 and served as a stationary training ship until stricken in 1953 and subsequently broken up. Frunze was finally scrapped beginning in 1949.

Design and development

Brassey's Naval Annual

1912

After the end of the Russo-Japanese War the Imperial Russian Navy was in a state of confusion. Its leadership, tactics and ship designs had all been cast into disrepute by its repeated defeats by the Japanese at the Battle of Tsushima, Battle off Ulsan and the Battle of the Yellow Sea. The Navy took quite some time to absorb the design lessons from the war while the government reformed the Naval Ministry and forced many of its more conservative officers to retire. It conducted a design contest for a dreadnought in 1906, but the Duma refused to authorize it, preferring to spend the money on rebuilding the Army.^[1]

The requirements for a new class of dreadnoughts were in a state of flux during 1907, but

The Russians did not believe that superfiring turrets offered any advantage as they discounted the value of axial fire, believed that broadside fire was much more important and also believed that super firing turrets could not fire while over the lower turret because of muzzle blast interfering with the open sighting hoods in the lower turret's roof. They therefore designed the ships with a 'linear' arrangement (lineinoe raspolozhenie) of turrets distributed over the length of the ship. This arrangement had several advantages because it reduced the stress on the ends of the ship since the turrets were not concentrated at the end of the ship, increased stability because the lack of elevated turrets and their barbettes, improved the survivability of the ship because the magazines were separated from each other and gave a lower silhouette. Disadvantages were that the magazines had to be put in the middle of all the machinery, which required steam pipes to be run through or around them and the lack of deck space free from blast. This greatly complicated the placement of the anti-torpedo boat guns which ultimately had to be mounted in the hull, closer to the water than was desirable.^[6]

The Ganguts were 180 meters (590 ft)

The main armament consisted of a dozen 52-

The main gun turrets had a KCA face and sides 203 mm (8.0 in) thick with a 100 mm roof. The guns had 3-inch gun shields to protect against splinters entering the embrasures and they were separated by splinter bulkheads. The barbettes were 150 mm thick above the upper deck, but reduced to 75 mm behind other armor, except for the fore and aft barbettes which only thinned to 125 mm. The conning tower sides were 254 mm (10.0 in) thick with a 100 mm roof. The 120 mm guns had their own individual 3-inch gun shields. The funnel uptakes were protected by 22 mm (0.87 in) of armor. The upper deck was 37.5 mm (1.48 in) of nickel-chrome steel and the middle deck was 25 mm (0.98 in) of nickel-chrome steel between the longitudinal splinter bulkheads, but thinned to 19 mm (0.75 in) outside them. The lower deck was of 12 mm (0.47 in) mild steel.^[22]

Underwater protection was minimal as there was only a single watertight bulkhead, presumably of high-tensile steel, behind the upwards extension of the double bottom. This was an extension of the splinter bulkhead and was also 3.4 meters inboard. A more comprehensive system was considered early in the design process but rejected because it would have cost some 500–600 t (490–590 long tons; 550–660 short tons).^[23]

The armor scheme of the Gangut-class ships had some significant weaknesses. The rear transverse bulkhead was unprotected by any other armor but was the same thickness as the forward bulkhead which was defended by the upper belt armor. The thinness of the barbette armor was a serious defect which could have proved fatal in a battle. And the lack of a splinter bulkhead behind the armor of the turrets, barbettes and conning towers left all of those locations vulnerable to main gun hits. But the biggest weakness was the lack of an anti-torpedo bulkhead, which made the ships highly vulnerable to mines or torpedoes.^[24]

All four ships were laid down on 16 June 1909, but this was just a ceremonial event as actual work did not begin until September–October. One major complication was that the design for the turrets and their magazines was not completed when construction began so their weights and dimensions had to be estimated.^[25] The machinery for these ships was built by either the Baltic Works or the Franco-Russian Works as the New Admiralty Shipyard lacked its own engine shop. Construction was initially very slow because the Duma did not allocate any money for these ships until May 1911. Initial funding was taken from other budget items or the emperor's discretionary fund^[26] and the shipyards had to use their own money to keep the work going. They were enormously expensive with their cost estimated at 29.4 million rubles each, including armament. By way of comparison the preceding class of pre-dreadnoughts had only cost 11 million rubles each. Once the Duma provided the funding the pace of work accelerated and the ships were launched later that year, although delays in the delivery of engines and turrets hindered their completion. All of the ships completed abbreviated trials by the end of 1914 and reached the fleet in December 1914 – January 1915.^[25]

All four of the Ganguts were assigned to the First Battleship Brigade of the Baltic Fleet in December 1914 – January 1915 when they reached Helsingfors. Their turrets and fire-control systems, however, were still being adjusted and fine-tuned through the next spring.^[27] Their role was to defend the mouth of the Gulf of Finland against the Germans, who never tried to enter, so they spent their time training with occasional sorties into the Baltic. Several ships ran aground in 1915 and 1916, often while providing cover for minelaying operations, but only Sevastopol suffered any significant damage. A minor mutiny broke out on 1 November on board Gangut when the executive officer refused to feed the crew the traditional meal of meat and macaroni after coaling.^[28] The crews of the battleships joined the general mutiny of the Baltic Fleet on 16 March 1917, after the idle sailors received word of the February Revolution in Saint Petersburg. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk required the Soviets to evacuate their base at Helsinki in March 1918 or have them interned by newly independent Finland even though the Gulf of Finland was still frozen over. Gangut and her sisters led the first group of ships on 12 March and reached Kronstadt five days later in what became known as the 'Ice Voyage'.^[29]

All of the dreadnoughts except for Petropavlovsk were

The initial attempts to return Frunze to service were to restore her to the original design, but money ran out before she was even half completed. Subsequent plans that focused on reconstructing her as a modernized equivalent to her sisters or even as a battlecruiser, with one turret deleted to save weight, were considered, but finally abandoned on 23 January 1935 when all work was stopped.^[33]

Parizhskaya Kommuna was refitted in 1928 in preparation for her transfer to the Black Sea Fleet the next year and she was given an open-topped false bow to improve her sea-keeping ability. However, while en route through the Bay of Biscay, she was caught in a heavy storm that damaged the bow and she was forced to put into Brest for repairs. Marat was the first of the class to be reconstructed between 1928 and 8 April 1931. Her superstructure was enlarged, her guns were replaced, the turrets overhauled, the anti-aircraft armament augmented and the fire-control equipment modernized. Her boilers were converted to burn only fuel oil and this produced enough steam that the forward three boilers could be removed and the boiler room was turned into anti-aircraft magazines and control spaces. The forward funnel was angled to the rear and extended to try to keep the exhaust out of the gunnery spaces and the bridge. She was also given a false bow, but hers had a solid top that turned it into a forecastle. Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya was the next ship to be rebuilt and profited from the experiences of her sister's modernization between 1931 and 1934. All twenty-five of her old boilers were replaced by a dozen oil-fired boilers originally intended for the Borodino-class battlecruiser Izmail. The space saved was used to add another inboard longitudinal watertight bulkhead that greatly improved her underwater protection. The rest of her modernization was along the same lines as Marat's, except that the latter's tubular foremast was replaced by a sturdier semi-conical mast, a new aft structure was built in front of the rear conning tower which caused the mainmast to be moved forward, her forward funnel was curved to the rear to better keep the bridge clear of exhaust gases and the thickness of her turret roofs was increased to 152 millimeters (6.0 in). Parizhskaya Kommuna began her two-stage reconstruction in 1933 along the lines of Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya's modernization. Major differences were that her guns and turrets were improved to increase their rate of fire to about two rounds per minute and to extend their range, she was the first ship of the class to receive light anti-aircraft guns and her forward funnel was given a more sinuous curve to direct its exhaust gases away from the forward superstructure. She completed these alterations in 1938, but was returned to the dockyard from December 1939 through July 1940 to receive a new armored deck and anti-torpedo bulges which cured her stability problems and greatly increased her underwater protection at a modest cost in speed.^[34]

The participation of Marat and Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya in the Winter War was limited to a bombardment of Finnish coastal artillery in December 1939 at Saarenpää in the Beryozovye Islands before the Gulf of Finland iced over. They failed to inflict any permanent damage before being driven off by near misses. Both ships had their anti-aircraft armament modernized and reinforced over the winter of 1939–40 and were transferred to Tallinn shortly after the Soviets occupied Estonia in 1940. Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya received more AA guns in February–March 1941. Parizhskaya Kommuna received a more modest number of AA guns while she was receiving her bulges, but landed four 120-mm guns right before the Germans invaded.^[35]

On 22 June 1941, the Germans attacked the Soviet Union under the codename of

During the late 1930s Frunze was used as a barracks hulk while she was stripped for parts, until she was formally discarded 1 December 1940, after scrapping had already begun at a leisurely pace.^[33] After the German invasion she was towed to Kronstadt and run aground in late July 1941 near the Leningrad Sea Canal. During the Siege of Leningrad her hull was used as a base for small ships.^[40] Frunze raised on 31 May 1944, towed to Leningrad and scrapped beginning in 1949.^[41]

Parizhskaya Kommuna was in Sevastopol and remained until 30 October 1941 when she was evacuated to

Sevastopol and Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya remained on the active list after the end of the war although little is known of their activities. Both were reclassified as 'school battleships' (uchebnyi lineinyi korabl) on 24 July 1954 and stricken on 17 February 1956. Their scrapping began that same year although Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya's hulk was still in existence in May 1958.^[44]

After the war there were several plans, known as Project 27, to reconstruct Petropavlovsk (ex-Marat), using the bow of

After World War II two of Frunze's turrets and their guns were used to rebuild the destroyed Coastal Defense Battery 30 (Maxim Gorky I) in Sevastopol. It remained in service with the Soviet Navy and the Russian Navy until 1997.^[46]

• Vladimir Yourkevitch

Bibliography

• Budzbon, Przemysław (1985). "Russia". In Gray, Randal (ed.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. pp. 291–325.
  ISBN 0-85177-245-5
  .
• Budzbon, Przemysław (1980). "Soviet Union". In Chesneau, Roger (ed.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946. Greenwich, UK: Conway Maritime Press. pp. 318–346.
  ISBN 0-85177-146-7
  .
• Budzbon, Przemysław; Radziemski, Jan & Twardowski, Marek (2022). Warships of the Soviet Fleets 1939–1945. Vol. I: Major Combatants. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
  ISBN 978-1-68247-877-6
  .
• ISBN 978-1-59114-555-4
  .
• Friedman, Norman (2011). Naval Weapons of World War One: Guns, Torpedoes, Mines and ASW Weapons of All Nations: An Illustrated Directory. Barnsley, UK: Seaforth.
  ISBN 978-1-84832-100-7
  .
• McLaughlin, Stephen (2003). Russian & Soviet Battleships. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
  ISBN 1-55750-481-4
  .
• Roberts, John (1997). Battlecruisers. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press.
  ISBN 1-55750-068-1
  .
• ISBN 1-59114-119-2
  .
• Vinogradov, Sergei E. (1998). "Battleship Development in Russia from 1905 to 1917". Warship International. XXXV (3): 267–290.
  ISSN 0043-0374
  .
• Vinogradov, Sergei E. (1999). "Battleship Development in Russia From 1905 to 1917, Chapter 2". Warship International. XXXVI (2): 118–141.
  ISSN 0043-0374
  .
• Wernet, Dieter & Wernet, Inge (1997). "Maksim Gor'kii I: A Recent Example of the Re-Use of Naval Turrets in Coast Defenses". Warship International. XXXIV (1).
  ISSN 0043-0374
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gangut class battleship.

• Battleship "Sevastopol" from Russian/Soviet Black Sea fleet (with photos)
• Article in Russian Archived 2012-03-06 at the Wayback Machine