Soviet battleships
Despite having a vast coastline to cover, the Soviet Navy was in a worse state than that of the Red Army by the time hostilities commenced in WWII. The reason why was because while creating a modern Soviet fleet became a priority in the 1930s, many senior officers had been removed thanks to Stalin’s purges. The Labour and Defence Council had approved plans for expansion of the fleet in 1926 and building submarines especially got underway immediately. For the surface fleet the plan was to build 15 Sovetsky Soyuz-class ships, designed to rival the German Bismarck and Japanese Yamato-class battleships. However, by 1940 only four hulls had actually been laid down and construction was fraught with problems because Soviet shipyards weren’t up to the job. In fact, one of the planned battleships, Sovetskaya Belorussiya, was so badly constructed that it was cancelled on 19 October 1940. The other three progressed painfully slowly and when Germany invaded in June 1941 the programme was abandoned completely to pour resources into the Red Army instead. This left the Soviet Navy with only its WWI-era Gangutclass battleships.
So, let’s turn the clock back to 1909 when four battleships, the Gangut, Petropavlovsk, Poltava and Sevastapol were commissioned for the Imperial Russian Navy. Problems with financing meant construction was slow until 1911 when the Russian Duma authorised them. All the ships were delivered to the Baltic Fleet between December
1914 and January 1915 where they were to be used to defend the Gulf of Finland against Germany in WWI.
The Germans, however, were too busy facing Britain’s Grand Fleet, and after the encounter at Jutland at the end of
May in 1916, stayed close to home for the rest of the war. Back in Imperial Russia, revolution was in the air, with the battleship crews joining the general mutiny of the Baltic Fleet in 1917 and subsequently went over to the Bolsheviks in 1918. However, by late 1918 a lack of crew members lead to all the ships, except the Petropavlovsk, being mothballed. Unfortunately a fire broke out on the Poltava while laid up, severely damaging it. After yet another mutiny in 1921, the Petropavlovsk was renamed as the Marat and the Sevastapol was renamed as the Parizhskaya Kommuna. In 1925 the other two battleships, the Gangut and Poltava were also given suitably patriotic Soviet names, as the Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya and Frunze, respectively.
The Parizhskaya Kommuna was modernised in 1928 and transferred to the Black Sea Fleet while the Marat and Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya underwent reconstruction and formed the core of the Baltic Fleet. The Frunze was subject to a number of proposals for refitting but they were never enacted and the ship was duly stripped of all useful elements prior to scrapping. So, at the start of WWII, the Soviet Navy could only call upon three ageing battleships.■
OKTYABRSKAYA REVOLUTSIYA (GANGUT)
This was the last Gangut-class ship to be finished by the Imperial Russian Navy, and was originally called by the same name, Gangut, until being renamed as the Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya (October Revolution) in 1925. She was built by the Admiralty Works in Saint Petersburg with her keel being laid down on 16 June 1909 and formally launched on 22 September 1911. After sea trials in late 1914 the Gangut entered service on 11 January 1915 and was assigned to the First Battleship Brigade of the Baltic Fleet.
The Gangut’s machinery was built by the Franco-Russian Works and had 10 Parsons-type steam turbines to power four propellers. In the outer compartments there was a high pressure ahead and reverse turbine for each wing propeller shaft, while in the central engine room there were two each, low pressure ahead and astern turbines plus two turbines for cruising, all driving the two central propeller shafts. The engines were designed to generate 42,000hp for the shafts but, in the sea trials, actually managed 52,000hp, giving a top speed of 24.1 knots (27.7mph).
The main weaponry consisted of four turrets distributed down the length of the ship, each with three 12in (305mm) Pattern 1907 guns. The Imperial
Russian Navy believed that it was better to distribute the guns and magazines throughout the ship, rather than having stacked turrets, both from a survivability perspective and also because of muzzle blast and recoil affecting the other stacked turret. There were also 16 x 4.7in (119mm) Pattern 1905 guns in casemates to provide defence against fast attack vessels. Initially there was only one AA gun, mounted on the quarterdeck. There were four underwater torpedo tubes with three torpedoes per tube.
After WWI the Gangut was laid up and not recommissioned until 1925, when the new Soviet Union renamed her the Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya. In the 1930s she was refitted to try to bring her up to date, with 12 new oil-fired boilers, two new KDP-6 fire control systems and bigger superstructures. One of the benefits of stripping out 25 of the old boilers was that there was more internal space which was used for a watertight bulkhead, making the ship harder to sink. Each turret had its armour increased to 15.2cm (6in) thick and received new Italian rangefinders, while six new 76.2mm (3in) 34-K antiaircraft guns were added, three each to the fore and aft turrets. The various upgrades, completed on 4 August 1934, increased
Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya (Gangut)
Class : Gangut
Displacement: 24,800 tonnes
Length: 181.2m (594ft)
Beam: 26.9m (88ft)
Draft: 8.99m (29ft 6in)
Speed: 24.1 knots
Range: 5,900km (3,700 miles)
Crew: 1,149 men
Armament: 4 x triple 12in guns • 16 x single 4.7in guns • 3in AA gun • 4 x 17.7in torpedo tubes Armour: Deck - 12mm-50mm (0.47in-1.97in), Waterline belt - 125mm-225mm (4.9in-8.9in)