History, Development, and Use of the Gangut class Battleship

After the Russo-Japanese war the Russian fleet faced a critical shortage of battleships and the few that remained were rapidly becoming obsolete.  The situation only worsened in 1906 when the British completed HMS Dreadnought, a revolutionary battleship design that began a naval arms race that would only end with the beginning of the Great War in 1914.

In light of these events the Russian navy decided that it would require four Dreadnought-type warships for their Baltic Fleet in the event of war with Germany.  The ships would have to attain a speed of at least 21 knots, be armed with twelve 12 inch guns, and have a further 16 4.7 inch guns in casemates.

The program ran into problems from the start as the Duma expressed strong opposition to the program.  Tsar Nicholas decided to override the objections of the Duma in 1908 and ordered construction to begin.  Unfortunately the Russians lacked the shipbuilding capability to design or complete the new ships.  Because of this they invited foreign designers to submit offers.  Soon after they made the offer 51 designs from 27 shipbuilding yards came in.  Only six of the 27 were Russian.

The Italian firm of Cuniberti emerged as the early favorite, but was turned down because of their insistence on placing the 4.7 inch guns in turrets instead of casemates.  With the failure of the Cuniberti design the German firm of Blohm & Voss moved to the forefront, but refused to meet the condition of constructing the ship in a Russian yard.  This left the Russians in a difficult position of having to buy the German design and rework it to Russian specifications in the Baltic Yards.  This major rework was made easier with the help of the British shipbuilding firm of John Brown who also incorporated features from the other rejected designs - particularly the one from Cuniberti which is would most closely resemble.

The result was a ship that fell somewhere between a battlecruiser and a battleship, and was known as a 'Baltic Dreadnought'.  It was a powerful design that could deliver a more powerful broadside than any contemporary British or German warship of the day.  It was also quite fast, some 2-3 knots faster than other dreadnoughts.  This was accomplished by using lighter Yarrow boilers rather than the heavier Belleville type found in earlier ships.  It also featured an icebreaking bow to enable it to operate year round in the Baltic Sea.  For protection against torpedoes and mines the ship had a double hull that reached as far up as the ship's deck.  The ship had a major vulnerability though as it sacrificed armor for speed.  In most places the ship's armor was one to three inches less than comparable ships.

Construction of the ships began in 1909 but almost immediately ran into difficulties as the Russian shipyards lacked the ability to construct such complicated warships.  Work stopped in 1910 because of doubts regarding the strength of the ship's hull and poor workmanship.  It took two more years for work to resume.  By this time the yards had been improved and the terrible Russian administrative system had been fixed.  The delay had allowed foreign navies to launch new battleships with 13.5 inch guns and neutralize any advantage the Russians were expecting.

All four ships were launched in 1911 where then underwent sea trials.  The first of the class to be commissioned was the Sevastopol in November of 1914.  The remaining three ships followed in  December of that year.

Almost instantly the ships found themselves in the midst of the Great War, during which they operated in the Baltic Sea.  Unfortunately memories of the defeat at Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese war were still fresh on the minds of the Russian admirals who were afraid to commit the ships in major operations for fear of losing them.  This mindset severely limited the capability of the Gangut class and they were restricted to covering minelaying ships and defending the Slava during the attacks on Moon Sound.

In September of 1915 the commander of the Baltic Sea decided to launch a battleship sortie into the Baltic, but is was interrupted by a mutiny over bad food aboard the Gangut.  It was only on 11 November that two battleships, the Gangut and Petropavlovsk, would sail toward Gotland as a way of masking mining operations in the Gulf of Riga.  They did little else for the remainder of the war.

The ships fell under Bolshevik control in early August of 1917 and were demobilized six months later on 29 January 1918.  All four Gangut class warships were then moved to Kronstadt in April where they sat idle  This situation did not last long as the Civil War intensified and foreign troops began landing in Russia to fight the Bolsheviks.

Sailors of the fledgling Red Navy managed to take control of the Petropavlovsk and use the ship until she was torpedoed in a British torpedo boat raid on 18 August 1919.  The Poltava was even less fortunate.  She suffered a serious fire in the forward boiler room on 24 November 1919 and was so severely damaged that it was decided not to repair the ship at the time.

Most of the former Tsarist-era battleships that had fallen into the hands of the Bolsheviks were scrapped between 1922 and 1924.  Only the four Gangut class ships would be spared although all would be renamed by the victorious Bolshevik forces.  The Petropavlovsk was repaired and renamed the Marat and recommissioned in 1922.  While the badly damaged Poltava was again added to the fleet lists in 1926, but the promised repair work never began and the ship was eventually scrapped.

In 1926 the Marat underwent a two year refit where it received new gun barrels and boilers.  During this time the Parizskaya Kommuna (former Sevastopol) was transferred to the Black Sea where she would form the core of the fleet there.  It began its journey in the Winter of 1929 but was severely damaged during a storm in the North Atlantic.  The ship was forced to stop at the French port of Brest in order to make repairs.

The 1930's were a period of modernization for the battleships of the Soviet navy.  The Marat underwent a three year refit in 1931 at the Leningrad's Baltic Yard.  During this time  the ship was substantially altered.  Its forecastle was raised by three feet, the front funnel was swept back to keep smoke from interfering with the bridge crew, and new fire control systems were added.

Oktoberskaya Revolutsia was the next ship to be modernized in October 1931.  The three year refit left the ship looking very different as the fleet incorporated lessons learned during the .refit of the Marat.  It had a lager bridge superstructure, two heavy cranes for the lowering and recovering of its three sea planes, and a new curved funnel.

Few modifications were carried out with the Parizskaya Kommuna in the Black Sea during the early 30's.  The only significant modification was the installation of a catapult system for launching aircraft on the number 3 turret.  This system was similar to those used on the Kirov class cruisers.

Towards the end of the decade the Soviet fleet grew in size and strength.  Many were eager to show the world their new warships.  They got their chance in May of 1937 when the Marat was sent as a representative of the Soviet Union to the Coronation Review of King George IV of England.  It was a proud moment for the Soviet navy.

As the clouds of war gathered in Europe the Soviets continued to modernize the fleet and the following year the Parizskaya Kommuna underwent a major refit where she was brought up to the same standard as the Oktoberskaya Revolutsia.  The ships looked virtually identical after this refit.  In fact, the only difference between the two ships was that the Parizskaya Kommuna had support struts on the in the crane system fitted to the main mast where the Oktoberskaya Revolutsia did not.

When war broke out in 1941 the battleships Oktoberskaya Revolutsia and Marat were at anchor in Kronstadt and Leningrad.  In the following months they slowed the German advance along the coast with heavy artillery fire and soon became the target many dive bomber attacks.  Beginning in September 1941 the Luftwaffe launched strikes to sink them.  The Marat was sunk in shallow water at the entrance of its harbor by a one ton bomb that destroyed the ship's bridge, forcastle, and front funnel.  Soon after the sinking the number 3 and 4 turrets were brought back into action, the number 2 turret was repaired shortly thereafter.

Oktoberskaya Revolutsia was returning from a raid on German shore positions on 16 September 1941 when the dive bombers attacked.  Although she had suffered several hits from 15cm German artillery pieces during the raid she managed to avoid the majority of the dive bomber attacks.  Even so, she was struck between three and six times.  Because of this the ship was ordered the following month to undergo repairs at Leningrad.  As the repairs continued the Oktoberskaya Revolutsia was again struck by four bombs in April of 1942.

During the siege of Leningrad both the Oktoberskaya Revolutsia and the sunken Marat provided heavy fire support to the defenders of the city.  Additional anti-aircraft guns were added to the Marat which in 1943 had its original name of Petropavlovsk restored.

Both ships also participated in the Red Army drive to liberate Leningrad in 1944.  The Petropavlovsk laid in heavy fire against German positions at Oranienbaum as the Red Army attacked.  While in June of that year the Oktoberskaya Revolutsia supported attacks on the Karelian Isthmus and against several islands held by Finnish forces.

While war raged in the Baltic, the Parizskaya Kommuna was stationed in the Black Sea.  It provided fire support the the Red Army during the German invasion of the Crimea.  As the fighting intensified the ship was pulled back to the eastern Black Sea ports which were out of the range of German air strikes.  Only when the Red Army regained the offensive late in the war did the ship move out to strike the positions of retreating German forces.

When the war ended the only two of the three battleships continued to actively serve with the Soviet navy.  The Oktoberskaya Revolutsia operated in the Baltic, while the Sevastopol served with the Black Sea Fleet.  The Petropavlovsk remained wrecked off Kronstadt as the Soviets debated whether to refloat her or simply scrap the ship.  In either case the crippled ship was renamed the Volkov in the late 1940s.  Why this was done is uncertain as the ship was eventually broken up on site in the early 1950's.  The two remaining ships remained in active service for a while longer as training ships.  They were equipped with British radar sets and the Oktoberskaya Revolutsia was even refitted with German cranes from the wrecked cruiser Talinn.

The end of the class would come when Nikita Khrushchev rose to power.  He was skeptical of the need for battleships in an age where missiles and nuclear weapons were becoming the standard.  Krushchev was also faced with rebuilding the Soviet economy, a task which Stalin had ignored in favor of building his military machine.  He attempted to find alternative uses for the fleet in an effort to save money, but was unable to do so.

Both battleships along with many cruisers became victims of his painful fleet reduction program.  The Sevastopol was the first of the two to be scrapped at the port which bore her name in 1957, while the Octoberskaya Revolutsia managed to linger on until 1959 when she was scrapped at Kronstadt.  The scrapping of the two ships marked the end of the Russian battleship era.

Tactical Use and Limitations

The Gangut class battleships were the result of the arms race that led to the Great War.  They were fast modern ships designed along the lines of the British Dreadnought and meant to be used accordingly in large scale fleet actions - actions that never actually took place due to Imperial Russian Admirals who feared losing the ships all at once in another Tsushima-like battle.

The ships had a number of advantages over contemporary vessels.  In a full broadside the Gangut class could train all twelve of her 12 inch guns on a target, compared to the eight guns of a comparable British or German battleship.  The ships machinery was lighter and more efficient and allowed the battleships to travel 2-3 knots faster than their rivals.

Delays in the construction of the warships caused them to fall behind in the arms race.  Their large 12 inch guns were soon eclipsed by the 13.5 inch guns of other powers.  The positioning of the 4.7 inch casemate guns was not very efficient as many of them were placed directly below the main 12 inch guns and were difficult to use effectively when the ship was firing a full broadside.  The ships also were lightly armored in comparison to other battleships of the day, a deficiency that would be remedied in the follow on 'Imperatrica Maria' class battleships.  

Another significant limitation was the lack of a good radar set when they became available.  It was only after the war that the Soviets decided to equip the ship with radar, and then it was a British system.  Most battleships had radar at some point during World War II rather than afterwards.

Deployment Chronology

The Gangut class were the first Dreadnought style warships of the Imperial Russian Navy.  They were a vast improvement over the earlier warships, but when the Great War began new battleships were called for.  These ships had heavier armament and better guns and would have replaced the Gangut class altogether if not for the events of the Bolshevik revolution.  After the revolution the newer 'Imperatrica Maria' battleships were scrapped and the older Gangut class continued to serve for several decades longer, until they were scrapped in the 1950's with nothing replacing them.

Here you can see what warships the Gangut class battleships replaced in front-line service and what ships evolved later to fill their role.  You can find out more about these ships if we have them on our site by clicking on the links below. 

Sources Cited

Here are some of the most informative sources that we have used in compiling this information for you.  We hope you can find them as useful as we have.

• The Illustrated Directory of Warships from 1860 to the Present, by David Miller, published by Motorbooks International, Osceola, WI, 2001

• The Imperial Russian Navy, by Anthony J Watts, published by Arms and Armour press, London, copyright Anthony J Watts 1990

• Battleships of the World 1905-1970, by Siegfried Breyer, published by Mayflower Books, New York, copyright Conway Maritime Press Ltd. 1980