Imperator Nikolai I

Design

The three dreadnoughts of the Imperatritsa Mariya-class initially seemed sufficient to counter the threat of the two Turkish super-dreadnoughts ordered in Britain in Early 1911, more so after one was cancelled following the Balkan Wars and the Ottoman Empire’s finance was in a precarious situation. Come 1913 however, the Turkish had secured the Brazilian battleship Rio de Janeiro, renaming her Sultan Osman I, also expressing interest in two Argentine battleships under construction in the USA and two Chilean battleships under construction in Britain, and the possibilities of Turkey buying a German battlecruiser. Come 1913 however, one thing was certain; The three Russian Imperatritsa Mariyas armed with 12” guns would be facing three Turkish battleships, two of them carrying 13.5” guns.

Expansion of the Black Sea Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy was quickly put into action, calling for the construction of six submarines, eight destroyers, two cruisers, and a fourth Black Sea battleship. Several initial designs including a repeated fourth Imperatritsa Mariya with twelve 12” guns, an Imperatritsa Mariya based design with eight 14” guns, and an entirely new design with ten to twelve 14” guns. As speed was of the essence, and Russian gunnery doctrine dictated that capital ships have 12 guns for good fire control, and the fact that this new battleship would need to be able to work with her older half-sisters, it was decided by January 1914 that the new Black Sea battleship would retain the same base design as the preceding Imperatritsa Mariyas, with heavier armor being the primary upgrade.

With this new design being based so heavily on the pre-existing Imperatritsa Mariya design, and being built by the ONZiV shipyard which was then constructing Imperatritsa Mariya-class battleship Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya, the fourth Black Sea battleship named Imperator Nikolai I (sometimes confused as Ioann Groznyi or even Imperatritsa Elizaveta) was developed incredibly quickly, as many features of the ship simply repeated designs of the previous Imperatritsa Mariya, including the usage of the same propulsion plant as Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya in an effort to get the ship built as quickly as possible. After her design was finalized in January 1914, she was laid down six months later in late June; following Ekaterina’s launch earlier that month.

With her design finalized, Imperator Nikolai I took the general shape of an enlarged Imperatritsa Mariya, with some peculiarities. One peculiarity of note was her ice-breaking bow; something unnecessary on Black Sea battleships and absent on the other three Russian battleships of the Black Sea, perhaps hoping that the Black Sea fleet may one day operate outside the confines of the inland sea. She retained the same general shape as the other Black Sea battleships, with a smokestack behind the main bridge and one amidships, and the same main turret and secondary layout. What stood out the most was her raised forecastle; the Imperatritsa Mariyas trimmed by the bow, so Nikolai’s design was modified to abate this; but the added weight of the taller barbette for the A turret may have only increased her trim problems.

The primary improvement of Imperator Nikolai I was her armor. Designed to be protected by nearly 9,500 tons versus the Imperatritsa’s 6,900 tons, Nikolai’s increased size was since Russian armor mills were unable to manufacture belt armor plate thicker than 273mm, meaning that to substantially increase the ship’s horizontal protection, the only route was to increase the thickness of the longitudinal bulkhead behind the main belt. Behind the main 270mm armor belt was a 75mm longitudinal bulkhead set 3 to 4.5m back from the outer side. While this lead to Nikolai being over 20 meters longer and 2.5 meters wider than her half-sisters, this thicker bulkhead allowed face-hardened plate to be used, with calculations showing that this would have increased the ship’s broadside protection by as much as 40%. However, like all Russian dreadnoughts, Nikolai lacked proper side-protection systems against underwater explosions; making the ships vulnerable to the more and more powerful torpedoes coming into service during World War I.

Imperator Nikolai I’s main armament was twelve 305mm/52 guns in four triple turrets, mounted in the typical Russian linear fashion along the centerline. They were arranged in the same pattern as the preceding Imperatritsas, with three facing forward and the rearmost facing aft. These guns were the same guns mounted on both the Imperatritsas of the Black Sea and the Ganguts of the Baltic, as new 14” guns that were intended for the Izmail-class Baltic Battlecruisers would take several more years to complete for Nikolai I. Her secondary armament was identical to her Black Sea half-sisters, carrying 20 130mm/55 secondaries in the same arrangement as her predecessors. For her AA armament, she was loaded with four semi-automatic 63mm/38 semi-automatic AA guns, a model considered largely unsuccessful and quickly taken out of service; there were plans to replace these with new 102mm/37 guns in 1917, but these – like the ship itself – never came to fruition. She was to carry 4 47mm saluting guns, and four 7.62mm machine guns. Finally, she had four 450mm underwater torpedo tubes, with a pair on each broadside.

Service History

The Naval General Staff had hoped that Imperator Nikolai I would be launched come October 1915, and be ready for service by the Summer of 1917. The outbreak of World War I threw a spanner in the works, but not in an entirely negative way. Construction continued at the previous pace, as it was believed that the war would be short and the ship would likely not be needed until afterwards. Even the seizing of the three Turkish battleships being built in the UK did not slow construction down; but soon things changed. As the war started to grow long, urgent war production began to slow the feed of materials to Nikolai, with workers being transferred to finish Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaia and begin construction of badly-needed destroyers. By 1916, construction had slowed down considerably, but Imperator Nikolai I was finally launched come October of 1916.

Following slight modifications to her design based on wartime experiences, work was still ongoing, with hopes that she’d be completed within 18 months. The February Revolution of 1917 quickly changed this. Come April of 1917 her hulk was renamed Demokratiya; by this time the hulk was about 60% completed, with her horizontal armor and barbettes in the final stages of completion. Work slowed to a crawl over 1917, until finally the provisional government ceased all work on the ship until “a more favorable time” by October 1917. As Russia internally fell apart, the Russian Army collapsed to the German-Austrian offensives of Spring 1918, with the Central Powers reaching the shipyard Demokratiya rested in. The occupying forces made no changes, nor had any plans to complete the ship that lay in the port of Nikolaev. Come 1923, the new Soviet government inspected the incomplete Tsarist capital ships, Demokratiya among them. Her hulk had sat afloat but uncared for for five years, rusting away in Nikolaev. She was considered too slow for modern operations, and would be too costly to properly modernize, and after discussions dragged on until 1927, where it was finally decided upon that her hulk would be scrapped, slowly being dismantled in Sevastopol until she finally disappeared in 1928.

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  Plan and side views.

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  Imperator Nikolai I under construction.