Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya

Imperial Russian battleship Gangut at anchor in Helsinki, Finland, 27 June 1915.

History

Design

At the direct behest of Tsar Nicholas II, the Imperial Russian Naval Staff commenced work on designing a novel dreadnought class for the Navy upon the unveiling of HMS Dreadnought in 1906. By 1908, the design requirements were finalized: the class had to possess speeds greater than 21 knots, and carry no less than twelve 12-inch guns. Due to a lack of native shipbuilding experience in Russia, tenders were sent out to foreign companies and a winner selected from over 50 contestants. The Naval Technical Committee chose the proposal sent by the German firm Blohm & Voss; unfortunately, Russian and Germany had become belligerent rival states and such a move was seen highly unfavorably in the eyes of the Russian and French governments. As such, the Navy decided to just buy the blueprints, and – with British technical assistance – got the Baltic Yard in St. Petersburg tooled up to start construction on Russia’s first dreadnought: the Gangut-class.

Immediately apparent in her silhouette was the placement of her artillery in 4 triple-turrets, all mounted along the centerline. In this era of dreadnought construction, this was a revolutionary design choice that allowed for the ships to use every 12-inch gun at their disposal for any broadside. Compared to her British and German counterparts, Gangut could hurl about 30% more weight per broadside salvo. What was less ideal was the placement of the casemates for the secondary guns; positioned right beneath the broadsides of each turret, they would frequently be disturbed when the main guns would fire.

Due to the location of the main battery turrets, the placement of machinery spaces was hampered as well: the fire-rooms with the boilers were situated around B turret, whereas the turbine rooms were placed aft of Y turret. With British assistance, the Russians were able to procure Yarrow boilers for the Gangut-class, which were much more efficient than the Belleville boilers that were currently in service with the Russian Navy at the time. The improved boilers increased projected speeds by about 2 knots, allowing for the class to be faster than its contemporaries. Other interesting design choices considered were a bow capable of ice-breaking and U.S Navy-style lattice masts; the latter were rejected due to vibrational instability.

On the other hand, compromises had to be made. Just like battlecruisers of the era, Gangut had to sacrifice on protection in order to improve speed. Further complicating matters, experience from the Russo-Japanese war showed that armor belts had to extend wider than had been previously thought. Unfortunately, this meant the belt was thinner overall; in certain cases the belts on the Gangut-class ships was 1-3” thinner than their foreign contemporaries. Some novel design considerations were implemented to offset any deficiencies; longitudinal bulkheads were placed some distance behind the belts in order to catch any AP shell fragmentations that managed to penetrate the belt.

While the design phase of Gangut’s construction progressed relatively smoothly, the construction phase was anything but. Although the military and the Tsar were enthusiastic about such a building program, the Duma was less so. Such a project required an amount of high-tensile steel that was unprecedented at the time for Russian shipbuilding. Various other factors compounded to result in construction being stretched out over several years, to the point that foreign navies were already in the process of designing dreadnoughts that would outclass Gangut by the time she was launched.

Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya (ex. Gangut, renamed in 1925), the lead ship of the class, was laid down at the Admiralty Shipyard in Saint Petersburg, on 16 June 1909. She was launched on 20 October 1911.

The Gangut-class underwent a major reconstruction phase during the 1930s. The ships were modified with a clipper bow that extended up to an enlarged forecastle deck. The superstructure was rebuilt to include an enlarged bridge and improved fire-control directors. The forward funnel was raised and tilted aft. Additionally, aviation facilities and improved AA armaments were installed, and oil-fired boilers replaced mixed-fired ones. Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya had turbines meant for battlecruiser Ismail installed aboard instead.

Service

Commissioned as battleship Gangut into the 1st Battleship Brigade of the Baltic Fleet on 11 January 1915, Gangut joined her sister-ships Sevastopol, Petropavlovsk, and Poltava spending 1915 performing distant cover for minelaying duties in the Baltic, never sailing further into the Baltic than the shoreline of modern-day Latvia. She spent the entirety of 1916 idling in the port of Helsinki, then under Russian rule. Her idle sailors joined the rebellions during the February Revolution in 1917, leaving the ship undermanned as her sailors drove the Tsar out of St. Petersburg. As the internal situation of the Russian Empire rapidly began to disintegrate, the provisional Russian government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers. Part of the treaty required Gangut and the Russian fleet anchored at Helsinki in March 1918 or have the now-independent Finns intern them, even though the Gulf of Finland was still frozen over. Gangut and her sisters managed to escape to Kronstadt in mid-March, in a trip that later became known as the “Ice Voyage”. As the Soviets drove the White Russians loyal to the Tsar out of Russia, Gangut was laid up in early November 1918, having essentially run out of men as her sailors joined the fighting in the homeland.

Following the Soviet victory and the establishment of the Soviet Union, Gangut was not reactivated until the mid-1920’s, renamed Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya (in honor of the October Revolution of 1917) in June 1925. She was partially modernized from her reactivation until July 1926, when she re-joined the Baltic Fleet. Her duties henceforth were nothing more than training exercises, until she returned to the Baltic Works in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) for a more extensive modernization. She returned to the Baltic Fleet again, resuming training exercises until the outbreak of the Winter War in 1938, where she bombarded Finnish coastal batteries in December 1939 before the Gulf of Finland froze over, preventing further naval support. She sailed to Tallinn shortly after the Soviets occupied Estonia, receiving another minor modernization in 1940. Upon the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya was still in Tallinn, and was forced to sail to Kronstadt by the invading Germans. In late September 1941, direct aerial bomb hits knocked out her two front turrets, forcing her to return to besieged Leningrad for repairs; she returned to service in November 1942. Much of her wartime service was repeated fire support missions against the Germans besieging Leningrad, until the siege was finally lifted in January 1944. Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya supported the Leningrad-Novgorod Offensive that month, and the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Offensive in June 1944. For her service, she received an Order of the Red Banner in late July 1944.

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  Gangut as built, 1914-1917.

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  Gangut at sea, 1914-1917.

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  Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya in 1934, after her modernization.

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  Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya after her final modernization refit, late 1930s.

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  Luftwaffe aerial photograph of the damaged Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya in Kronstadt, 23 September 1941.

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  Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya post-war, with crew manning the rails.