![]() Even though she never sailed again, the Soviets kept the battered relic around for another eight years after the war ended as a stationary training ship before finally breaking the half-century old ship up in 1953.ĭisplacement: 24,800 tonnes (24,408 long tons) Her small guns were landed and rushed to the front where they fought panzers face to face. During 1942-43 she fired more than 1900 rounds of 12-inch shells against German army land targets around Leningrad, while her excess crew fought ashore. She literally became a concrete battleship. Her upper decks were covered with inches of concrete and slabs of granite to help provide reinforcement against future air attacks. However the ship only sank in 36-feet of water and the Soviets cut away the front, refloated the stern, filled the forward areas with concrete, and managed to get three of her four 12-inch gun turrets back in action within weeks. Nine operational 12-inch guns with a twenty-mile range still makes a pretty heavy impact, even if the ship could never put to sea again. After this, to erase the memory of the ship that fought for the Tsar, then the Soviets, then against the Soviets, she was renamed in 1921 at the end of the Civil War Marat, after French revolutionary sailor Jean-Paul Marat.Īs post-1942 floating battery. In a twist of fate, her sailors, long the bulwark of the Red forces, rebelled in the epic Kronstadt mutiny in 1921. Her sailors served ashore with the Red Army as shock troops during the Russian Civil War while the ship itself traded shots with British torpedo boats and destroyers, who were assisting the counter-revolutionary White Russian forces. ![]() The Russian navy was instrumental in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ship itself flew one of the first red flags in the fleet. In arguably the last Russian naval action of WWI, the Petropavlovsk led the break out of the Baltic Fleet from their ice locked bases at Tallinn and Helsinki to Kronstadt in February 1918. She spent her war years in quiet readiness as a member of the Russian fleet in being that largely barred the Gulf of Finland from German ships. Laid down in 1909 to replace the ships lost at Tsuhuma, the Petro was only completed in September 1915, a year into World War One. ![]() Laid down as a member of the four-ship Gangut class of battleships, the Petropavlovsk was the most advanced design ever to sail the Baltic under a Russian flag. Here we see the Petropavlovsk (Russian: Петропавловск) when she was commissioned around 1915 The Gangut class was set up with one turret forward, one sten, and two amidships that could only fire to the port and starboard in broadside. Plus picking Baku for the premium would've left the lead ship available as a non-premium if Russian DDs ever get a line split.Note the four turrets, each with a trio of huge 12-inch (305mm) guns and the Tsarist Navy banner on the stern. Petersburg, which is the hometown of WoWs. There the Baku joined the Northern Fleet, which hosted ships protecting the Murmansk convoys like the Murmansk cruiser and the Gremyaschy.īut of course, the Leningrad is chosen instead because that used to be the name of St. It had to do this during summer where the ice won't block the way. So the ship traveled north, to the Bering Straits past Alaska into the Artic Ocean. The region is far beyond the reach of German bombers, and the ship making facilities there are the source of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, which also built Project 7 destroyers like the one that became the Anshan later.įor the Baku to join the war effort, it needed to return to the European side of Russia, and going south, there is a place called Japan on the way. This place is into the Far East, right across the northeast border of China. The ship was finished in the region of Khabarovsk. Not sure why WG picked the Leningrad, when her sister ship the Baku had a more interesting camouflage, and history.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |