Russian battleship Sevastopol (1911)

For the earlier ship of the same name, see Russian

battleship Sevastopol (1895).
For other ships of the same name, see Sevastopol (ship).
Sevastopol (Russian: ) was the rst ship
completed of the Gangut-class battleships of the Imperial
Russian Navy, built before World War I. The Ganguts
were the rst class of Russian dreadnoughts. She was
named after the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean
War. She was completed during the winter of 191415,
but was not ready for combat until mid-1915. Her role
was to defend the mouth of the Gulf of Finland against the
Germans, who never tried to enter, so she spent her time
training and providing cover for minelaying operations.
Her crew joined the general mutiny of the Baltic Fleet
after the February Revolution and joined the Bolsheviks
later that year. She was laid up in 1918 for lack of manpower, but her crew joined the Kronstadt Rebellion of
1921. She was renamed Parizhskaya Kommuna after the
rebellion was crushed to commemorate the Paris Commune and to erase the ships 'betrayal' of the Communist
Party.

Plan view of the Gangut class

more than her designed displacement of 23,288 t (22,920

long tons).[1]
Sevastopol 's machinery was built by the Baltic Works.
Ten Parsons-type steam turbines drove the four propellers. The engine rooms were located between turrets
three and four in three transverse compartments. The
outer compartments each had a high-pressure ahead and
reverse turbine for each wing propeller shaft. The central
engine room had two each low-pressure ahead and astern
turbines as well as two cruising turbines driving the two
center shafts. The engines had a total designed output of
42,000 shaft horsepower (31,319 kW), but they produced
52,000 shp (38,776 kW) during her sister Poltava's fullspeed trials on 21 November 1915 and gave a top speed of
24.1 knots (44.6 km/h; 27.7 mph). Twenty-ve Yarrow
Admiralty-type small-tube boilers provided steam to the
engines at a designed working pressure of 17.5 standard
atmospheres (1,770 kPa; 257 psi). Each boiler was tted
with Thornycroft oil sprayers for mixed oil/coal burning.
They were arranged in two groups. The forward group
consisted of two boiler rooms in front of the second turret, the foremost of which had three boilers while the second one had six. The rear group was between the second
and third turrets and comprised two compartments, each
with eight boilers. At full load she carried 1,847.5 long
tons (1,877.1 t) of coal and 700 long tons (710 t) of fuel
oil and that provided her a range of 3,500 nautical miles
(6,500 km; 4,000 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h;
12 mph).[2]

She was recommissioned in 1925, and retted in 1928 in

preparation for her transfer to the Black Sea the following
year. Parizhskaya Kommuna and the cruiser Prontern
ran into a severe storm in the Bay of Biscay that severely
damaged Parizhskaya Kommuna 's false bow. They had
to put into Brest for repairs, but reached Sevastopol in
January 1930. Parizhskaya Kommuna was comprehensively reconstructed in two stages during the 1930s that
replaced her boilers, upgraded her guns, augmented her
anti-aircraft armament, modernized her re-control systems and gave her anti-torpedo bulges. During World
War II she provided gunre support during the Siege
of Sevastopol and related operations until she was withdrawn from combat in April 1942 when the risk from
German aerial attack became too great. She was retained
on active duty after the war until she became a training
ship in 1954. She was broken up in 195657.

Design

Sevastopol was 180 meters (590 ft) long at the waterline

and 181.2 meters (594 ft 6 in) long overall. She had a
beam of 26.9 meters (88 ft 3 in) and a draft of 8.99 meters
(29 ft 6 in), 49 centimeters (1 ft 7 in) more than designed.
Her displacement was 24,800 tonnes (24,400 long tons)
at load, over 1,500 t (1,500 long tons; 1,700 short tons)

Her main armament consisted of a dozen Obukhovskii

12-inch (305 mm) Pattern 1907 52-caliber guns mounted
in four triple turrets distributed the length of the ship.
The Russians did not believe that superring turrets offered any advantage as they discounted the value of axial re and believed that superring turrets could not re
1

2 SERVICE

while over the lower turret because of muzzle blast problems. They also believed that distributing the turrets, and
their associated magazines, over the length of the ship
improved the survivability of the ship. Sixteen 4.7-inch
(119 mm) 50-caliber Pattern 1905 guns were mounted in
casemates to defend the ship against torpedo boats. She
completed with two 3-inch (76 mm) 30-caliber Lender
anti-aircraft (AA) guns mounted on the quarterdeck.
Other AA guns were probably added during the course
of World War I, but details are lacking,[3] although Conways says that four 75-millimeter (3.0 in) were added to
the roofs of the end turrets during the war.[4] Four 17.7inch (450 mm) submerged torpedo tubes were mounted
with three torpedoes for each tube.[3]

were added to the roofs of the fore and aft turrets. She
received some additional rangenders and she was given
a false bow to improve her sea-keeping ability. She sailed
for the Black Sea on 22 November 1929, in company
of the cruiser Prontern, encountering a bad storm in
the Bay of Biscay. The open-topped bow lacked enough
drainage and tended to trap a lot of water which badly
damaged both the false bow and the supporting structure.
Parizhskaya Kommuna was forced to put into Brest for
repairs, which included the removal of the bulwark that
retained so much water. Both ships arrived at Sevastopol
on 18 January 1930 and Parizhskaya Kommuna became
the agship of the Black Sea Fleet.[7]

2.1 Reconstruction

Service

Sevastopol was built by the Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg. Her keel was laid down on 16 June 1909 and she
was launched on 10 July 1911. She was commissioned
on 30 November 1914 and reached Helsingfors late the
next month where she was assigned to the First Battleship Brigade of the Baltic Fleet. Sevastopol and her sister
Gangut provided distant cover for minelaying operations
south of Liepja on 27 August, the furthest that any Russian dreadnought ventured out of the Gulf of Finland during World War I. She ran aground on 10 September and
was under repair for two months. On 17 October a halfcharge of powder was dropped and ignited when it impacted the oor of the forward magazine. Flooding the
magazine prevented an explosion, but the re killed two
men and burned a number of others. She saw no action of
any kind during 1916, but hit underwater rocks twice that
year, suering minor damage each time. Her crew joined
the general mutiny of the Baltic Fleet on 16 March 1917,
after the idle sailors received word of the February Revolution in Saint Petersburg. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
required the Soviets to evacuate their base at Helsinki in
March 1918 or have them interned by newly independent
Finland, even though the Gulf of Finland was still frozen
over. Sevastopol and her sisters led the rst group of ships
out on 12 March and reached Kronstadt ve days later in
what became known as the 'Ice Voyage'.[5]
The crew of the Sevastopol joined the Kronstadt Rebellion of March 1921. She returned re when the Bolsheviks began to bombard Kronstadt Island and was hit by
three 12-inch shells that killed or wounded 102 sailors.
After the rebellion was bloodily crushed, she was renamed Parizhskaya Kommuna after the Paris Commune
on 31 March 1921.[6] She was retted several times before she was recommissioned on 17 September 1925. She
was retted again in 1928 at the Baltic Shipyard, in preparation for her transfer to the Black Sea Fleet. Her forward
funnel was raised and the upper part was angled aft in
an attempt to keep the exhaust gases out of the control
and gunnery spaces, while three 3-inch 'Lender' AA guns

Sevastopol after World War II. Note that most of the casemates
no longer extend past the side of the hull

She temporarily mounted an imported Heinkel aircraft

catapult atop the third turret between 1930 and 1933.
It was transferred to the cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz when
Sevastopol began the rst stage of her reconstruction in
November 1933. This was based on that done for her
sister Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya, but was even more extensive. Her rear superstructure was enlarged and a new
structure was built just forward of it which required the
repositioning of the mainmast forward. This did not leave
enough room for a derrick, as was tted in Marat, and
two large booms were tted to handle aircraft while the
existing boat cranes remained in place. The mast had to
be reinforced by two short legs to handle the weight of
the booms and their loads. Her false bow was reworked
into a real forecastle like those tted to her sisters. All
twenty-ve of her old boilers were replaced by a dozen
oil-red boilers originally intended for the Borodino-class
battlecruisers. The space saved was used to add another
inboard longitudinal watertight bulkhead that greatly improved her underwater protection.[8]
Her turrets were modied to use a xed loading angle of 6 and tted with more powerful elevating motors which increased their rate of re to two rounds
per minute. Their maximum elevation was increased to
40 which extended their range to 32,320 yards (29,550

2.2

Second World War

m) and they were redesignated as MK-3-12 Mod. She

landed her old 'Lender' AA guns and replaced them
with six semi-automatic 45-millimeter (1.8 in) 21-K AA
guns, three atop the fore and aft turrets. Three 76.2millimeter (3.00 in) 34-K each were mounted on platforms on the fore and aft superstructures as well as a total of twelve 12.7-millimeter (0.50 in) DShKM machine
guns. Her re-control system was completely revised
with a pair of KDP-6 re control director, equipped with
two 6-meter (20 ft) Zeiss rangenders positioned atop
both superstructures.[9] Her original Pollen Argo Clock
mechanical re-control computer was replaced with a
copy of a Vickers Ltd re-control computer, designated
AKUR by the Soviets, as well as a copy of a Sperry stable vertical gyroscope.[10] She also received the rst stabilized anti-aircraft directors in the Soviet eet, SVP-1s
that were tted on each side of the forward superstructure. They were manually stabilized and less than satisfactory as the men manning them had diculties keeping
their sights on the horizon while the ships motions were
violent.[9]

3
matic AA guns were added, three each on the fore and
aft turret tops and twelve in the superstructures.[11]

2.2 Second World War

Four of Parizhskaya Kommuna's 120-mm guns were
landed shortly before 22 June 1941.[12] When the
Germans invaded she was in Sevastopol, but she was
evacuated to Novorossiysk 30 October after the Germans
had breached Soviet defensive lines near the Perekop Isthmus. During 2829 November she bombarded German
and Romanian troops south of Sevastopol with 146 12inch and 299 120-mm shells.[13] She steamed into Sevastopols South Bay on 29 December and red 179 and
265 120-mm shells at German troops before embarking
1025 wounded and departing in company with the cruiser
Molotov on the 31st.[14] She bombarded German positions south of Feodosiya on the evening of 45 January
1942 and on 12 January. Parizhskaya Kommuna provided gunre support during Soviet landings behind German lines along the southern coast of the Crimea three
days later.[15] She bombarded German positions west and
north of Feodosiya on the nights of 2628 February in
support of an oensive by the 44th Army. She red her
last shots of the war[14] at targets near Feodosiya during
the nights of 2022 March 1942 before returning to Poti
to have her worn-out 12-inch guns relined.[16] By the time
this was nished the Soviets were unwilling to expose
such a prominent ship to German air attacks, which had
already sunk a number of cruisers and destroyers.[14] She
returned to her original name on 31 May 1943, but remained in Poti until late 1944 when she led the surviving
major units of the Black Sea Fleet back to Sevastopol on
5 November.[14] Lend-Lease British Type 290 and 291
air-warning radars were tted during the war.[12] She was
awarded the Order of the Red Banner on 8 July 1945.[14]

Parizhskaya Kommuna nished the rst stage of her reconstruction in January 1938 with unresolved stability issues derived from all of the additional topweight. The options to cure this were discussed at length until Marshal
Voroshilov, the Peoples Commissar for Defense approved the addition of anti-torpedo bulges in 1939 which
would increase the ships underwater protection and rectify her stability problem. The second part of the reconstruction was carried out between December 1939 and
July 1940. A pair of bulges were tted that extended from
the forward magazine to the rear magazine that increased
the ships beam by 5.62 meters (18.4 ft). They had an
unusual form that consisted of an outer void compartment intended to weaken the explosive force of the torpedo backed by a relatively narrow section immediately
adjacent to the original hull that extended from above the
waterline to the bottom of the bilge. This was divided She was reclassied as a 'school battleship' on 24 July
into two compartments; the lower of which was kept full 1954 and stricken on 17 February 1956. She was
[17]
of either fuel oil or water to absorb splinters and frag- scrapped at Sevastopol in 195657.
ments from the explosion while the upper compartment
was lled with small watertight tubes intended to preserve
the ships waterplane area and minimize ooding from 3 Notes
gunre hits around the waterline. The underwater torpedo tubes were incompatible with the bulges and were [1] All dates used in this article are New Style
removed at this time. The bulges increased her standard
displacement to 30,395 tonnes (29,915 long tons; 33,505
short tons), increased her metacentric height to 2.03 me- 4 Footnotes
ters (6 ft 8 in) and reduced her speed to 21.5 knots (24.7
mph; 39.8 km/h). The Soviets took advantage of her ex- [1] McLaughlin, p. 207
tra stability to reinforce her deck armor by completely
replacing her middle deck armor with 76.2-millimeter [2] McLaughlin, pp. 208, 22425
(3.00 in) cemented armor plates originally intended for
[3] McLaughlin, pp. 22021
Admiral Nakhimov-class cruisers. These were not ideal
as they were harder than desirable for deck plates, but [4] Gardiner & Gray, p. 303
they did have the prime virtue of being free. At some
[5] McLaughlin, pp. 207, 299303
point, the exact date is unknown, her 45-mm guns were
removed and sixteen 37-millimeter (1.5 in) 70-K auto- [6] McLaughlin, p. 324

[7] McLaughlin, pp. 227, 324, 338

[8] McLaughlin, pp. 34445
[9] McLaughlin, p. 345
[10] Friedman, Norman (2008). Naval Firepower: Battleship
Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era. Annapolis,
MD: Naval Institute Press. p. 278. ISBN 978-1-59114555-4.
[11] McLaughlin, pp. 34546
[12] McLaughlin, p. 407
[13] Rohwer, pp. 111, 119
[14] McLaughlin, p. 402
[15] Rohwer, pp. 133, 13536
[16] Rohwer, pp. 149, 153
[17] McLaughlin, p. 227

Bibliography
Gardiner, Robert; Gray, Randal, eds. (1984). Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships: 1906-1922.
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-85177245-5.
McLaughlin, Stephen (2003). Russian & Soviet
Battleships. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
ISBN 1-55750-481-4.
Rohwer, Jrgen (2005). Chronology of the War at
Sea 1939-1945: The Naval History of World War
Two (Third Revised ed.). Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press. ISBN 1-59114-119-2.

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