SRGW - Russia - Battleship Available for Research (1915)

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geminif4ucorsair
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SRGW - Russia - Battleship Available for Research (1915)

Post by geminif4ucorsair »

* * Russia was actively in researching several further battleship designs before the outbreak of World War One, in 1914. In March, the chief of the Operations Section of the Baltic Fleet staff, Captain 2nd Rank A.V. Kolchak, completed compiling several Fleet suggestions as to what the next battleship should have as characteristics, and one of those was 16-inch main guns. Several other proposals suggested changing the traditional Russian multi-layers ships defense (armor) system, while others cast doubt on attaining a 25-knot speed (23-knots existing being sufficient). What followed was the document translated as "Basic Requirements for Battleship for the Baltic Sea".

One of the more accepted schemes was submitted by Russian naval architect Bubnov, while having outlying similarities to the existing series of Russian battleships, placed a 16-inch/45cal quad turret fore, amidships, and aft. [Source: Proekt lineinogo korablia vodoizmeshcheniem 35 000 t"]. The arc's of fire would have included 360-deg. forward turret, 140-deg. on either beam for amidships turret, and 320-deg. for the aft turret. There was also some design changes for the secondary 130-mm/55 (5.1") guns, in that they were not concentrated so forward as on the I. Mariia or Izmail class ships, instead being grouped in four groups of three-guns each along the hull.
Standard main gun ammunition was to be 225-rounds per gun, overload at 250-rounds per gun.

Counterpart: In large part, while having traditionally large guns (16-in/406-mm) than either British or American designs at the time, they would have been counterparts to the USN "Pennsylvania" (BB-38) class, laid down Oct 1913
and armed with 12 x 14"-inch (356-mm), due to the Russian design have less deck and over all side armor. The U.S. did not being 16-inch battleships until USS Maryland (BB-46) of the "Colorado" class was laid down in April 1917.

In all the Russian designs, there was little requirement for open-ocean freeboard and the designs that resulted were less suitable for open-ocean warfare outside the Baltic, Black and non-winter conditions in the Mediterranean or White Sea regions (where they would have been quite wet), and, were therefore less able to be modernized and given more suitable anti-aircraft defenses in the 1930s, had all the design classes survived that long.
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Note. Design should be added to the Available to Research category; with a 1915 date.

Bathagor: data on the class sent private email.

Thanks for considering. :-)
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