Some 105 years ago this month, check out these two snapshots of brand-new battleships under construction on two different sides of Europe. Ordered by two doomed empires with the very likely prospect of fighting each other at sea, that never happened, and each saw its own fate under far different circumstances.
On the Neva River outside of St. Petersburg at the Tsar’s Admiralty Shipyard, we see this June 1914 shot of the leader of her class of dreadnoughts– the first for Imperial Russia– the Gangut, shown fitting out.
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At 25,000 tons and with a main battery of a dozen Obukhovskii 12-inch/52-caliber Pattern 1907 guns in four triple turrets, Gangut could make 24 knots and was protected by as much as 10 inches of armor plate, although with a rather light battle cruiser-ish 5-to-9-inch main belt.
Next, at the Vickers yard at Barrow-in-Furness in England, is the Ottoman Empire’s shiny future battleship Reşadiye (left) next to the HM’s battleship Emperor of India (right), in June 1914.
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Like Gangut, Reşadiye was the leader of her planned class of new dreadnoughts, the first for the Turks, and went 25,000 tons. Slower than Gangut (21 knots) she had much better armor (12-inch belt) and, while she had fewer main guns (10) they were more powerful Vickers Elswick BL 13.5-inch Mk VIs.
It would have been an interesting match-up if the two ever met on the open seas in a one-on-one surface engagement.
Of course, that never happened.
Gangut would go on to be commissioned in January 1915 and serve in the Baltic Sea Fleet where, in 1917, the revolution brought the hangman’s noose and firing squad to many of her officers as her men were dispatched throughout the Worker’s Paradise to fight ashore as Red naval infantry during the Russian Civil War.
Renamed Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya, she was repaired enough to be put back into service with the Red Banner Fleet by 1925. Reconstructed in the 1930s, she would be an indestructible thorn in the Germans’ side during the siege of Leningrad and, somehow surviving the war, would endure until scrapped in the 1950s.
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Gangut in 1915, once completed
She never fought an outright capital ship surface engagement.
Meanwhile, Reşadiye, ordered in 1911, launched in the late summer of 1913 and completed by July 1914– fully paid for by the Sultan’s government and completed her builder’s sea trials– was instead seized under the First Sea Lord’s orders with the Great War on the horizon and, in August 1914, put into service with the Royal Navy as HMS Erin. This is often credited with being one of the final straws that pushed the Turks and Germans together.
Ironically, while at Jutland, Erin was the only British battleship not to fire her main guns during the massive sea clash!
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HMS Erin in a North Sea harbor, with a kite balloon moored aft, 1918
A unique ship and curious ship in a fleet flush with several classes of great dreadnoughts, she was discarded in 1922.