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/Battleship Potémkin

The Russian battleship Potémkin (Князь Потёмкин Таврический, Kniaz Potemkin Tavricheskiy, "Prince Potémkin of Tauris") was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet. She became famous when the crew rebelled against the officers in June 1905 (during that year's revolution), now viewed as a first step towards the Russian Revolution of 1917. The mutiny later formed the basis of Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent propaganda film The Battleship Potémkin.

After the mutineers sought asylum in Constanța, Romania, and after the Russians recovered the ship, her name was changed to Panteleimon. She accidentally sank a Russian submarine in 1909 and was badly damaged when she ran aground in 1911. During World War I, Panteleimon participated in the Battle of Cape Sarych in late 1914. She covered several bombardments of the Bosphorus fortifications in early 1915, including one where she was attacked by the Turkish battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim – Panteleimon and the other Russian pre-dreadnoughts present drove her off before she could inflict any serious damage. The ship was relegated to secondary roles after Russia's first dreadnought battleship entered service in late 1915. She was by then obsolete and was reduced to reserve in 1918 in Sevastopol.

Panteleimon was captured when the Germans took Sevastopol in May 1918 and was handed over to the Allies after the Armistice in November 1918. Her engines were destroyed by the British in 1919 when they withdrew from Sevastopol to prevent the advancing Bolsheviks from using them against the White Russians. She was abandoned when the Whites evacuated the Crimea in 1920 and was finally scrapped by the Soviets in 1923.

Planning
Planning began in 1895 for a new battleship that would utilise a slipway slated to become available at the Nikolayev Admiralty Shipyard in 1896. The Naval Staff and the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral K. P. Pilkin, agreed on a copy of the Peresvet-class battleship design, but they were overruled by General Admiral Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich. The General Admiral decided that the long range and less powerful 10 in guns of the Peresvet class were inappropriate for the narrow confines of the Black Sea, and ordered the design of an improved version of the battleship RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Tri Sviatitelia instead. The improvements included a higher forecastle to improve the ship's seakeeping qualities, Krupp cemented armour and Belleville boilers. The design process was complicated by numerous changes demanded by various departments of the Naval Technical Committee. The ship's design was finally approved on 12 June 1897, although design changes continued to be made that slowed the ship's construction.

Construction and sea trials
Construction of Potémkin began on 27 December 1897 and she was laid down at the Nikolayev Admiralty Shipyard on 10 October 1898. She was named in honour of Prince Grigory Potémkin, a Russian soldier and statesman. The ship was launched on 9 October 1900 and transferred to Sevastopol for fitting out on 4 July 1902. She began sea trials in September 1903 and these continued, off and on, until early 1905 when her gun turrets were completed.

Description
Potémkin was 371 ft long at the waterline and 378 ft long overall. She had a beam of 73 ft and a maximum draught of 27 ft. She displaced 12900 LT, 420 LT more than her designed displacement of 12480 LT. Potémkin's crew consisted of 26 officers and 705 enlisted men.

Power
The ship had a pair of three-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each of which drove one propeller, that had a total designed output of 10600 ihp. Twenty-two Belleville boilers provided steam to the engines at a pressure of 15 atm. The eight boilers in the forward boiler room were oil-fired and the remaining 14 were coal-fired. During her sea trials on 31 October 1903, she reached a top speed of 16.5 kn. Leaking oil caused a serious fire on 2 January 1904 that caused the navy to convert her boilers to coal firing at a cost of 20,000 rubles. She carried a maximum of 1100 LT of coal at full load that provided a range of 3200 nmi at a speed of 10 kn.

Armament
The main armament consisted of four 40-calibre 12 in guns mounted in twin gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. The electrically operated turrets were derived from the design of those used by the Petropavlovsk-class battleship s. These guns had a maximum elevation of +15° and their rate of fire was very slow, only one round every four minutes during gunnery trials. They fired a 337.7 kg shell at a muzzle velocity of 2792 ft/s. At an elevation of +10° the guns had a range of 12000 m. Potémkin carried 60 rounds for each gun.

The sixteen 45-calibre, 6 in Canet Pattern 1891 quick-firing (QF) guns were mounted in casemates. Twelve of these were placed on the sides of the hull and the other four were positioned at the corners of the superstructure. They fired shells that weighed 41.46 kg with a muzzle velocity of 792 m/s. They had a maximum range of 11523 m when fired at an elevation of +20°. The ship stowed 160 rounds per gun.

Smaller guns were carried for close-range defence against torpedo boats. These included fourteen 50-calibre Canet QF 75 mm guns: four in hull embrasures and the remaining 10 mounted on the superstructure. The ship carried 300 shells for each gun. They fired an 4.9 kg shell at a muzzle velocity of 2700 ft/s to a maximum range of 6405 m. She also mounted six 47 mm Hotchkiss guns. Four of these were mounted in the fighting top and two on the superstructure. They fired a 2.2 lb shell at a muzzle velocity of 1400 ft/s.

Potémkin had five underwater 15 in torpedo tubes: one in the bow and two on each broadside. She carried three torpedoes for each tube. The model of torpedo in use changed over time; the first torpedo that the ship would have been equipped with was the M1904. It had a warhead weight of 70 kg and a speed of 33 kn with a maximum range of 800 m.

In 1907 telescopic sights were fitted for the 12-inch and 6-inch guns. In that or the following year 2.5 m rangefinders were installed. The bow torpedo tube was removed in 1910–11, as was the fighting top. The following year the main gun turret machinery was upgraded and the guns were modified to improve their rate of fire to one round every 40 seconds.

Two 57 mm anti-aircraft (AA) guns were mounted on the ship's superstructure on 3–6 June 1915; they were supplemented by two 75 mm AA guns, one on top of each turret, probably during 1916. In February 1916 the ship's four remaining torpedo tubes were removed. At some point during World War I her 75 mm guns were also removed.

Protection
The maximum thickness of the Krupp cemented armour waterline belt was 9 in which reduced to 8 in abreast the magazines. It covered 237 ft of the ship's length and 2 in plates protected the waterline to the ends of the ship. The belt was 7 ft high, of which 5 ft was below the waterline, and tapered down to a thickness of 5 in at its bottom edge. The main part of the belt terminated in 7 in transverse bulkheads.

Above the belt was the upper strake of six-inch armour that was 156 ft long and closed off by six-inch transverse bulkheads fore and aft. The upper casemate protected the six-inch guns and was five inches thick on all sides. The sides of the turrets were 10 in thick and they had a two-inch roof. The conning tower's sides were nine inches thick. The nickel-steel armour deck was two inches thick on the flat amidships, but 2.5 in thick on the slope connecting it to the armour belt. Fore and aft of the armoured citadel, the deck was 3 in to the bow and stern. In 1910–11, additional 1 in armour plates were added fore and aft; their exact location is unknown, but they were probably used to extend the height of the two-inch armour strake at the ends of the ship.

Reserve and decommissioning
She was placed in reserve in March 1918 and was captured by the Germans at Sevastopol in May. They handed the ship over to the Allies in December 1918 after the Armistice. The British wrecked her engines on 19 April 1919 when they left the Crimea to prevent the advancing Bolsheviks from using her against the White Russians. Thoroughly obsolete by this time, the ship was captured by both sides during the Russian Civil War, but was abandoned by the White Russians when they evacuated the Crimea in November 1920. Borets za svobodu was scrapped beginning in 1923, although she was not stricken from the Navy List until 21 November 1925.