The beginning of the 20th century marked a new era in naval shipbuilding.
The age of powerful armored giants—battleships—began.
Great Britain was the first to launch its HMS Dreadnought,
which gave its name to a whole type of ship,
thus involving other countries in the naval arms race.
Russia also followed the trend: in June 1909,
Saint-Petersburg, four dreadnoughts of the Russian fleet were laid down.
They were the Sevastopol-class battleships, quite powerful for their time.
Battleship Petropavlovsk was one of these four ships.
During her time in commission, she was renamed three times.
This first name is closely associated with her predecessor—
the ironclad ship of the Russo-Japanese war that perished near Port Arthur.
The name Volkhov is only known to a small number of specialists and enthusiasts.
However, all who are interested in naval history know about Marat:
a famous Soviet battleship that protected Leningrad during the years of the German siege.
And they were all the same ship.
The Petropavlovsk project was developed by the Technical bureau
of the Baltic Shipyard in Saint-Petersburg.
In June 1909,
the battleship was laid down at the same shipyard and completed within a couple of years.
In 1914 she was commissioned and joined the Baltic Fleet.
Compared to the last ironclads of the Russian Navy,
the new battleship looked like a giant.
She was more than 590 feet in length, her beam was about 88 feet.
The displacement was almost 26,000 tons
and the draft was more than 29 feet.
The number of superstructures was minimal:
the upper deck only had gun turrets, two smoke stacks, two masts,
and two conning towers, the one on the bow had a compact superstructure.
The Petropavlovsk's power plant included 25 Yarrow boilers and 10 Parsons steam turbines.
The boilers were located in four boiler rooms between the turrets.
They used both coal and oil.
The turbines were installed in the battleship's three engine rooms;
they actuated four propeller shafts.
Under normal operation, the machines were producing 32,000 brake horsepower,
but the maximum output could reach up to 42,000 brake horsepower.
The Petropavlovsk's armor layout was unusual for that time:
having learnt from the Russo-Japanese war,
engineers decided to cover all the freeboard in armor.
The main armor belt was 8.9 inches thick
between the first and fourth turrets on the waterline.
Its thickness thinned out on the bow and aft to 4.9 inches.
The top armor belt,
from the bow turret to the aft turret, was also 4.9 inches thick.
Towards the bow, the thickness dropped to 2.9 inches,
while the aft was not covered by the top belt.
Petropavlovsk's primary armament
consisted of twelve 12-inch guns,
developed by the Obukhov Plant, installed in four triple turrets.
For the first time, a Russian ship had ventilated and heated turrets.
The secondary armament consisted of 16 4.7-inch guns designed by Vickers.
Battleship Petropavlovsk did not manage to demonstrate
the power of her artillery in World War I.
But after the October Revolution, she sided with the Bolsheviks,
and in 1919 engaged British ships.
Eight destroyers of the British squadron that arrived to Baltic shores
were forced to retreat hastily under fire from the battleship's artillery.
Petropavlovsk also participated in other military operations
during the Russian Civil War...
During the White Guard mutiny in the Krasnaya Gorka fort in 1919,
battleship Petropavlovsk fired 568 12-inch shells.
You can imagine the scope of destruction inflicted
by Petropavlovsk's primary armament salvos upon the fort.
However, two years later she opened fire at Krasnaya Gorka once again.
Only this time as a rebel, supporting the mutiny in Kronstadt.
After the Kronstadt's events of 1921,
the Bolsheviks hastily renamed the rebellious battleship:
she was called Marat in honor of the French revolutionary.
In the 1920s to 30s, the ship underwent extensive repairs and serious modernization,
which considerably altered her exterior.
During the winter of 1939,
battleship Marat participated in the Winter War,
supporting the Red Army with her primary armament and dueling with the Finnish heavy shore batteries.
The ship was fightin in World War II from day one,
defending Kronstadt and Leningrad against German air raids.
By the second night of combat actions,
the crew of Marat had already shot down their first two enemy planes.
By September, German troops approached the city
and entered the effective area of Marat's primary armament guns;
the battleship cracked down on the enemy with her devastating artillery fire.
The German advance was stopped, but after the first days of the Siege of Leningrad,
Marat became a priority target for German pilots.
On September 23, 1941, about 40 German aircraft simultaneously attacked Kronstadt.
Two half-ton bombs fell on the battleship during the raid.
One of them hit the forward section of the ship and caused ammunition detonation.
A 1,000-foot high pillar of smoke rose over Marat.
One of the turrets literally flew up over the ship and collapsed on the breached deck.
Three hundred and twenty six crewmen died, including the captain and the commissar of the ship.
As a result of the explosion,
the forward superstructure was torn up to the second main turret
and the rest of the guns were disabled.
The surviving crewmen heroically strove to save the ship, but without success:
Marat sank, only three meters of her board remained above water.
Germans decided that Marat was destroyed.
However, only five weeks later, the third and fourth turrets
of the battleship opened fire on the enemy again.
The battleship, which recovered her original name Petropavlovsk,
continued to fight the German troops until the siege of the city was lifted.
After the war, Petropavlovsk served as a stationary training ship
until 1953 when she was struck and scrapped.
Thus ending the service record of the battleship
that made two of her names famous: Petropavlovsk and Marat.