page_title: Andrei Pervozvanny-class battleship
section_title: Design and description
hierarchical_section_title: Andrei Pervozvanny-class battleship / Design and description
caption_attribution_description: Right elevation and deck plan diagrams depicting Russian Andrei Pervozvanny class battleship. Numbers on top diagram show armour thickness (shaded areas) in inches. Numbers on bottom diagram show size of guns in inches.
context_page_description: The Andrei Pervozvanny class were a pair of pre-dreadnought battleships built in the first decade of the twentieth century for the Baltic Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy. They were conceived by the Naval Technical Committee in 1903 as an incremental development of the Borodino-class battleships with increased displacement and heavier secondary armament. The disastrous experiences of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 and the unrest resulting from the 1905 Russian Revolution led to countless redesigns, change orders and delays in construction. Despite the designers' repeated attempts to modernize the ships while under construction, they were obsolete in concept from the beginning, and even more so when they entered service in 1911.
  In the first year of World War I, Andrei Pervozvanny and Imperator Pavel I formed the core of the Baltic Fleet. For most of the war they remained moored in the safety of Sveaborg and Helsingfors. Idle, demoralized ratings subscribed to Bolshevik ideology and on March 16 [O.S. March 3] 1917 took control of the ships in a violent mutiny, killing many of their officers in the process.
context_section_description: The planned completion of the five Borodino-class battleship in 1904 would leave Russian shipbuilders with little work, so the Naval Technical Committee (NTC) organized a conference in late 1902 on the new 20-year shipbuilding program, which included money for four battleships in 1903 and 1904, a pair for the Black Sea Fleet (Evstafi class) and another for the Baltic Fleet. Based on the recommendations of the participants, the NTC chose a much larger and heavily armoured version of the Borodinos for the Baltic ships, with their secondary armament upgraded to 7.5-or-8-inch (191 or 203 mm) quick-firing guns rather than the 6-inch (152 mm) guns of the older ships. The initial estimate of the design's 16,500-long-ton (16,765 t) displacement became an informal upper limit which constrained the design of the ships.
  At the beginning of 1903, the Russian Naval General Staff considered sketch designs by the designer of the Borodino class, Dmitry Skvortsov, and the NTC and selected the former's proposal. It also issued more detailed requirements for the new ships. They were to be fitted with 12- and 8-inch guns, each in twin-gun turrets, and equipped with twenty 75-millimetre (3 in) guns for defence against torpedo boats. Their protection was to consist of a 9-inch (229 mm) waterline belt with an upper strake of 7-inch (180 mm) armour or a uniform belt 8 inches thick. The speed of the battleships was to be no less than 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) and they were to have a maximum draught of 26 feet (7.9 m) to allow passage through the Suez Canal. Concerned about stability, the staff reduced the superstructure by one deck. Skvortsov presented his drawings and calculations in June. 
  Skortsov warned about the unacceptable drag of the hull form that he was forced to use and Alexey Krylov, then chief of the Navy's ship model basin agreed, but nothing was done to improve its efficiency. Krylov's planned departure for the Far East forced the NTC to hasten official approval of the draft design. Their presentation on July 4 [O.S. June 21] 1903 ended in an embarrassment: the NTC intended to award the contract for one of two new ships to Baltic Works, but did not even inform its master builder Sergey Ratnik about the project's existence. Ratnik, who had built two of the Borodino-class ships, believed that the new design was inferior to its predecessors. It had no displacement reserve compared to the 242 long tons (246 t) allowed for the Borodino class and the British standard of at least 4% of displacement. The NTC overruled his objections and approved the design for construction. At the end of July, Ratnik appealed to the NTC again, arguing that the mechanisms and systems overlooked by the designers would add 500–600 long tons (510–610 t) to the ship's weight. The NTC dismissed his complaint and proceeded with the flawed design. In line with Russian practice of the period, it was a collective work signed off by a ring of designers and bureaucrats. No one dared to take the lead and assume full responsibility. In August the NTC finalized the design with only marginal improvements. On August 29 [O.S. August 16] 1903 the Ministry of the Navy awarded construction contracts to the Galernyi Island Shipyard (Andrei Pervozvanny) and the Baltic Works (Imperator Pavel I) in Saint Petersburg.
caption: Right elevation and plan from Brassey's Naval Annual 1912. The shaded areas show the ships' armour.
exif: {"Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image ExifOffset": "78", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated"}