page_title: HMS Royal Sovereign (05)
section_title: Service with the Soviet Navy
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Royal Sovereign (05) / Service history / Second World War / Service with the Soviet Navy
caption_attribution_description: English: THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR. ADMIRALTY OFFICIAL COLLECTION.A gift to Russia; HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN (renamed ARCHANGELSK) after being handed over to the Russian Navy. Also handed over were the submarines URSULA, UNISON, UNBROKEN and SUNFISH as well as eight ex-American destroyers.
context_page_description: HMS Royal Sovereign was a Revenge-class battleship of the Royal Navy displacing 29,970 long tons and armed with eight 15-inch guns in four twin-gun turrets. She was laid down in January 1914 and launched in April 1915; she was completed in May 1916, but was not ready for service in time to participate in the Battle of Jutland at the end of the month. She served with the Grand Fleet for the remainder of the First World War, but did not see action. In the early 1930s, she was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and based in Malta.
  Unlike the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships, Royal Sovereign and her sisters were not modernised during the interwar period. Only minor alterations to her anti-aircraft battery were effected before the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. Assigned to the Home Fleet, the ship was tasked with convoy protection until May 1940, when she returned to the Mediterranean Fleet. Royal Sovereign was present during the Battle of Calabria in July 1940, but her slow speed prevented her from engaging the Italian battleships.
context_section_description: After returning to Britain, Royal Sovereign was sent to the naval base in Scapa Flow. On 30 May 1944 she was transferred on loan to the Soviet Navy as Arkhangelsk in lieu of war reparations from Italy. The ship left Britain on 17 August 1944 as part of the escort for Convoy JW 59, which contained thirty-three merchant vessels. Six days later, while still en route, the convoy was attacked by the U-boat U-711. The submarine's captain, Hans-Günther Lange, incorrectly reported hits on Arkhangelsk and a destroyer, though his torpedoes had exploded prematurely. Under the impression that they had crippled the battleship, the Germans launched several submarine attacks on the ship while she was moored in Kola. Anti-torpedo nets ensured that the attacks failed, however. The Germans then planned to use six Biber midget submarines to attack the ship, but mechanical difficulties eventually forced the cancellation of the plan. Regardless, Arkhangelsk had already departed Kola to patrol the White Sea by the time the Bibers would have arrived. A Soviet crew commissioned the ship on 29 August 1944 at Polyarny. Arkhangelsk was the largest ship in the Soviet fleet during the war. While in Soviet service, she was the flagship of Admiral Gordey Levchenko and was tasked with meeting Allied convoys in the Arctic Ocean and escorting them into Kola.
  Arkhangelsk ran aground in the White Sea in late 1947; the extent of damage, if any, is unknown. The Soviet Navy returned the ship to the Royal Navy on 4 February 1949 after the former Italian battleship Giulio Cesare was transferred to the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. The Soviet Navy had initially sought to avoid sending the ship back, claiming that she was not sufficiently seaworthy to make the voyage back to Britain. After an inspection by a Royal Navy officer, however, the Soviet Navy agreed to return the vessel in January 1949. Upon returning to the Rosyth naval base, Royal Navy personnel thoroughly inspected the ship and found much of her equipment to be unserviceable. It appeared to the inspectors that the main battery turrets had not been rotated while the ship was in Soviet service, and were jammed on the centreline. As a result of her poor condition, she was sold for scrap. The ship arrived at Thos W Ward's scrapyard at Inverkeithing, Scotland, on 18 May to be broken up. The elevation mechanisms from her main battery gun turrets were later reused in the 250-foot (76 m) Mark I radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire built in 1955–1957.
caption: Royal Sovereign as Arkhangelsk in Soviet service
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