Borodino - class battlecruiser The Borodino " - class battlecruisers ( ) were a group of four battlecruisers ordered by the Imperial Russian Navy before World War I . Also referred to as the Izmail " class , they were laid down in December 1912 at Saint Petersburg for service with the Baltic Fleet . Construction of the ships was delayed as many domestic factories were overloaded with orders and some components had to be ordered from abroad . The start of World War I slowed their construction still further as the imported components were often not delivered and domestic production was diverted into areas more immediately useful for the war effort . Three of the four ships were launched in 1915 and the fourth in 1916 . Work on the gun turret s lagged , and it became evident that Russian industry would not be able to complete the ships during the war . The Russian Revolution of 1917 put a stop to their construction , which was never resumed . Although some consideration was given to finishing the hulls that were nearest to completion , they were all eventually sold for scrap by the Soviet Union . The Soviet Navy proposed in 1925 to convert " Izmail " , the ship closest to completion , to an aircraft carrier , but the plan was cancelled after political maneuvering by the Red Army led to funding not being available . Design and development . After the end of the Russo - Japanese War of 1905 , the Russian Naval General Staff decided that it needed a squadron of fast " armoured cruiser s " that could use their speed to engage the leader of an enemy ' s battle line , much as Admiral Tōgō had done against the Russian fleet during the Battle of Tsushima . Initially the Naval General Staff wanted a ship with high speed ( ) , guns , and limited protection ( a waterline belt of ) ; the Tsar approved construction of four such ships on 5 May 1911 , but the Duma session ended before the proposal could be voted on . Preliminary bids for the ships were solicited from private builders , but the bids proved to be very high , leading to a reconsideration of the requirements . A new specification was issued on 1 July 1911 by the Naval General Staff for a ship with a speed of only and with armour increased to . Armaments were increased to nine guns in three non - superfiring triple - gun turret s , based on a false rumor that the Germans were increasing the caliber of their guns . The Russian Navy believed that widely separating the main gun magazine s improved the survivability of the ship , and that under a superfiring arrangement , muzzle blast would hurt the sailors manning the gun sight s in the lower turrets through the open sighting hoods on the turret roofs . The Naval Ministry solicited new bids on 8 September from 23 shipbuilders , domestic and foreign , but only seven responded , even after the deadline was extended by a month . A number of designs were rejected for not meeting the revised criteria . In the meantime , the Artillery Section of the Main Administration of Shipbuilding had decided that it preferred a four - turret design , and new bids were solicited in May 1912 from the leading contenders from the first round of bidding . The eventual winner was a design by the Admiralty Works in Saint Petersburg , which had the extra turret added to a new hull section inserted into the original three - turret design . The Duma approved construction in May 1912 , before the design was finalised , and allocated 45 . 5 million rubles for each ship . However , the increase in armaments and consequential increase in the size of the ships raised their estimated cost by seven million rubles each , and some money was diverted from the budget for the s . Orders were placed on 18 September 1912 for a pair of ships each from the New Admiralty Shipyard and the Baltic Works . The first pair was to be ready for trials on 14 July 1916 and the second pair on 14 September 1916 . Full - scale armour trials revealed serious weaknesses in the proposed protection scheme . The trials employed the obsolete ironclad , modified with armour protection identical to that used by the s then under construction . The deck and turret roof armour proved to be too thin , and the structure supporting the side armour was not strong enough to withstand the shock of impact from heavy shells . The design of the " Borodino " - class ships was modified as a consequence , which slowed their construction . Deck armour was reinforced with extra plates , the turret roofs were increased to a thickness of , and the side and roof of the conning tower were increased by and respectively . To compensate for the additional weight , the rear conning tower was removed entirely and the thickness of the main belt was reduced by . Mortise and tenon joints were introduced between the armour plates along their vertical edges to better distribute the shock of a shell impact and to lessen the stress on the supporting hull structure . The launching of the first pair of ships was postponed by six months because of these changes , plus delays imposed by the large number of ship orders already in hand . The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 caused further delays as a number of components had been ordered from foreign manufacturers . As an example , the gun turrets rested on roller bearings made in Germany , but attempts to order replacements from the United Kingdom and Sweden proved futile , as no company was willing and able to make the bearings . Components for the turbines of " Navarin " and " Izmail " that had been ordered from AG Vulcan in Germany were seized by the German government at the beginning of the war and used in the construction of the two s . General characteristics . The " Borodino " - class ships were long overall . They had a beam of and a draught of at full load . The ships displaced normally , and at ( full load ) . High - tensile steel was used throughout the hull with mild steel used only in areas that did not contribute to structural strength . The hull was subdivided into 25 transverse watertight bulkheads and the engine room was divided by a longitudinal bulkhead . The double bottom had a height of , while the vitals of the ship were protected by a triple bottom that added an extra of depth . The design called for a freeboard of forward , amidships and aft . The ships were fitted with three Frahm anti - rolling tanks on each side . Propulsion . Two sets of steam turbines were ordered on 22 April 1913 from the Franco - Russian Works in Saint Petersburg for the Admiralty - built ships ; the Baltic Works built its own turbines , with some components ordered from abroad . The wing propeller shafts were powered by high - pressure impulse - reaction turbines , and the inboard shafts were powered by low - pressure reaction - type turbines . They produced a total of and were designed to be overloaded to . The turbines were powered by 25 triangular Yarrow boilers with a working pressure of . The forward boilers were grouped into three compartments with three oil - fired boilers in each compartment . The rear boilers were split into four compartments with each containing four coal - fired boilers fitted with oil sprayers . Maximum speed was estimated at 26 . 5 knots , although forcing the machinery would increase it to . Coal capacity was and fuel oil capacity was , which gave an estimated range of at full speed . The " Borodino " - class ships had six turbo generator s and two diesel generators , each rated at . These were divided among four compartments on the platform deck , two forward and two aft of the machinery . The generators powered a complex electrical system that combined alternating current for most equipment with direct current for heavy - load machinery such as the turret motors . Armament . The main armament consisted of four electrically powered turrets , which were never built . The turrets were designed to elevate and traverse at a rate of 3° per second . Each would have had three 52 - calibre Model 1913 guns . The guns could be depressed to −5° and elevated to + 25° . They could be loaded at any angle between −5° and + 15° ; the expected rate of fire was three rounds per minute . At full load , 80 rounds per gun could be carried . The guns fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of ; this provided a maximum range of . The secondary armament consisted of twenty - four 55 - calibre 130 mm Pattern 1913 guns mounted in casemate s . A pair of casemates were situated on each side , below the three rear turrets ; near the forward turret were six additional casemates , two of which were directly above the middle pair . This positioning reflected the Naval General Staff ' s prediction of the most likely direction of attack by torpedo boat s . The anti - aircraft armament was intended to be four 38 - caliber anti - aircraft gun s fitted on the upper deck with 220 rounds stored per gun . Four guns were to be mounted in pairs on the main turret roofs for sub - caliber training with the main guns . Six underwater torpedo tube s were fitted , three on each broadside ; they were provided with a total of eighteen torpedoes . Fire control . The fore and aft main gun turrets were given a rangefinder , and there was another unit on top of the conning tower . These would provide data for the Geisler central artillery post computer , which would then transmit commands to the gun crew . The mechanical fire - control computer would have been either a Pollen Argo range clock , which had been bought in 1913 , or a domestically designed Erikson system . Protection . The trials with the " Chesma " greatly affected the armour protection design of the " Borodino " - class ships . The Krupp cemented - armour plates were sized to match the frames to provide support for their joints , and they were locked together with mortise - and - tenon joints to better distribute the shock of a shell ' s impact . The waterline belt covered the middle of the ship . It had a total height of , of which was above the design waterline and below . It was backed by 75 millimeters of wood to make a better fit between the hull and the armour . The remaining portion of the waterline was protected by plates backed by of wood . The upper belt was thick and had a height of . It thinned to 75 mm forward of the casemates all the way to the bow . The rear portion of the forecastle deck was protected by an upward extension of the upper belt in the area of the forward barbette s and the upper casemates . The upper casemates themselves were protected from axial fire by 100 mm transverse bulkheads . Behind the side armour was an inboard longitudinal splinter bulkhead that was thick between the middle and lower decks . This decreased to between the middle and upper decks . The bulkhead sloped away from the edge of the lower deck to the lower edge of the armour belt with a total thickness of 75 mm . The slope was one 50 mm plate of Krupp non - cemented armour ( KNC ) on a 25 mm nickel - steel plate . The forward end of the armoured citadel was protected separately and the transverse bulkhead was therefore only 75 mm thick . The rear bulkhead had no other protection and was thick between the middle and lower decks , decreasing to 75 mm at the level of the armour belt . The main gun turrets had sides 300 mm thick with 150 mm roofs . The gun ports were protected by 50 mm plates , and 25 mm bulkheads separated each gun . The barbettes were thick , decreasing to when behind other armour . They were shaped like truncated cones which matched the trajectories of descending shells and thus lessened their protective value . The conning tower was thick , reduced to 300 mm below the upper deck . The funnel uptakes were protected by 50 mm of armour . The upper deck was thick while the middle deck consisted of plates of KNC on 25 mm of nickel - steel over the armoured citadel . Underwater protection was minimal : there was only a watertight bulkhead behind the upward extension of the double bottom , and even this was thinner as the hull narrowed towards the end turrets . Construction . All four ships were officially laid down on 19 December 1912 , but work did not begin until March – April 1913 . After a progress review on 4 June 1914 , launching of the first pair of ships was delayed until October 1914 . When World War I began , the hull of " Izmail " , the most advanced ship , was judged 43 percent complete , with the others lagging considerably behind . The war caused more delays , including problems obtaining imported components , and the ships were competing for scarce resources with other production deemed necessary for the war . Three of the four ships were launched in 1915 , but it was clear that Russian industry would not be able to complete them during the war , mostly because the turrets were seriously delayed . They were reclassified as 2nd rank projects by the Main Administration of Shipbuilding in 1916 . A number of plans were made for the post - war completion of the ships , including modifying the turrets to load at a fixed angle of + 4° to reduce the weight and complexity of the loading equipment . Another intended change was to lengthen the funnels by to minimise smoke interference with the bridge , as this had been noted as a problem on the " Gangut " - class dreadnoughts . There were suggestions to improve the machinery with geared turbines , turbo - electric drive , or Föttinger ' s hydraulic transmission , but these were more theoretical than practical . After the February Revolution , the condition of the ships was assessed on 28 April 1917 . The ship that was furthest along was the " Ismail " : her hull , engines , and boilers were around 65 % complete , and her armour was 36 % complete . Her turrets , however , were not expected to be completed until 1919 . The Congress of Shipyard Workers decided to continue work on the " Izmail " in mid - 1917 , but only to provide jobs . The Provisional Government halted all work on " Borodino " , " Kinburn " , and " Navarin " on 24 October 1917 , and the Soviet Supreme Naval College ordered work on " Izmail " halted on 14 December 1917 . After the end of the Russian Civil War the victorious Bolsheviks considered finishing " Izmail " , and possibly " Borodino " , to their original design . It would have taken at least two years to build all of " Izmail " s turrets , even if enough guns had been available . Ten had been delivered by Vickers before the Revolution and one gun had been completed domestically in 1912 , but the prospects that more guns could be purchased from Vickers or that the Soviets could make more were not promising , given the state of their heavy industry in the wake of the Civil War . Another problem was the complicated electrical system ; it could not be completed under current conditions , and at least twenty months would be required to replace it with a simpler system . The Soviets considered finishing " Kinburn " and " Navarin " to a modified design that featured guns ; a two - gun turret weighed slightly less than a triple 14 - inch gun turret . Four proposals were made with various changes to the turrets ' armour scheme , but none were accepted , not least because the prospects of actually acquiring such guns were minimal . Domestic industry was not capable of building such large guns and they were not able to purchase the guns from any foreign company . Other ideas were examined for the three less complete ships . These included converting the hulls to cargo ships , passenger liners , or oil barges , but most of the ideas were rejected as the hulls were thought to be too large and unwieldy for the proposed alternative uses . None of the proposals was accepted , and all three of the less complete ships were sold to a German company for scrap on 21 August 1923 to raise much - needed cash for the government . The Operational Administration of the Soviet Navy worked out the requirements in May 1925 for a conversion that would have made " Izmail " into an aircraft carrier with a top speed of and a capacity of fifty aircraft . She would have been armed with eight guns and her armour reduced to a maximum of . This proposal was approved by Alexey Rykov , Chairman of the Council of the People ' s Commissars on 6 July 1925 . The plan was cancelled on 16 March 1926 after the Red Army managed to gain control of a commission appointed to review the needs of the Navy , and the Army was strongly opposed to spending additional money on naval projects . She was scrapped beginning in 1931 in Leningrad . Ships . The ships were named after battles fought by the Russian Empire :