HMS Royal Sovereign (05)
 The Royal Sovereign as the Soviet Arkhangelsk |
|
| period of service |
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|---|---|
| Builder: | Portsmouth Naval Dockyard |
| Laid on the keel: | January 15, 1915 |
| Launch: | May 1915 |
| Commissioning: | April 18, 1916 |
| Fate: | Scrapped in 1949 |
| Technical specifications | |
| Displacement : | before renovation:
Normal: 28,000 ts after reconstruction: Normal: 29,600 ts Maximum: 33,000 ts |
| Length: |
Water line : 189 m over all: 190.95 m |
| Width: | before conversion: 27 m after conversion: 30.94 m |
| Draft: | before conversion: 8.5 m
after renovation: 9.76 m |
| Drive: | 4 sets of steam turbines with Parson gears 18 Yarrow steam boilers 40,000 shp (30 MW) |
| Speed: | originally 23 kn (approx. 43 km / h) |
| Range: | 4,000 nm (7,400 km) |
| Crew: | 997-1146 |
| Bunker amount: | 1,040–1,146 t |
| Armament: |
before renovation:
4 × 2 381 mm guns after reconstruction 4 × 2 381 mm guns 17 × 20 mm anti-aircraft guns |
| Armor: | Belt: 102–330 mm Deck: 20–64 mm Towers: up to 330 mm Barbettes: 100–250 mm Command post: 152–280 mm |
The HMS Royal Sovereign was a battleship of the Revenge-class battleship of the Royal Navy. In the First World War it was only put into service after the Battle of the Skagerrak and in the Second World War it was mainly used for relief tasks.
history
Between the wars, the ship was rebuilt several times, including torpedo bulges and reinforced anti-aircraft armament. The latter was reinforced several times during the war. In addition, the Royal Sovereign received a reinforcement of the armor over the ammunition chambers by 51 mm (2 inches) in 1942.
During the Second World War, the Royal Sovereign was first used in the Home Fleet and in the Mediterranean. On July 9, 1940, she took part in the naval battle at Punta Stilo , but had no opportunity to open fire. From late 1941 to late 1943, the ship was part of the British Eastern Fleet and provided convoy escort in the Indian Ocean .
It was awarded to the Red Fleet in 1944 as Arkhangelsk as a replacement for Italian reparations . The background was that the Soviet Union demanded a share of the captured ships of the Italian Navy ( Regia Marina ). As an interim solution, a number of Western Allied ships were made available to the USSR, giving the Soviet fleet access to modern Western equipment, in particular radar . A Soviet crew took over the ship on May 30, 1944, and they accompanied convoy JW-59 on August 24, 1944 in the course of the transfer to Murmansk . The ship remained inactive for the remainder of the war and was returned to the Royal Navy on February 4, 1949 in a completely neglected condition. Allegedly even the ammunition is said to have rusted.
Whereabouts
From May 18, 1949, the Royal Sovereign was in Inverkeithing by the ship demolition company Thomas W. Ward Shipbreakers Ltd. scrapped.
Parts of the mechanics of their towers were later used for the 250-foot "Mark I" radio telescope of the Jodrell Bank Radio Observatory in Cheshire , which was built from 1955 to 1957.
literature
- Jurg Meister: Soviet Warships of the Second World War. Macdonald and Janes, London 1977, ISBN 0-356-08402-7 .
- Siegfried Breyer: Battleships and battle cruisers 1905–1970. JF Lehmanns Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-88199-474-2 .
- Mike J. Whitley: Battleships of World War Two. Cassel & Co, London 2001, ISBN 0-304-35957-2 .
