In 1886 the Imperial Russian Navy adopted the 12-inch 35 caliber
Krupp gun. The first batch of six German-made guns was installed on
Chesma. Local production of the modified Krupp gun began in 1891. Eleven Obukhov guns were installed on
Navarin,
Chesma and
Georgii Pobedonosets. The low firing rate of these guns made them a temporary, intermediate weapon. In the same 1891 the Naval Technical Committee ordered the Obukhov Works to design a new gun with improved range and firing rate, employing
smokeless powder. In May 1892 the Navy issued a firm contract for the guns and turrets of
Tri Sviatitelia, followed by
Sissoi Veliky and the
Petropavlovsk class in May 1893. Obukhov presented the first 12-inch 40 caliber gun for trials in March 1895, thus the new gun was also unofficially called
Model 1895. but the Krupp legacy persisted in the Navy's largest guns. The 12-inch 40-caliber became the Navy's standard main gun and was employed on all its
pre-dreadnought battleships starting with
Sissoi Veliky of the
Baltic Fleet and
Tri Sviatitelia of the
Black Sea Fleet. The seventeen battleships employing these guns had turrets of six distinct types. The earliest turrets of
Tri Sviatitelia,
Sissoi Veliky,
Pobeda and
Petropavlovsk were powered with
hydraulic machinery and their firing rate was on par with the 12-inch 35 caliber guns mounted in electrified turrets. At the beginning of World War I, the Imperial Navy ordered a second production run of the 12-inch 40-caliber model to replace the worn-out guns of the surviving pre-dreadnoughts. By the end of 1916 thirty new guns, produced at Obukhov Works and in England, were stockpiled in Saint Petersburg,
Kronstadt and
Sevastopol. The planned refit of the old battleships was interrupted by the
1917 Revolution. In the 1930s these guns were installed in coastal defence batteries and on TM-2-12
railway gun platforms serving in the Far East. == Operators ==