Petropavlovsk was built by the
Baltic Works in
Saint Petersburg. Her keel was
laid down on 16 June 1909 and she was
launched on 22 September 1911. She entered service on 5 January 1915, six months after the start of
World War I, when she reached
Helsinki and was assigned to the First Battleship Brigade of the
Baltic Fleet.
Petropavlovsk and her sister provided distant cover for
minelaying operations on 10–11 November and 6 December 1915. She saw no action of any kind during 1916. Her crew joined the general
mutiny of the Baltic Fleet on 16 March 1917, after the idle sailors received word of the
February Revolution in Saint Petersburg. The
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk required the Soviets to evacuate their naval base at Helsinki in March 1918 or have their ships interned by newly independent
Finland even though the
Gulf of Finland was still frozen over.
Petropavlovsk and her sisters led the first group of ships on 12 March and reached
Kronstadt five days later in what became known as the
"Ice Voyage". in 1934
Petropavlovsk was the only operable dreadnought belonging to the Soviets and provided cover to smaller ships on raiding missions. On 31 May 1919 she fired in support of the and several
minesweepers that had taken the bait laid by the British forces supporting the
White Russians. The British
destroyer appeared to be operating alone and the Soviets sortied to attack her, but a number of other British destroyers were positioned to sweep in behind the Soviets.
Azard retreated at full speed and
Petropavlovsk opened fire on
Walker at about . She hit
Walker twice, inflicting only minor damage and wounding two sailors, and the British destroyers eventually disengaged when they got too close to Soviet
coastal artillery and
minefields. A few days later
Petropavlovsk and the
pre-dreadnought battleship bombarded
Fort Krasnaya Gorka whose garrison had mutinied against the Bolsheviks. She fired no fewer than 568 12-inch shells and the garrison surrendered on 17 June when
Leon Trotsky promised them their lives, only to subsequently order them machine-gunned. On 17 August 1919
Petropavlovsk was claimed as torpedoed and put out of action by the British
Coastal Motor Boat CMB 88 during
a night attack in Kronstadt harbor, but was, in fact, not damaged at all. The crew of
Petropavlovsk joined the
Kronstadt rebellion of March 1921. After it was bloodily crushed she was renamed
Marat to honor the French revolutionary leader
Jean-Paul Marat on 31 March 1921. By 1922 her primary rangefinder had been moved to a platform on the foremast and she mounted three 3-inch "Lender" AA guns each on the roofs of the fore and aft turrets.
Marat was partially reconstructed between the northern autumn of 1928 and 8 April 1931 at the Baltic Works. The most obvious external change was a much more elaborate forward superstructure needed to house new fire control instruments. A KDP-6
fire-control director, with two
Zeiss rangefinders, was positioned at the top of the tubular foremast. An Zeiss rangefinder was also added on the rear superstructure. The top of the forward funnel was lengthened by about and angled backwards in an attempt to keep the exhaust gases away from the control and gunnery spaces. A
derrick was added to the mainmast to handle a
KR-1 flying boat imported from Germany that was stored above the third turret. No
aircraft catapult was fitted so the aircraft had to take off and land on the water. A
forecastle was added to the bow, which was also given much more sheer and flare to improve her sea-keeping abilities. Her turrets were overhauled, her guns replaced and new 8-meter rangefinders were installed on every turret. Her boilers were converted to only burn fuel oil and the more powerful boilers allowed the forward three boilers to be removed. The space freed up was used for anti-aircraft ammunition and various control spaces. The cruising turbines were also removed which simplified the ship's machinery at a small cost in power. These changes increased her displacement to at full load and her overall length to . Her
metacentric height increased to from her designed mainly because she now carried much of her fuel in her double bottom rather than in coal bunkers high on the sides of the ship. More weight was added to her before World War II, including an increase in the thickness of her turret roofs to , that decreased her metacentric height to only . This was unsatisfactory and plans were made to reconstruct her again, but they were cancelled when the Germans attacked in 1941.
Marat took part in the
1937 Coronation Review in Britain. Her participation in the
Winter War was minimal as she bombarded Finnish coast defense guns one time at
Saarenpää in the
Koivisto Islands with 133
high explosive shells before the Gulf of Finland iced over. In early 1940 her anti-aircraft armament was reinforced. She exchanged her elderly 3-inch "Lender" guns for modern
34-K guns and two twin-gun 76.2 mm 81-K mounts were mounted on her quarterdeck. The magazines for these guns were situated in the rearmost casemates on each beam, which lost their 120 mm guns. At some point six automatic
70-K guns were also added. These additions boosted her displacement to at full load. She sailed to
Tallinn shortly after the Soviets
occupied Estonia, although she returned to Kronstadt on 20 June 1941, two days before the
German invasion of Russia began. She was sunk at her moorings on 23 September 1941 by two near-simultaneous hits by bombs near the forward superstructure. They caused the explosion of the forward
magazine which heaved the turret up, blew the superstructure and forward funnel over to starboard and demolished the forward part of the hull from frames 20 to 57. 326 men were killed and the ship gradually settled to the bottom in of water. Her sinking is commonly credited to the
Stuka pilot
Oberleutnant Hans-Ulrich Rudel of III./
StG 2, but Rudel dropped only one of the two bombs. The rear part of the ship was later refloated and she was used as a floating battery although all of her 120 mm guns were removed. Initially only the two rearmost turrets were operable, but the second turret was repaired by the autumn of 1942. She fired a total of 1,971 twelve-inch shells during the
siege of Leningrad. She resumed her original name on 31 May 1943. After the war there were several plans to reconstruct her, using the bow of the
Frunze, but they were not accepted and were formally cancelled on 29 June 1948. She was renamed
Volkhov, after the nearby
river, on 28 November 1950 and served as a stationary training ship until stricken on 4 September 1953. The ship was subsequently broken up. ==Notes==