Gangut was built by the
Admiralty Works in
Saint Petersburg. Her keel was laid down on 16 June 1909 and she was launched on 22 September 1911. At the end of October 1914, she collided with her sister
Poltava which delayed her trials, scheduled for 9 November 1914, to late December 1914. She entered service on 11 January 1915 when she reached
Helsinki and was assigned to the First Battleship Brigade of the
Baltic Fleet.
Gangut and her
sister provided distant cover for
minelaying operations south of
Liepāja on 27 August, the furthest that any Russian dreadnought ventured out of the
Gulf of Finland during World War I. She ran aground on 10 September, but suffered only minor damage. A minor
mutiny broke out on 1 November when the executive officer refused to feed the crew the traditional meal of meat and
macaroni after coaling. The return of the captain and the issue of a dinner of tinned meat restored order on the ship. On 10–11 November and 6 December
Gangut and her sister again provided distant cover for minelaying operations. 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 base at Helsinki in March 1918 or have them interned by newly independent
Finland even though the
Gulf of Finland was still frozen over.
Gangut 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'.
Gangut was
laid up on 9 November 1918 for lack of manpower and was renamed
Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya on 27 June 1925 while she was being refitted. She was recommissioned on 23 March 1926 and began a partial reconstruction on 12 October 1931, incorporating the lessons from the earlier modernizations of her sisters
Marat and
Parizhskaya Kommuna. The tubular tower-mast was replaced by a larger and sturdier structure with a KDP-6
fire control director, equipped with two
Zeiss rangefinders positioned on top. The aft superstructure was enlarged and a new structure was built just forward of it, with another KDP-6 director surmounting it, which required the repositioning of the mainmast forward. This did not leave enough room for a
derrick, as was used on
Marat, so two large boat cranes were mounted on each side of the mainmast. Her funnel was curved to the rear rather than angled like
Marat. Each turret received Italian rangefinders and their roof armor was increased to in thickness. A new forecastle, much like that of
Marat, was fitted to improve seakeeping. Six
34-K anti-aircraft (AA) guns were added, three on the roofs of the fore and aft turrets. All twenty-five of her old
boilers were replaced by a dozen oil-fired boilers originally intended for the
Izmail. The space saved was used to add another inboard longitudinal watertight bulkhead that greatly improved her underwater protection. Her original Pollen Argo Clock mechanical fire-control computer was upgraded with a copy of a
Vickers Ltd fire-control computer, designated AKUR by the Soviets, as well as a copy of a
Sperry stable vertical
gyroscope. These changes increased her displacement to at full load and her overall length to . Her
metacentric height decreased to from her designed as a result of her enlarged superstructures. She finished her reconstruction on 4 August 1934.
Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya sailed to
Tallinn shortly after the Soviets
occupied Estonia, but she was refitted in February–March 1941 in Kronstadt and her anti-aircraft armament was reinforced. Two twin-gun
81-K mounts were mounted on her quarterdeck. The magazines for these guns were probably situated in the rearmost casemates on each beam, which lost their 120-mm guns and twelve automatic
70-K guns were also added, three guns each on the middle turrets and the other six in the fore and aft superstructures. Four twin and four single
DShK machine guns and two AA directors were also fitted. The large cranes were replaced by smaller ones taken from the ex-German
heavy cruiser Petropavlovsk to make room for the anti-aircraft guns. On 22 June 1941
Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya was in
Tallinn when the Germans
invaded the Soviet Union, but she was forced to sail for
Kronstadt by the advancing Germans. She opened fire on troop positions of the German
18th Army on 8 September from the channel between
Leningrad and Kronstadt, and probably landed four guns on the following day for use ashore. She was hit again by one heavy and three medium bombs dropped by
Heinkel He 111s of
KG 4 during the night of 4–5 April. and again by three bombs on 24 April. Her repairs were completed in November 1942, although a quadruple 37-mm 46-K gun mount was added in September. She supported Soviet forces during the
Siege of Leningrad, the
Leningrad–Novgorod Offensive in January 1944 and the
Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive in June 1944. She received a
Lend-Lease British
Type 279 air-warning radar sometime during 1944. On 22 July 1944 she was awarded the
Order of the Red Banner. She was reclassified as a 'school battleship' on 24 July 1954 and stricken on 17 February 1956. She was slowly scrapped and her hulk still survived in May 1958. ==Notes==