Shipbucket

Hello everyone!

The short-lived pride of the Tsar's Black Sea Fleet: the battleship Imperatritsa Mariya. Not a handsome ship, but by all accounts a good one, certainly much better than the Baltic Fleet's Gangut and her sisters, being much better protected and not very much slower in service (according to a german report, Mariya and her sister ship Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya once almost ran down SMS Goeben, which should have been five knots faster by design).



Sister ships to follow soon.

Greetings
GD

I've always been very confused about the fact that Russia designed their ships differently for different of their fleets. It feels like a drop in flexibility to me.
Anyway, a very nice drawing. I quite like these vessels(as well as the Ganguts), even though they're not very pretty.

Very interesting ship. I like the two rudders. What's that boom at the bow?

Wonderful drawing, GD. Anticipating the sisters.

Beautiful work of art GD.
These ships are lesser known, and so it is wonderful they are been done.
Well done.

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Thank you Kim for the crest

"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

Very nice work! Are you also planning to do the various versions of the Gangut-class?

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

Awesome work!

@KHT
Russians assumed (quite correctly) that in case of any major European war each fleet would be effectively cut off from the others, so flexibility and interchangeability were not that much of an issue from their perspective.

They probably knew that in the event of a war against a major power, their navy would be largely ineffective.

This is another piece of excellent work. It's really nice to see these in SB.
I've always liked these and the Ganguts because they look so much like floating batteries, they have serious firepower and everything else topside is subservient to that. They look capable of dishing out shells and are very workmanlike. No pretty curves and features here!

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Marvelous, this will certainly inspire me to redo the Ganguts at some point...

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Hello again!

Thanks everyone! Now - out of chronological order - the third unit of the class, the Imperator Aleksandr III. She was mostly identical to Mariya, but did not receive the crane-like application at the bows (either some kind of mooring aid device or some kind of minesweeping gear, or both, sources differ); at least there are no photographs showing her with it. She received some kind of bowsprit instead which was not hinged, but retractable; what purose it served (probably the same) I could not find out. Maybe Golly knows more about that. The other differences were the brigde (no charthouse on top of the bridge, because she was not fitted as flagship), the slightly different antenna rig, different placement of AA guns (two abreast on turrets A and Y) and the lack of the foremost 130/55 gun (Mariya's forward casemate tended to be flooded all the time when she went at speed, so they removed the gun and welded the casemate shut on Aleksandr). Aleksandr III had also received additional rangefinders at the rear of each heavy turret, which Mariya would have received too if she had not been lost early.



Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya will follow next week, and the never finished Imperator Nikolay I later this month.

Greetings
GD