Tag: Military

Russian Battleship Imperator Aleksandr III

Imperator Aleksandr III was a battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy. The third and last of the three ship Imperatritsa Mariya-class (along with her sisters Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya and Imperatritsa Mariya), she was launched 15 April 1914. Completion was delayed as effort was concentrated on her two more advanced sisters. Additionally, the delivery of her turbines from Britain was also delayed.

Renamed Volia (Freedom), she entered service on 17 July 1917. By this time, the Black Sea Fleet had become ineffective dure to the February 1917 Revolution and she saw no combat. On 1st of October 1918, she was handed to the Germans who commissioned her into the Imperial German Navy and manned her with the crew of the decommissioned dreadnought Rheinland. Several cruises were made, but she was not combat ready before Germany surrendered and she was handed to the British on 24 November 1918.

The Royal Navy sailed Volia to Izmit in Turkey. On 29 October 1919 she was sailed back to Sevastopol by a crew from the battleship HMS Iron Duke and turned over to the White Russians on 1 November. They renamed her General Alekseyev and carried out shore bombardments with only three of her of twelve guns operable. With the collapse of the White Russian armies in Southern Russia in 1920, the ship helped to evacuate the Whites from the Crimea to Bizerte, where she was interned with the rest of White Russian’s fleet. Negotiations to sell her to the Soviet Union fell through and she was sold for scrap in the late 1920s to pay her docking costs although she was not actually broken up until 1936.