With the introduction of Soviet cruiser Sevastopol in the game, we get a glimpse of how a completed unit in the super-cruiser Kronshtadt−class might have appeared had either ship been completed—and modernized in the early Cold War.
Sevastopol, like cruiser Gouden Leeuw, comes equipped with main battery turrets well familiar to the Baltic Sea. However, unlike the Dutch cruiser, the Soviet vessel mounts the German twin 15-inch Drh.L. C/34e turret, the same outfitted in Bismarck and Tirpitz. Even more intriguing, or perhaps mind-boggling, is that World of Warships now offers three playable ships—Siegfried, Sevastopol, and Gneisenau—sharing the same three historical turret assemblies.
Battleship main armament is usually the longest lead-time item, with gun mechanisms and barrels typically ordered and completed first for any new class. The Kriegsmarine’s ambitious Z-plan alone exceeded Krupp’s capacity to produce the 38 cm SK C/34 naval gun and the subsequent Drh.L. C/34e turret with sufficient speed. Nonetheless, with two O-class battlecruisers planned (e.g., Siegfried), Krupp began work on the required six turret assemblies. With the war outbreak in 1939, the Z-plan was put on hold, the O-class was canceled, and the Scharnhorst-class refitting, which required by itself six turrets, was postponed as the German high command pressed all available capital ships into the fight against the Royal Navy. This postponement left Krupp with six turret assemblies in various stages of completion.
In 1940, the Soviet Navy approached the German naval delegation in Moscow to purchase main armament for the Kronshtadt−class ships. Buying foreign-made weapons would allow Soviet engineers to focus on the ship’s armor and machinery, major areas that were still lagging two years into construction. The German government agreed to trade the armament for food and raw materials. The six unfinished turrets and their twelve guns were to be transferred to the Soviet Union under this agreement.
By the time Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Krupp had completed at least three of the six Drh.L. C/34e turret assemblies, but none had been transferred. Several months later, in late February 1942, battleship Gneisenau suffered a magazine detonation while being repaired and refitted in Gotenhafen (Gdynia) after a bomb hit during an air raid. The Kriegsmarine saw the need to rebuild the ship as a perfect opportunity to refit it with Krupp’s 15-inch turrets. Gneisenau’s burnt-out bow was cut away and lengthened to add additional buoyancy to account for the extra weight of the larger turrets. The turrets were delivered to Gotenhafen and prepared for installation; however, Hitler ordered all work on capital ships to be halted in 1943, as German surface units had underperformed during the war. The assemblies were likely stripped of electrical and hydraulic components, as well as their guns, which went to Norway for coastal defense, with the turret houses abandoned. Gneisenau would sit turretless until 1945, when it was sunk in the harbor as a block ship, to be then raised and scrapped by Poland in 1951.
Kronshtadt would also never be completed, left instead to rot on its slipway until 1945 and ultimately broken up for scraps in 1947. The lessons learned from this project would heavily influence the design of the next class of Soviet super cruisers, the Stalingrad class.
Drawing of Gneisenau after the 1942 refit, showing her with three twin 15-inch turrets. The cross-section is of turret A. Note the barbette and turtle-back armor.
A remarkable view of Kronshtadt under construction at Leningrad. The German observers initially thought the ship was an aircraft carrier due to the lack of barbette structures, usually present early on during construction. This indicates that even as the ship was under construction, the final armament had not been decided.
Battleship Bismarck
A Design and Operational History
Drawing on survivors' accounts and the authors' combined decades of experience in naval architecture, Battleship Bismarck is a marine forensics analysis and engineering study of the design, operational career, and loss of Germany's greatest battleship.
Russian and Soviet Battleships
Russian and Soviet Battleships is the definitive English language overview of Russian and Soviet battleships, from the ironclad Petr Velikii of 1869 to Stalin’s final projects. This reissue was made possible by Drachinifel, Naval Historiographer and World of Warships Community Contributor.
Other Noteworthy Titles From the Naval Institute Press
U.S. Aircraft Carriers, Revised Edition
U.S. Aircraft Carriers, Revised Edition, is one the most comprehensive references available on the entire development of U.S. Aircraft Carriers, starting in 1920 with USS Langley CV-1 to the new Ford class.
U.S. Navy Attack Aircraft, 1920-2020
U.S. Navy Attack Aircraft, 1920–2020, is uniquely told from the point of view of the Navy, as understood through its previously-classified documents. Spanning a century from the earliest airplanes conceived to operate by U.S. carriers in 1920 to the current F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).
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