HMS Royal Sovereign (05)

Royal Sovereign at Philadelphia, September 1943
History
United Kingdom
Name:	Royal Sovereign
Builder:	HM Dockyard, Portsmouth
Cost:	£2,570,504
Laid down:	15 January 1914
Launched:	29 April 1915
Completed:	May 1916
Out of service:	Transferred to the Soviet Navy, 30 May 1944
Identification:	Pennant number: 05
Soviet Union
Commissioned:	30 May 1944
Renamed:	Arkhangelsk
Fate:	Returned to the Royal Navy, January 1949
United Kingdom
Acquired:	January 1949
Renamed:	Royal Sovereign
Fate:	Scrapped, 1949
General characteristics (as built)
Class and type:	Revenge-class battleship
Displacement:	29,970 long tons (30,450 t) (normal) 31,130 long tons (31,630 t) (deep load)
Length:	620 ft 7 in (189.2 m)
Beam:	88 ft 6 in (27.0 m)
Draught:	33 ft 7 in (10.2 m) (deep load)
Installed power:	40,000 shp (30,000 kW) 18 Babcock & Wilcox boilers
Propulsion:	4 shafts; 4 steam turbines
Speed:	23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph)
Range:	7,000 nmi (13,000 km; 8,100 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Crew:	1,240 (1921)
Armament:	4 × twin 15-inch (381 mm) guns 14 × single 6-inch (152 mm) guns 2 × single 3-inch (76 mm) AA guns 4 × single 47 mm (1.9 in) 3-pdr guns 4 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armour:	Waterline belt: 13 in (330 mm) Deck: 1–4 in (25–102 mm) Barbettes: 6–10 in (152–254 mm) Gun turrets: 11–13 in (279–330 mm) Conning tower: 3–11 in (76–279 mm) Bulkheads: 6 in (152 mm)

HMS Royal Sovereign (pennant number 05) was a Revenge-class (also known as Royal Sovereign and R-class) battleship of the Royal Navy displacing 29,970 long tons (30,450 t) and armed with eight 15-inch (381 mm) guns in four twin-gun turrets. She was laid down in January 1914 and launched in April 1915; she was completed in May 1916, but was not ready for service in time to participate in the Battle of Jutland at the end of the month. She served with the Grand Fleet for the remainder of the First World War, but did not see action. In the early 1930s, she was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and based in Malta.

Unlike the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships, Royal Sovereign and her sisters were not modernised during the interwar period. Only minor alterations to her anti-aircraft battery were effected before the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. Assigned to the Home Fleet, the ship was tasked with convoy protection until May 1940, when she returned to the Mediterranean Fleet. Royal Sovereign was present during the Battle of Calabria in July 1940, but her slow speed prevented her from engaging the Italian battleships. By March 1942, she was assigned to the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean, but after the Indian Ocean raid by Admiral Nagumo's Kido Butai, the ship was withdrawn to eastern Africa to escort convoys. In January 1944, she returned to Britain, and in May the Royal Navy transferred Royal Sovereign to the Soviet Navy, which renamed her Arkhangelsk. She then escorted Arctic convoys into Kola until the end of the war. The Soviets returned the ship in 1949, after which she was broken up for scrap.