Borodino Class Battleship - Design

Design

The Borodino-class battleships were the most numerous class of battleships ever built by Russia. Although they were to be near duplicates of the Tsesarevich, as soon as the contracts were signed it became clear that they would be quite different than the French-built ship. The basic problem facing the Russian government was that the Borodinos would have heavier engines and larger turrets which would require a designer to build the same Tsesarevich type warship which had the same speed, draft, guns and armor, but had a bigger displacement. The new design was made up by D. V. Skvortsov of the Russian Naval Technical Committee (NTC). He completed his new design in July/August, one month after the original contract had been signed. The new concept was roughly 1,000 tons heavier and slightly larger and wider than the Tsesarevich.

Outwardly, the biggest change was in the appearance of the Borodinos from the original Tsesarevich design. Skvortsov added two more casemates, each containing four 75mm guns, one at the bow and the other aft. This was added to the already existing 12 75mm guns emplaced along the sides above the armor belt. This resulted in the tumblehome hull design over the twelve guns to be done away with, and flat sided armor was used in its place. Thus the five Borodino class battleships only had tumblehome hulls both fore and aft of their 75mm guns emplaced along their sides.

Along with the lead-ship of the class, Tsesarevich, the vessels suffered from instability having a high centre of gravity (made worse by overloading). The centreline bulkhead led to a danger of capsizing and a narrow armour belt became submerged due to overloading. As such, some naval architects regard these as some of the worst battleships ever built.