Imperator Aleksandr II Class Battleship

Imperator Aleksandr II Class Battleship

The Imperator Aleksandr II class battleships were two battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1880s. They were intended to counter the small armored ships of the other Baltic powers. Construction was very prolonged and the ships were virtually obsolescent when completed. They were optimized for ramming.

Imperator Aleksandr II served in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas before becoming a gunnery training ship in 1904, but she was inactive during World War I before joining the Bolsheviks in 1917. She was sold for scrap in 1922. Imperator Nikolai I served in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas as well as the Pacific Ocean during the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. She surrendered after the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 and was commissioned in the Imperial Japanese Navy before she was sunk as a target in 1915.