Greek battleship Salamis
Salamis was a Greek dreadnought battleship. She was ordered as part of a Greek naval rearmament program meant to modernize the fleet. Salamis represented the culmination of a naval arms race between the two countries that had significant effects on the First Balkan War and World War I. The design for Salamis was revised several times during the construction process, in part due to Ottoman acquisitions.
About Greek battleship Salamis in brief
Salamis was a Greek dreadnought battleship. She was ordered as part of a Greek naval rearmament program meant to modernize the fleet. Salamis and several other battleships represented the culmination of a naval arms race between the two countries that had significant effects on the First Balkan War and World War I. The design for Salamis was revised several times during the construction process, in part due to Ottoman acquisitions. Work began on the keel on 23 July 1913, and the hull was launched on 11 November 1914. Construction stopped in December 1914, following the outbreak of World War I in July. The German navy employed the unfinished ship as a floating barracks in Kiel. The hull of the ship remained intact after the war and became the subject of a protracted legal dispute. It was finally awarded to the builders and the Hull was scrapped in 1932. The Greek Navy attempted to buy two older French battleships, and when that purchase failed to materialize, they tried unsuccessfully to buy a pair of British battleships. They then tried to buy ships from the United States, but were rebuffed due to concerns that such a sale would alienate the Ottomans, with whom the Americans had significant industrial and commercial interests. The Greeks were faced with a choice of the arms race, or ordering new capital ships of their own. In early 1912, the Greek Navy convened a committee that would be in charge of acquiring a new capital ship to counter the Ottoman Reşadiye, initially conceived as a battlecruiser.
The new ship would be limited to limited spending, as the government waited for the arrival of British advisers for the project for the new Venizelos. The ship would not be completed until after the Second World War, when it would be completed as a limited capital ship, with a much larger armament of eight 14-inch guns in four turrets. The final version of the design was significantly larger, at 19,500 long tons, with a top speed of 23 knots. Early drafts of the vessel called for a displacement of 13,500 guns in three twin-gun turrets. It would have been armed with an armament of six 14- inch guns. The Vickers design was for a smaller ship armed with nine 10-inch guns, while Armstrong-Whitworth proposed a larger ship armed with 14- inches guns in four turrets. The British officers recommended a program of two 12,000 long tons battleships and a large armored cruiser; offers from Vickers and Armstrong- Whitworth were submitted for the proposed battleships; the Greek government did not pursue these proposals. The initial step in the Greek rearmaments program was completed with the purchase of the Italian-built armored cruiser Georgios Averof in October 1909. The Ottoman, in turn, purchased two German pre-dreadnought Battleships, Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm and Weissenburg, amplifying the naval armsrace between thetwo countries.
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This page is based on the article Greek battleship Salamis published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
