Battleship Imperator Aleksander III

The Imperator Aleksander III (Император Александр Третий) was a Dreadnought Battleship of the Imperial Russian Navy, She was a ship of the Imperatritsa Mariya class battleships.

Imperator Aleksander III (Император Александр Третий) was launched in 1914, renamed Volya (Воля, Freedom) in 1917 and then General Alekseev (Генерал Алексеев )in 1920. The ship did not take part in operations during World War I due to long delays in the delivery of its machinery from Britain, but was able to go to sea by 1917 and conduct a series of trials. However, final outfitting was interrupted by the chaos of the Russian Revolution and was never fully completed. In 1918 the ship was under German control for a few months. After Germany's surrender it was seized by the British, who moved it to Izmir in Turkey. In 1919 it passed under the control of White Russian forces and returned to the Black Sea, where it fought in the Russian Civil War against the Red Army, mainly by carrying out shore bombardments. With the collapse of the White Russian armies in Southern Russia in 1920, the battleship participated in their evacuation and then sailed to the Mediterranean, where it was interned in Bizerta. With the French recognition of the USSR in 1924 the ship passed to Soviet control, but it never returned to service and was scrapped in France.