Greek battleship Limnos

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Career
Limnos
Ordered:	1914
Laid down:	May 12, 1904
Launched:	December 9, 1905
Commissioned:	July 22, 1914
Decommissioned:	April 23, 1941
Fate:	sunk during German invasion of Greece
Current position:	near Salamis
General Characteristics
Displacement:	Full load 14,095 tons, standard displacement 13,000 tons
Length:	382 ft
Beam:	77 ft
Draft:	24.7 ft
Speed:	Maximum Speed 17 kts. knots
Complement:	34 Officers 710 men
Armament:	four 12-inch guns, eight eight-inch guns, eight seven-inch guns, 12 three-inch guns, six three-pounders, two one-pounders, six .30-caliber machineguns, two 21-inch torpedo tubes
Powerplant:	10,000 horsepower, triple-expansion reciprocating engines, two propellers, 17 knot maximum speed
Armour:	9" Belt, 12" Turrets, 3" Decks, 9" Conning Tower

Limnos (sometimes Lemnos) (Greek: Θ/Κ Λήμνος) was a 13,000 ton Mississippi-class Greek battleship (θωρηκτό) named for a crucial naval battle of the First Balkan War. Laid down for the United States Navy in 1904, she served in that navy as the USS Idaho (BB-24) from 1908 until 1914, when both Mississippi-class ships were purchased from the United States by Greece. Taken over at Newport News, Virginia, late in July of that year, the ship was seized by France along with the rest of the Greek Fleet in 1916 due to Greece's neutrality in World War I (see the National Schism). When the Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos was re-established as head of the entire country in June 1917 and Greece entered the war on the side of the Entente, France turned both battleships over to the Royal Hellenic Navy, where she served in World War I and in the 1919 Allied Crimean expedition in support of White Russian forces, along with Kilkis, Leon and Panther under the command of Rear Admiral G. Kakoulidis, RHN. During the Asia Minor Campaign, she was flagship to the Second Fleet, based in Smyrna, under Rear Admiral G. Kalamidas RHN, her mission being the surveillance of the Black Sea, Dardanelles and Asia Minor coasts. In 1926-28, she underwent boiler repairs. In 1932, her armament was removed and employed as a coastal battery on the island of Aegina. She was sunk in the Salamis channel by Stuka dive bombers on April 23, 1941, during the German invasion of Greece. Her wreck was salvaged for scrap in the 1950s.