:List of battleships of Greece

File:Salamis illustration.png]]

{{main|Greek battleship Salamis}}

Starting in 1911, the Ottoman Empire—Greece's traditional naval rival—set about modernizing its fleet. That year, the Ottomans ordered the dreadnought {{ship|Ottoman battleship|Reşadiye||2}}. The expansion of Ottoman naval power threatened Greek control of the Aegean; to counter the Ottoman dreadnought, Greece decided to order a dreadnought of its own, Salamis, from a German shipyard.Sondhaus, p. 220 The keel was laid down on 23 July 1913; the hull was complete and ready for launching by 11 November 1914. However, the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 interrupted her completion; work stopped on 31 December 1914. The guns that had been ordered for the ship in the United States were instead sold by the manufacturer, Bethlehem Steel, to the Royal Navy to arm the British {{sclass|Abercrombie|monitor||warship}}s. After the end of the war, the Greek Navy refused to accept the incomplete hull. She was eventually scrapped in 1932 following a lengthy arbitration between the Greek Navy and the German shipyard.Gardiner & Gray, p. 43

{{See also|South American dreadnought race#Third stage: another Brazilian dreadnought}}

Following the Ottoman purchase of a second dreadnought in December 1913, {{ship|Ottoman battleship|Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel||2}}, a previously Brazilian ship still under construction,Hough, p. 75 the Greek Navy responded with an order for a second dreadnought of its own. The new battleship was to be named Vasilefs Konstantinos and was to be built to the same design as the French {{sclass|Bretagne|battleship|4}} from AC de St Nazaire Penhoet. Work began in June 1914 but ceased on the outbreak of war in August and never resumed. The Greek Navy refused the incomplete ship after the end of the war, leading to a contract dispute, which was settled in 1925. The unfinished ship was subsequently broken up for scrap.

File:RHS Lemnos.jpg

{{main|Greek battleship Kilkis|Greek battleship Lemnos}}

Kilkis and Lemnos were built by the United States Navy between 1904 and 1908, originally named {{USS|Mississippi|BB-23|2}} and {{USS|Idaho|BB-24|2}}. They served with the US fleet until June 1914, when they were purchased by the Greek Navy as a stop-gap measure. They were needed to counter Ottoman naval expansion while the Greeks waited on their newly ordered dreadnoughts to be completed abroad.Gardiner & Gray, p. 383 The two ships reached Greece in July 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I at the end of the month. As Greece remained neutral during the first three years of the war, the two ships saw little service. In October 1916, the French seized the Greek fleet and disarmed Kilkis and Lemnos; they were put back into service at the end of the war. Both ships saw service during the Greco–Turkish War in 1919–1922,Gardiner & Gray, pp. 383–384 with Lemnos also participating in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.

Both ships continued to see service in the Greek fleet until the early 1930s, with Kilkis serving as the flagship of the fleet.Lautenschläger, p. 64 In 1932, Lemnos was disarmed and used as a barracks ship, and Kilkis was reduced to a training ship. Lemnos was used as a barracks ship after 1937,Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 404 and Kilkis became a floating battery at Salamis Naval Base in 1940. During the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, both ships were attacked and sunk in Salamis. German Ju 87 Stuka dive-bombers bombed both ships in the harbor; Kilkis was sunk outright while Lemnos was beached to avoid sinking.{{cite web|title=Idaho|url=http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/i1/idaho-ii.htm|publisher=Naval History & Heritage Command|date=28 September 2007|access-date=6 December 2011|archive-date=10 January 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140110180354/http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/i1/idaho-ii.htm|url-status=dead}}Lautenschläger, p. 65 Both ships were broken up after the end of the war.Hore, p. 89

• List of battleships

Notes

{{reflist|group=Note}}

Citations

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book|title=Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905|editor=Gardiner, Robert|publisher=Conway Maritime Press|location=Greenwich|year=1979|isbn=0-8317-0302-4|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/conwaysallworlds0000unse_l2e2}}
• {{cite book |editor1-last=Gardiner|editor1-first=Robert|editor2-last=Gray|editor2-first=Randal|title=Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921|year=1985|location=Annapolis|publisher=Naval Institute Press|isbn=0-87021-907-3 |name-list-style=amp | url=https://archive.org/details/conwaysallworlds0000unse_z3o0}}
• {{cite book|editor1-last=Gardiner|editor1-first=Robert|editor2-last=Chesneau|editor2-first=Roger|title=Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946|publisher=Naval Institute Press|year=1980|isbn=0-87021-913-8|location=Annapolis |name-list-style=amp}}
• {{cite book |last=Hore|first=Peter|title=Battleships of World War I|year=2006|location=London|publisher=Southwater Books|isbn=978-1-84476-377-1}}
• {{cite book|last=Hough|first=Richard|title=The Great Dreadnought: The Strange Story of H.M.S. Agincourt: The Mightiest Battleship of World War I|publisher=Harper & Row|location=New York|year=1967|oclc=914101}}
• {{cite book|last=Lautenschläger|first=Karl|title=Warship Profile 39|year=1973|location=Windsor|publisher=Profile Publications|oclc=33084563|chapter=USS Mississippi (BB-23) Greek Kilkis|pages=49–72}}
• {{cite book |last=Sondhaus|first=Lawrence|title=Naval Warfare, 1815–1914|year=2001|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-0-415-21478-0}}

{{Greek battleships}}

{{Battleships}}

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Greece

Battleships