A new reality arose in the geopolitical balance of power at sea, and it was based on the rapid and massive appearance of “standard battleships” - primarily ships with 356 guns. How were these essentially epoch-making ships designed and built, and how did they carry out their long-term service? Unfortunately, not much information about these ships can be gleaned from naval literature published in Russian. As in the case of the first American dreadnoughts, virtually the only sources of information are magazine articles and reference books from different years and publications, the information in which often contradicts each other. This is especially true for information about the armor (primarily deck) of ships, as well as data about modernizations carried out. Note. OCR: The different names of one of the authors (Mandel) in the first and second parts of the book are not an error - this is in the original source.