Greek Battleship Kilkis Country: Greece Type: Battleship Service: 1914 - 1941 Laid down: 12 May 1904 (as USS Mississippi) Launched: 30 September 1905 (as USS Mississippi) Commissioned: 1 February 1908 (as USS Mississippi) Decommissioned: 21 July 1914 (as USS Mississippi) Commissioned: July 22, 1914 Fate: Sunk 23 April 1941

The two pre-dreadnought Mississippi-class battleships, USS Mississippi and USS Idaho, were built for and served in the US Navy from 1908 to 1914. They were considered obsolete on commissioning. Neither ship was satisfactory in US service and both were sold to Greece in 1914 to finance the purchase of the new USS Idaho. Taken over at Newport News, Virginia, late in July 1914. The ships was seized by France along with the rest of the Greek Fleet in 1916 due to Greek neutrality in World War I. After Greece entered the war on the side of the Entente in 1917, France turned both battleships over to the Royal Hellenic Navy. Kilkis was a 13,000 ton Mississippi-class Greek battleship. Kilkis saw action in the 1919 Allied Crimean expedition, in support of White Russian forces, and the Asia Minor Campaign. Kilkis served actively in the Royal Hellenic Navy until 1932. In 1935, after a period in reserve, she became a training ship. She was sunk in the Salamis channel by Stuka dive bombers on April 23, 1941, during the German invasion of Greece during World War II. Her wreck was salvaged for scrap in the 1950s.