Diana armored cruiser of the Russian fleet. Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the Diana-class cruisers based on the experience of their operation and combat use

"Diamond", cruiser. The only cruiser that broke through in May 1905 after the Battle of Tsushima to Vladivostok. Later he sailed in the Baltic and the Black Sea. A revolutionary underground organization was active on the ship. In 1917, the sailors of the Almaz, which was in

"Askold", cruiser. In 1904 he staunchly defended Port Arthur. In October 1907, the crew of the cruiser supported the armed uprising of Vladivostok workers and soldiers. The tsarist government dealt savagely with the "Askold" revolutionaries. Not a year passed without the ship

"Oleg", cruiser. “Lenin wants to speak to you on behalf of the revolutionary government,” the words appeared on the telegraph tape. Sailor diver Nikolai Izmailov, acting chairman of the Tsentrobalt, who was in Helsingfors, dictated to the telegraph operator:

"Russia", cruiser. The name of the famous revolutionary sailor Timofey Ulyantsev is associated with this ship. In 1913-1914, he led the underground organization of the RSDLP (b) here. The most politically conscious sailors joined its ranks. In April 1917, there were 50 Bolsheviks on it.

"Rurik", cruiser. The crew actively participated in the revolutionary events of 1917. “We send you a curse, Kerensky,” the sailors wrote on October 2, 1917. - We demand from the Central Executive Committee the immediate convening of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, which

The regular Russian Navy turns 320 this year. In Russian history, the strength of the fleet has always been determined not only by the amount of funds invested in it, but also by the thoughtfulness and accuracy of the tasks assigned to it. In the Finnish, Abo-Aland and Stockholm skerries, the galley fleet of Peter I successfully resisted the clumsy Swedish ships. To establish Russia on the Black Sea, Catherine II created a powerful sailing fleet. Its main force was made up of battleships and frigates.

Under General Admiral Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, low-seaworthy gunboats and monitors were built to protect Kronstadt and the capital, as well as high-speed corvettes and clippers for cruising operations on the ocean communications of England - at that time the main political and military enemy of Russia. At the end of the 19th century, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bocean cruising war against a stronger enemy was considered still relevant, and for its implementation, specialized cruisers were required, which received the unofficial name of "trade fighters". According to the shipbuilding program adopted in 1895, it was planned to build three armored cruisers of ocean navigation, reduced in comparison with armored cruisers of the Rurik type.

For successful operations on enemy communications, the new "trade fighters" required a maximum speed of 19-20 knots, strong artillery armament, a long cruising range and high autonomy. It should be noted that domestic shipbuilders coped with the task, and the Russian fleet received a series of ships that were quite modern for that time, the tactical and technical elements of which almost completely corresponded to the terms of reference. Therefore, the critical statements about cruisers of the "Diana" type, constantly repeated in the domestic military-technical literature, are perplexing. So, according to the authors of the monograph “Goddesses of the Russian Fleet “Aurora”, “Diana”, “Pallada”, published in 2009, “cruisers had practically no advantages ... they turned out to be slow and large ... they were not suitable for any of the roles for which they were planned ... cruisers are already outdated on the slipways.

Indeed, during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the Diana-class cruisers, unlike their "older brothers" Rurik, Rossiya and Gromoboy, which were part of the famous Vladivostok detachment of cruisers, did not have a chance to participate in raiding operations on Japanese maritime communications. But this was, first of all, a consequence of the fact that the command of the 1st Pacific Squadron tactically illiterately disposed of the ship composition entrusted to it, and in Port Arthur there were squadron battleships created for operations on enemy communications (and, in fact, armored cruisers) “Peresvet 3 and Pobeda, cruisers Diana and Pallada trade fighters. The thesis that the Diana-class cruisers allegedly “were hopelessly inferior in all characteristics to the cruisers of the 1st rank of the 1898 program”4, which means the Askold, Bogatyr, Varyag and Bayan, is also untenable. As for the latter, it was the first high-speed turret armored cruiser in the domestic fleet, and it is incorrect to compare it with armored cruisers. From the standpoint of today, it can be argued that specific ships not built according to the programs of 1895 and 1898 did not justify themselves, and the very concept of an armored cruiser of the 1st rank5 did not justify itself - a large (displacement more than 5000 tons), well-armed, but weakly protected ship.

Based on the experience of naval battles in the first half of the 20th century, it can be asserted with full confidence that war, and only war, in practice tests the correctness of pre-war theoretical views on the methods and methods of conducting combat operations at sea and the scientific and technical policy in the field of shipbuilding that meets these views. The experience of naval battles in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 clearly showed the inexpediency of building large armored cruisers6. It is no coincidence that, according to the experience of the Russo-Japanese War, all the leading maritime powers refused to build such ships, and the use of steam turbine plants on cruisers since 1906 made all previously built ships of this class morally and physically obsolete.

Thus, the main, fundamental and, unfortunately, the fatal drawback of the Diana-class cruisers was the discrepancy between the operational and tactical views of the top leadership of the Russian Imperial Fleet, in accordance with which the terms of reference for their design were developed, the project was developed and the construction of the Diana-class cruisers was carried out. ", the realities of naval battles of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. The Japanese fleet had a more balanced cruising force. They were based on eight armored cruisers. All of them had a turret arrangement of artillery of the main caliber (203-254 mm) and could be effectively used in conjunction with battleships. This happened in the battles of July 28, 1904 in the Yellow Sea and May 14-15, 1905 at Tsushima. Japanese armored cruisers were literally assembled "from pine forest": four ships were built in England, two ships - in Italy, one each in Germany and France. At the same time, in terms of their tactical and technical elements, they fully corresponded to their purpose - to act together with battleships as part of a squadron.

As for domestic armored cruisers, they, unlike the Japanese ones, were not intended to participate in squadron battles7. The best Japanese armored cruisers Kasagi, Chitose, Takasago, Yoshino, nicknamed "dogs" by Russian sailors, were very actively used during the Russo-Japanese War. They carried patrols at Port Arthur, carried out long-range reconnaissance in the battles of July 28, 1904 in the Yellow Sea and May 14-15, 1905 at Tsushima. The command of the Japanese fleet was afraid of the larger and outgunned Russian armored cruisers and preferred to keep their cruisers at a considerable distance from the Russian ships. Properly using their numerical superiority, the Japanese armored cruisers took an active part in the search for and destruction of single ships of the 2nd Pacific squadron defeated in the Tsushima battle. On August 23, 1905, a peace treaty between Russia and Japan was signed in the American city of Portsmouth.

The Russian delegation managed to reject the most humiliating Japanese demands, for example, the payment of an indemnity in the amount of three billion rubles, the transfer to Japan of all Russian ships that had taken refuge (interned) in foreign ports8. The end of the war found the Diana interned in Saigon, where she broke through after the battle in the Yellow Sea. Aurora, along with Oleg and Zhemchug, was interned in Manila after the Battle of Tsushima. The Pallada was in a semi-submerged state in the inner harbor of Port Arthur, which had become Japanese9. During the war years, the Diana-class cruisers were never used for their main purpose as “trade fighters”, and their participation in the battles in the Yellow Sea and Tsushima clearly proved the viciousness of the concept of a weakly armored cruiser of large displacement, when every hit of a projectile of even a small caliber resulted in serious injury and death of personnel. But in spite of everything, the Aurora and Diana survived the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War. And this suggests that the systemic shortcoming, laid down at the stage of issuing the terms of reference for the design of Diana-class cruisers, was nevertheless partly compensated by certain advantages.

The steam power plant of the ship had high technical characteristics. Its design reflected all the latest improvements of that time. After the elimination of "childhood diseases", it was reliable, easy to maintain, and could work with large overloads. Here is how the work of the Aurora machines during the Tsushima battle is described by the senior doctor of the Aurora cruiser V.S. Kravchenko: “The machines worked without failure, giving everything they had to give. And they tore them apart. As from two o'clock in the afternoon uninterrupted orders rained down, so they continued until late at night. From 125-130 rpm they commanded immediately to stop, and then immediately to reverse - they barely had time to translate backstage. This frequent and quick change of moves is terribly harmful to the mechanisms, but they never gave up, nothing broke, the bearings did not warm up, the steam did not sit down ... We must do justice to the gentlemen of the ship's mechanical engineers. What is the maximum speed that the Aurora developed during the Battle of Tsushima? According to V. S. Kravchenko, "at least 17 knots." According to the data provided by L. L. Polenov, up to 17-18 knots12. After an unparalleled seven-month transition, only the protection of the hull from fouling with copper sheets, as well as the high reliability of boilers and mechanisms of domestic production, helped to ensure and maintain such a speed. Often criticized are the initial artillery armament of the Diana-class cruisers, which consisted of only eight 152 mm guns and 24 75 mm guns. This has its own explanation.

Preparing for a decisive artillery battle at a short distance of 15-20 cables, the command of the Russian fleet relied on armor-piercing shells capable of penetrating the thickest armor and hitting the vital parts of the enemy ship, primarily ammunition cellars and machine-boiler installations. It was assumed that, having opened fire from 152-mm guns, the cruiser would continue to approach the enemy and enter into action, bombarding the enemy with shells, which had twice the rate of fire of numerous 75-mm guns. Then the crews of 37-mm guns entered the battle, even the possibility of sinking the enemy ship by hitting the ram stem was not ruled out. In reality, in the Battle of Tsushima, the Japanese opened fire from a distance of 38-43 cables, and only at some moments it was reduced to 11-18. Of course, under these conditions, 75-mm gun mounts in squadron combat were practically useless.

Since the architecture of the Diana-class cruisers allowed for the possibility of replacing and rearranging guns, then, according to the experience of the Russo-Japanese War on the Diana and Aurora, by reducing the number of 75-mm guns from 24 to 20 and removing useless 37-mm guns, the number of 152 mm guns was increased to ten. In 1915, during the repair, ten of the latest 130-mm guns were installed on the Diana, and on the Aurora in 1916, the number of 152-mm guns was increased to fourteen, that is, 1.8 times compared to the original project. As already noted, after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, there was a rapid obsolescence of the Diana-class cruisers, however, as well as the vast majority of ships of other classes. The cruisers actually lost their combat value and could only be used against their “peers” or weaker enemy ships.

With the revival of the domestic fleet after the Russo-Japanese War, a need arose for a seaworthy, roomy, high-autonomy and at the same time fairly easy-to-maintain training ship. Diana-class cruisers were the best fit for this role. This predetermined the further service of cruisers in the interwar period - as training ships. It was the possibility of using a hopelessly outdated cruiser as a training ship that preserved for us in the distant 1922 the legendary Aurora as a monument to the history of domestic shipbuilding.

It was designed as a "trade fighter", being a halved (in terms of displacement and armament) version of the armored cruisers of the "Rurik" series.

It was designed as a "trade fighter", being a halved (in terms of displacement and armament) version of the armored cruisers of the "Rurik" series. Weak armament with such a large displacement, the complete lack of artillery protection, insufficient speed due to suboptimal hull contours and a long construction period made it obsolete even before commissioning. The underwater part is sheathed in wood and copper for long-term activities in the ocean. After the battle on July 28 (10 killed, 17 wounded) she was interned in Saigon. After the war she served in the Baltic. In 1912-13 underwent repairs (10 152- and 20 75-mm guns), and in 1915-16. rearmament (10 130-mm guns). Participated in the first world war, revolution, ice campaign. From May 1918 it was stored in the port of Kronstadt, and in 1922 it was dismantled for metal.