Russian battleships of the 1st World War. The last battleship of the Russian Empire

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On the Western Seaman forum www.shipbucket.com, the author, someone Tempest, posted an overview of the projects of German battleships that were designed during the First World War.

Not a lot of text, but lots of great illustrations. Well, all the background information on these ships is presented in full.

All battleship projects that were developed in Germany can be divided into two large groups:

• Doutland battleship projects;
• Post-Jutland battleship projects.

Doutland battleship projects.

The group of these projects includes ships that were developed for the 1916 construction program of the year. According to the plans of the German command in 16, the battleships were to receive guns with a caliber of at least 15 inches. In accordance with this caliber, more serious armor was also provided. The German command believed that by this year all the leading shipbuilding powers would switch to such serious main calibers and new battleships should be able to withstand such powerful artillery.

As I wrote above, even before the start of the war, three battleship projects were developed. Which had code designations L1, L2 and L3. All ships were to be armed with 380 mm main caliber guns, have a displacement of about 34,000 tons and reach a maximum speed of 25-26 knots. The main discussion was in the direction of which main battery turrets to use on new ships. There were supporters of the preservation of the traditional two-gun turrets for the German fleet, but no less were supporters of the installation of main-caliber guns in new four-gun turrets, which had yet to be developed.

Battleship project L1

Displacement: 34,000 tons.

Dimensions:

Total length: 220 m

Width: 30 m

Draft: 8.6 m

Armament:

GK: 4 x 2 x 380 mm

Medium caliber: 16×150mm

Anti-mine caliber: 8 × 88 mm

Torpedo tubes: 5 × 600 mm

Power plant:

Machines: steam turbines.

Total number of boilers: eighteen.

Of which coal-fired boilers: 12.

Oil boilers: 6.

Number of shafts: 4.

Power: 65,000 hp.

Maximum speed: 25 knots.

Booking

Belt: 350 mm.

Towers: 350 mm.

Data for other characteristics could not be found.

Battleship project L2

The L2 project differed from L1 only by an increase in the number of main battery guns. As you can see in the figure, it was planned to install as many as 10 of them in five towers on L2. There should also have been fewer boilers, not 18 but 15. How, with an increase in mass, the designers were going to maintain the same armor and speed indicators, remains a mystery. But the fact remains.

Battleship project L3

Post-Jutland battleship projects

The battle of the linear forces of England and Germany took place near the Jutland Peninsula. He forced all the theorists of war at sea to completely reconsider their views. In Germany, a heated discussion began, which continued until the end of the First World War.

The main direction of the discussion was in the direction that in the future the class of battleships and battlecruisers would have to unite into a class of high-speed battleships (in fact, this actually happened in reality). Theorists also insisted that the main calibers of the battleships of the future should still increase, at least to 420 mm. By the way, back in 1916, Krupp began working on the 420 mm gun project.

As part of this discussion, a whole scattering of post-war dreadnought projects was created. The battleships of the 4 main projects had a displacement of 42,000 tons. However, this is where their similarities ended. The L20b project carried 8 main battery guns with a diameter of 420 mm, located in four towers. The L21b project had as many as 5 main gun turrets, but the guns were smaller than 380 mm. The L22c project had only eight 380 mm guns, but better armor and high speed performance.

By August 1917, the German admirals decided that future battleships should be armed with 420 mm guns. And so the project with eight 420 mm guns was taken as the basis. At that time, with such a configuration of weapons, two projects of battleships L20e and L24 were developed (by the way, about). The ships of both projects were very similar in configuration and differed mainly only in that the battleship of the L24 project could reach a speed of 1.5 knots more than the L20e. True, for this he had to increase the overall dimensions and, as a result, the displacement.

Namely, these two projects were taken by German designers as a basis. Work on them was carried out until January 1918. And during this time, both ships have fairly added to the displacement. The battleship of the L20eɑ project (this is the index received by the modified project) began to weigh 44,500 tons, and L24eɑ - 45,000.

In order not to exceed the mark of 45,000 tons on new battleships, they were forced to reduce the average caliber to 12 guns, compared with earlier projects where the average caliber consisted of 16 guns. For some reason, they decided to add a couple more underwater torpedo tubes to L24eɑ. The armoring of the battleships was planned to be made according to the scheme already well-proven on Bayern-class battleships.

Bayern-class battleship

After considering the projects personally by the Kaiser, he instructed to finalize the project in terms of reducing its weight. Also at the meeting with the Kaiser, it was pointed out that there were surplus torpedo tubes.

After that, the admirals asked the shipbuilders whether the installation of three- and four-gun turrets could save enough weight that the battleships could squeeze into a displacement of 30,000 tons. Until the end of technical research in this direction, work on projects was suspended until the summer of 1918.

On September 11, 1918, finally, the admirals decided on what kind of project should form the basis of the future battleship for the High Seas Fleet. They were supposed to be the L20eɑ project. At the same time, the new battleship was supposed to replace both battleships and battlecruisers.

Photos of the death of warships. First World War August 12th, 2013

Indefatigable

The battlecruiser Indefatigable became the first English ship to die in the Battle of Jutland. During a duel of battlecruisers, the ship was hit by heavy shells from the German battlecruiser Von der Tann, causing an explosion of ammunition. Out of a team of 1019 people, only two survived, picked up by a German ship.

Queen Mary

The second British battlecruiser to die in the Battle of Jutland was the Queen Mary, which was lost just over 20 minutes after the Indefatigable. The ship received a combined salvo from the battlecruisers Derflinger and Seydlitz, which also caused an explosion in the artillery cellars. Of the team of 1275 people, 9 were saved.

Invincible

This battlecruiser was Admiral Hood's flagship at the Battle of Jutland. When Beatty's formation, which had already lost two battlecruisers in battle with the Germans, retreated to the main forces of the British fleet, Hood's detachment was the first to come to his aid. The fire of the Invincible severely damaged the German light cruiser Wiesbaden, which later sank. But then the lighting changed, and the ship became clearly visible to the gunners of the German battlecruisers. At 18.31, the ship received a hit in the main battery turret, which caused the explosion of the cellars. From the explosion, the ship broke in half, and since it sank at a depth of less than 30 meters, each half rested on the bottom, and the stern and bow remained sticking out above the water. For several years after the war, fishermen could see this terrible monument, until a storm overturned both parts of the skeleton. Admiral Hood, Captain 1st Rank E. L. Clay and more than 1000 people were killed; 6 survivors from the cruiser were picked up by the destroyer Badger.

The German cruiser Blucher was a transitional ship between armored and battlecruisers. Due to a shortage of ships, she often took part in operations alongside newer battlecruisers. During the Dogger Bank on January 24, 1915 with the English battlecruisers, the Blucher, which was the last in the German detachment, received several heavy hits and lost speed. The British preferred to finish off the lagging German ship and let the rest leave. After receiving from 70 to 100 shell hits, and then several torpedoes, the cruiser capsized and sank. The loss of the crew amounted to 792 people, 281 sailors were picked up by British ships.

The French battleship was part of the Allied squadron, which was trying to break through the Turkish fortifications in the Dardanelles on March 18, 1915. The duel of coastal batteries and ships proved fatal for the latter. Bouvet received several hits that destroyed her forward gun turret and one of the masts. Then the battleship stumbled upon a mine, the explosion of which caused the detonation of ammunition. The ship sank within two minutes. Out of a team of 710 people, only about 50 were saved.

clothes
One of four ships of the King George V class. The first dreadnought in history to die in action. October 27, 1914, "Odeyshes", following for training artillery firing, at 08:05 ran into a mine, installed by the German auxiliary mine layer "Berlin". The captain tried to bring the sinking ship to the shore and throw it aground, but at 10:50 the engine room was flooded and the Odeishes lost speed. At 21:00, the Odeishes capsized, exploded and sank. A foreman on the Liverpool cruiser, located at a distance of more than 700 meters from the explosion site, was killed by shrapnel. This is the only human casualty in the sinking of the Odeishes.

Irresistable

The battleship Irresistable (Irresistible) was part of a series of eight British battleships built at the beginning of the 20th century. Participating in the attack by the allied squadron of the Dardanelles on March 18, 1915, the ship hit a mine and lost its course. The current carried him to the Turkish batteries, which finished him off and after three hours the ship went to the bottom. The loss of the team amounted to about 150 people. In total, from this series of battleships, in addition to the Irresistable, two more ships died in the First World War.

The battlecruiser Inflexible picks up the crew of the cruiser Gneisenau

The armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were the core of the German East Asia Squadron based in Qingdao, China. With the outbreak of the First World War, the German squadron went to sea so as not to be destroyed by superior enemy forces in the port. Off the coast of Chile, she defeated the English squadron of Admiral Craddock sent to search for her, sinking two old armored cruisers, but off the Falkland Islands she stumbled upon a much stronger enemy - Strady's squadron, which consisted of an armadillo, 2 linear, 3 armored and 2 light cruisers. In an unequal battle, both German armored and 2 light cruisers were destroyed. The Scharnhost perished along with the entire crew and Admiral Count Spee, while 680 of the Gneisenau crew died and 187 people were rescued.

Saint Stephen

The battleship "Saint-Istvan" (Saint Stephen) was part of a series of four dreadnoughts of Austria-Hungary of the Viribus Unitis type. He spent most of his service at the base of the Austrian fleet in Pole. On June 15, 1918, the main forces of the Austrian fleet went to sea to attack the Allied anti-submarine forces in the Otranto area. The operation failed, and at 3.25 the Szent Istvan received two torpedoes from the Italian torpedo boat MAS-15. The ship received a strong roll to starboard. Attempts to take her ashore and put her aground were unsuccessful, and at 0605 the ship capsized and sank. Of the 1094 crew members, 89 drowned along with the dreadnought, the rest were picked up by escort ships. After the war, the Italians put the MAS-15 boat on public display in Rome's Museo di Risorgimento, where it remains to this day.

Viribus Unitis

On October 31, 1918, during the collapse of Austria-Hungary as a single state, flags were lowered on the decks of the ships of the former Austro-Hungarian fleet, after which the fleet came under the jurisdiction of the Yugoslav National Council. On the same day, the flagship of the former fleet, the Viribus Unitis, sank in the harbor of Pola as a result of a sabotage by the Italian combat swimmers R. Rosetti and R. Paolucci, who laid mines on board the battleship. Janko Vukovich Podkapelsky, captain 1st rank, part-time commander of the new Yugoslav fleet, refused to leave the ship and died with him, sharing the fate of almost 400 crew members. The question of whether the Italians knew that they were going to blow up, in fact, not an enemy battleship, but a ship of a completely different fleet, remains open to this day.

origin of name

Battleship - short for "battleship". So in Russia in 1907 they named a new type of ships in memory of the old wooden sailing battleships. Initially, it was assumed that the new ships would revive linear tactics, but this was soon abandoned.

The advent of battleships

The mass production of heavy artillery guns was very difficult for a long time, therefore, until the 19th century, the largest of those installed on ships remained 32 ... 42-pounders. But working with them during loading and aiming was very complicated due to the lack of servos, which required a huge calculation for their maintenance: such guns weighed several tons each. Therefore, for centuries, ships tried to arm as many relatively small guns as possible, which were located along the side. At the same time, for reasons of strength, the length of a warship with a wooden hull is limited to about 70-80 meters, which also limited the length of the onboard battery. More than two or three dozen guns could only be placed in a few rows.

This is how warships arose with several gun decks (decks), carrying up to one and a half hundred guns of various calibers. It should be immediately noted what is called a deck and are taken into account when determining the rank of the ship only closed gun decks, above which there is another deck. For example, a two-decker ship (in the Russian fleet - two-way) usually had two closed gun decks and one open (upper) one.

The term "battleship" arose in the days of the sailing fleet, when in battle multi-deck ships began to line up - so that during their volley they were turned sideways to the enemy, because the simultaneous volley of all onboard guns caused the greatest damage to the target. This tactic was called linear. Building in a line during a naval battle was first used by the fleets of England and Spain at the beginning of the 17th century.

The first battleships appeared in the fleets of European countries at the beginning of the 17th century. They were lighter and shorter than the “ship-towers” ​​that existed at that time - galleons, which made it possible to quickly line up sideways to the enemy, and the bow of the next ship looked at the stern of the previous one.

The resulting multi-deck sailing ships of the line were the main means of warfare at sea for more than 250 years and allowed countries such as Holland, Great Britain and Spain to create huge trading empires.

The ship of the line "St. Paul" 90 (84?) - the cannon ship of the line "St. Paul" was laid down at the Nikolaev shipyard on November 20, 1791 and launched on August 9, 1794. This ship went down in the history of naval art, a brilliant operation of Russian sailors and naval commanders to capture a fortress on the island of Corfu in 1799 is associated with its name.

But the real revolution in shipbuilding, which marked a truly new class of ships, was made by the construction of the Dreadnought, completed in 1906.

The authorship of a new leap in the development of large artillery ships is attributed to the English Admiral Fisher. Back in 1899, commanding the Mediterranean squadron, he noted that firing with the main caliber can be carried out at a much greater distance if guided by splashes from falling shells. However, at the same time, it was necessary to unify all artillery in order to avoid confusion in determining the bursts of shells of the main caliber and medium-caliber artillery. Thus was born the concept of all-big-guns (only big guns), which formed the basis of a new type of ship. The effective firing range increased from 10-15 to 90-120 cables.

Other innovations that formed the basis of the new type of ships were centralized fire control from a single general ship post and the spread of electric drives, which accelerated the guidance of heavy guns. The guns themselves have also changed significantly, due to the transition to smokeless powder and new high-strength steels. Now only the lead ship could carry out sighting, and those following it in the wake were guided by bursts of its shells. Thus, building in wake columns again allowed in Russia in 1907 to return the term battleship. In the USA, England and France, the term "battleship" was not revived, and new ships continued to be called "battleship" or "cuirassé". In Russia, the "battleship" remained the official term, but in practice the abbreviation was established battleship.

The Russo-Japanese War finally established superiority in speed and long-range artillery as the main advantages in naval combat. There were talks about a new type of ships in all countries, in Italy Vittorio Cuniberti came up with the idea of ​​a new battleship, and in the USA the construction of ships of the Michigan type was planned, but the British managed to get ahead of everyone due to industrial superiority.

The first such ship was the English Dreadnought, whose name has become a household name for all ships of this class. The ship was built in record time, going on sea trials on September 2, 1906, a year and one day after the laying. A battleship with a displacement of 22,500 tons, thanks to the new type of power plant used for the first time on such a large ship, with a steam turbine, could reach speeds of up to 22 knots. On the Dreadnought, 10 305 mm caliber guns were installed (due to the haste, the two-gun turrets of the completed squadron battleships of 1904 were taken due to the haste), the second caliber was anti-mine - 24 76 mm caliber guns; medium-caliber artillery was absent. The reason for this was that the medium caliber was less long-range than the main one and often did not participate in battle, and guns with a caliber of 70-120 mm could be used against destroyers.

The appearance of the Dreadnought made all other large armored ships obsolete.

For Russia, which lost almost all of its Baltic and Pacific battleships in the Russo-Japanese War, the “dreadnought fever” that had begun turned out to be very useful: To the revival of the fleet could begin without taking into account the outdated armored armadas of potential opponents. And already in 1906, having interviewed the majority of naval officers - participants in the war with Japan, the Main Naval Staff developed a task for designing a new battleship for the Baltic Sea. And at the end of next year, after the approval of the so-called "small shipbuilding program" by Nicholas II, a worldwide competition was announced for the best design of a battleship for the Russian fleet.

The competition was attended by 6 Russian factories and 21 foreign firms, among which were such well-known companies as the English "Armstrong", "John Brown", "Vickers", the German "Vulkan", "Schihau", "Blom und Voss", the American "Krump", and others. Individuals also offered their projects - for example, engineers V. Cuniberti and L. Coromaldi. The best, according to the authoritative jury, was the development of the company "Blom und Voss", but for various reasons - primarily political - they decided to refuse the services of a potential adversary. As a result, the project of the Baltic Plant was in the first place, although evil tongues claimed that the presence of a powerful lobby in A.N. Krylov - both the chairman of the jury and the co-author of the winning project.

The main feature of the new battleship is the composition and placement of artillery. Since the 12-inch cannon with a barrel length of 40 calibers, which was the main weapon of all Russian battleships, starting with the "Three Saints" and "Sisoy the Great", was already hopelessly outdated, it was decided to urgently develop a new 52-caliber gun. The Obukhov Plant successfully coped with the task, and the Petersburg Metal Plant in parallel designed a three-gun turret installation, which, compared to a two-gun mount, gave a 15 percent savings in weight per barrel.

Thus, Russian dreadnoughts received unusually powerful weapons - 12 305-mm guns in a side salvo, which made it possible to fire up to 24,471-kg shells per minute with an initial speed of 762 m / s. Obukhov guns for their caliber were rightfully considered the best in the world, surpassing in ballistic characteristics both British and Austrian ones, and even the famous Krupp guns, which were considered the pride of the German fleet.

However, excellent armament was, alas, the only advantage of the first Russian dreadnoughts of the "Sevastopol" type. In general, these ships should be recognized, to put it mildly, unsuccessful. The desire to combine conflicting requirements in one project - powerful weapons, impressive protection, high speed and solid range ", swimming - turned into an impossible task for the designers. I had to sacrifice something - and primarily armor. By the way, the mentioned survey of naval officers did a poor job here. Of course, those, having been under the destructive fire of the Japanese squadron, would like to go back to battle on fast ships with powerful artillery.As for protection, they paid more attention to the area of ​​​​armor than its thickness, without taking into account the progress in the development of shells and cannons. The experience of the Russo-Japanese War was not seriously weighed, and emotions prevailed over impartial analysis.

As a result, "Sevastopol" turned out to be very close (even outwardly!) to the representatives of the Italian shipbuilding school - fast, heavily armed, but too vulnerable to enemy artillery. "Project scared" - such an epithet was given to the first Baltic dreadnoughts by naval historian M.M. Dementiev.

The weakness of armor protection was, unfortunately, not the only drawback of the Sevastopol-class battleships. In order to ensure the greatest cruising range, the project provided for a combined power plant with steam turbines for full speed and diesel engines for economic power. Alas, the use of diesel engines caused a number of technical problems, and from they were abandoned already at the stage of drawing development, only the original 4-shaft installation with 10 (!) Parsons turbines remained, and the actual cruising range with a normal supply of fuel (816 tons of coal and 200 tons of oil) was only 1625 miles with a 13-knot course. one and a half, two, or even three times less than any of the Russian battleships, starting with Peter the Great. The so-called "reinforced" fuel supply (2500 tons of coal and 1100 tons of oil) hardly "reached" the cruising range to acceptable standards, but catastrophically worsened the rest of the parameters of the already overloaded ship. Seaworthiness was also useless, which was clearly confirmed by the only ocean voyage of a battleship of this type - we are talking about the transition of the Paris Commune (formerly Sevastopol) to the Black Sea in 1929. Well, there is nothing to say about habitability conditions: comfort for the crew was sacrificed in the first place. Perhaps worse than our sailors, only the Japanese, accustomed to the harsh environment, lived on board their battleships. Against the background of the above, the assertion of some domestic sources that battleships of the "Sevastopol" type were almost the best in the world, looks somewhat exaggerated.

All four of the first Russian dreadnoughts were laid down at St. Petersburg factories in 1909, and in the summer and autumn of 1911 they were launched. But the completion of the battleships afloat was delayed - many innovations in the design of ships, for which the domestic industry was not yet ready, had an effect. German contractors also contributed to the failure to meet deadlines, supplying various mechanisms and not at all interested in the rapid strengthening of the Baltic Fleet. In the end, ships of the Sevastopol type entered service only in November-December 1914, when the fire of the world war was already raging with might and main.

Battleship "Sevastopol" (from March 31, 1921 to May 31, 1943 - "Paris Commune") 1909 - 1956

Laid down on June 3, 1909 at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg. On May 16, 1911, he was included in the lists of ships of the Baltic Fleet. Launched June 16, 1911. Entered service November 4, 1914. In August 1915, together with the battleship Gangut, she covered minelaying in the Irben Strait. It underwent a major overhaul in 1922-1923, 1924-1925 and 1928-1929 (modernization). November 22, 1929 left Kronstadt for the Black Sea. On January 18, 1930, he arrived in Sevastopol and became part of the Black Sea Naval Forces. From January 11, 1935, he was part of the Black Sea Fleet.

It underwent a major overhaul and modernization in 1933-1938. In 1941, anti-aircraft weapons were strengthened. Participated in the Great Patriotic War (defense of Sevastopol and the Kerch Peninsula in 1941-1942). On July 8, 1945 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. On July 24, 1954 it was reclassified into a training battleship, and on February 17, 1956 it was excluded from the lists of the Navy ships in connection with the transfer to the stock property department for dismantling and sale, on July 7, 1956 it was disbanded and in 1956 - 1957 it was divided on the basis of "Glavvtorchermet" in Sevastopol for metal

Displacement standard 23288 full 26900 tons

Dimensions 181.2x26.9x8.5 m in 1943 - 25500/30395 tons 184.8x32.5x9.65 m

Armament 12 - 305/52, 16 - 120/50, 2 - 75 mm AA, 1 - 47 mm AA, 4 PTA 457 mm
in 1943 12 - 305/52, 16 - 120/50, 6 - 76/55 76K, 16 - 37 mm 70K, 2x4 12.7 mm Vickers machine guns and 12 - 12.7 mm DShK

Reservations - Krupp armor belt 75 - 225 mm, mine artillery casemates - 127 mm,
towers of the main caliber from 76 to 203 mm, conning tower 254 mm, decks - 12-76 mm, bevels 50 mm
in 1943 - board - upper belt 125 + 37.5 mm, lower belt 225 + 50 mm, decks 37.5-75-25 mm,
traverses 50-125 mm, cabin 250/120 mm floor 70 mm, towers 305/203/152 mm

Gears 4 Parsons turbines up to 52,000 hp (in 1943 - 61,000 hp) 25 Yarrow boilers (in 1943 - 12 systems of the English Admiralty).

4 screws. Speed ​​23 knots Cruising range 1625 miles at 13 knots. Crew 31 officer 28 conductors and 1065 lower ranks. In 1943, speed 21.5 knots Cruising range 2160 miles at 14 knots.

Crew 72 officers 255 foremen and 1219 sailors

Battleship "Gangut" (since June 27, 1925 - "October Revolution") 1909 - 1956

Battleship "Poltava" (since November 7, 1926 - "Frunze") 1909 - 1949

The battleship "Petropavlovsk" (from March 31, 1921 to May 31, 1943 - "Marat")

(from November 28, 1950 - "Volkhov") 1909 - 1953

The information received that Turkey is also going to replenish its fleet with dreadnoughts demanded that Russia take adequate measures in the southern direction as well. In May 1911, the tsar approved a program for the renewal of the Black Sea Fleet, which provided for the construction of three battleships of the Empress Maria type. The Sevastopol was chosen as a prototype, but taking into account the characteristics of the theater of operations, the project was thoroughly revised: the proportions of the hull were made more complete, speed and power mechanisms were reduced, but the armor was significantly strengthened, the weight of which now reaches 7045 tons (31% of the design displacement versus 26% on the "Sevastopol"). Moreover, the size of the armor plates was adjusted to the spacing of the frames - so that they served as an additional support that prevents the plate from being pressed The normal supply of fuel also increased slightly - 1200 tons of coal and 500 tons of oil, which provided a more or less decent cruising range (about 3000 miles of economic progress). But the Black Sea dreadnoughts suffered more from overload than their Baltic counterparts. The matter was aggravated by the that due to an error in the calculations, "Empress Maria" received a noticeable trim on the nose, which further worsened the already unimportant seaworthiness; In order to somehow rectify the situation, the ammunition of the two main caliber bow turrets had to be reduced to 70 rounds per barrel instead of 100 according to the state. And on the third battleship "Emperor Alexander III" for the same purpose, two bow 130-mm guns were removed. In fact, ships of the "Empress Maria" type were more balanced battleships than their predecessors, which, having a longer range and better seaworthiness , could be considered more like battlecruisers. However, when designing the third series of dreadnoughts, cruising tendencies again prevailed - apparently, our admirals were haunted by the ease with which the faster Japanese squadron covered the head of the Russian wake column ...

Battleship "Empress Maria" 1911 - 1916

at the Russud plant in Nikolaev, launched on October 19, 1913, entered service on June 23, 1915.
He died on October 7, 1916 in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol from the explosion of cellars of 130-mm shells.
By May 31, 1919, it was raised and put into the Northern Dock of Sevastopol, and in June 1925 it was sold to the Sevmorzavod for dismantling and cutting into metal, and on November 21, 1925 it was excluded from the lists of ships of the RKKF. Dismantled for metal in 1927.

Battleship "Empress Catherine the Great" (until June 14, 1915 - "Catherine II") (after April 16, 1917 - "Free Russia") 1911 - 1918

On October 11, 1911, it was included in the lists of the Black Sea Fleet ships and on October 17, 1911, it was laid down at the Naval plant (ONZiV) in Nikolaev, launched on May 24, 1914, and entered service on October 5, 1915.
On April 30, 1918, he left Sevastopol for Novorossiysk, where on June 18, 1918, by decision of the Soviet government, in order to avoid capture by the German invaders, he was sunk by torpedoes fired from the destroyer Kerch.
In the early 1930s, EPRON carried out work to raise the ship. All the artillery of the Civil Code and the UK was raised, but then there was an explosion of the ammunition of the Civil Code, as a result of which the hull broke under water into several parts.

Battleship "Emperor Alexander III" (since April 29, 1917 - "Will") (after October 1919 - "General Alekseev") 1911 - 1936

October 11, 1911 was included in the lists of ships of the Black Sea Fleet and October 17, 1911 was laid
at the Russud plant in Nikolaev, launched on April 2, 1914, entered service on June 15, 1917.
December 16, 1917 became part of the Red Black Sea Fleet.
On April 30, 1918, he left Sevastopol for Novorossiysk, but on June 19, 1918 he returned to Sevastopol again, where he was captured by German troops and on October 1, 1918 included in their Navy on the Black Sea.
On November 24, 1918, it was captured from the Germans by the Anglo-French invaders and soon taken to the port of Izmir on the Sea of ​​Marmara. From October 1919 he was part of the White Guard naval forces of the South of Russia, on November 14, 1920 he was taken away by the Wrangel troops during the evacuation from Sevastopol to Istanbul and on December 29, 1920 he was interned by the French authorities in Bizerte (Tunisia).
On October 29, 1924, it was recognized by the French government as the property of the USSR, but due to the difficult international situation, it was not returned. In the late 1920s, it was sold by Rudmetalltorg to a French private company for scrapping, and in 1936 it was cut into pieces in Brest (France) for metal.

The next four ships for the Baltic, according to the "Program of Reinforced Shipbuilding" adopted in 1911, were originally created as battlecruisers, the lead of which was named "Izmail".

The battlecruiser Izmail on the slipway of the Baltic Shipyard a week before launch, 1915

The new ships were the largest ever built in Russia. According to the original project, their displacement was to be 32.5 thousand tons, but during construction it increased even more. Huge speed was achieved by increasing the power of steam turbines to 66 thousand hp. (and when boosted - up to 70 thousand hp). Booking was significantly increased, and in terms of the power of weapons, the Izmail surpassed all foreign counterparts: the new 356-mm guns were supposed to have a barrel length of 52 calibers, while abroad this figure did not exceed 48 calibers. The weight of the projectile of the new guns was 748 kg , initial speed - 855 m / s Later, when, due to the protracted construction, it was necessary to further increase the firepower of the dreadnoughts, a project was developed to re-equip Izmail with 8 and even 10 406-mm guns,

In December 1912, all 4 Izmails were officially laid down on stocks that were freed up after the launch of the Sevastopol-class battleships. The construction was already in full swing when the results of full-scale tests on the execution of the former Chesma were received, and these results plunged the shipbuilders into a state of shock. cable, and at long firing distances it deforms the shirt located behind the armor, violating the tightness of the hull. Both armored decks turned out to be too thin - the shells not only pierced them, but also crushed them into small fragments, causing even greater destruction ... It became obvious that the meeting of the "Sevastopol" at sea with any of the German dreadnoughts did not bode well for our sailors: one an accidental hit in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe ammunition cellars will inevitably lead to disaster. The Russian command realized this back in 1913, and that is why it did not release the Baltic dreadnoughts into the sea, preferring to keep them in Helsingfors as a reserve behind the mine-artillery position that blocked the Gulf of Finland ...

The worst thing about this situation was that nothing could be fixed. There was nothing to think about making any fundamental changes to the 4 Baltic and 3 Black Sea battleships under construction. On the Izmails, they limited themselves to improving the systems for attaching armor plates, strengthening the set behind the armor, introducing a 3-inch wooden lining under the belt and changing the weight of horizontal armor on the upper and middle decks. The only ship on which the experience of shooting the Chesma was taken into account in full , became "Emperor Nicholas I" - the fourth battleship for the Black Sea.

The decision to build this ship came just before the start of the war. It is curious that it was officially laid down twice: first in June 1914, and then in April of the next, in the presence of the tsar. The new battleship was an improved version of the "Empress Maria", but with identical armament, it had large dimensions and significantly enhanced armor protection. The weight of the armor, even without taking into account the towers, now reached 9417 tons, that is, 34.5% of the design displacement. But it was not only quantity, but also in quality: in addition to strengthening the support jacket, all armor plates were connected by vertical dowels of the "double dovetail" type, which turned the main belt into a monolithic 262nd

Battleship "Emperor Nicholas I" (since April 16, 1917 - "Democracy")

1914 - 1927

It was laid down on June 9, 1914 (officially on April 15, 1915) at the Naval plant in Nikolaev and on July 2, 1915 was included in the lists of ships of the Black Sea Fleet, launched on October 5, 1916, but on October 11, 1917 due to a low degree of readiness weapons, mechanisms and equipment removed from construction and laid up. In June 1918, it was captured by German troops and October 1, 1918 included in their fleet on the Black Sea. The Germans planned to use the ship as a base for seaplanes, but due to a lack of personnel, these plans were abandoned.
After the liberation of Nikolaev by parts of the Red Army, the battleship was laid up. On April 11, 1927, it was sold to Sevmorzavod for scrapping and on June 28, 1927, it was sent in tow from Nikolaev to Sevastopol for cutting into metal.

Battle cruiser "Borodino" 1912 - 1923

Laid down on December 6, 1912 at the New Admiralty in St. Petersburg. Launched on July 19, 1915.

Battlecruiser "Navarin" 1912 - 1923

Laid down on December 6, 1912 at the New Admiralty in St. Petersburg.
Launched November 9, 1916
On August 21, 1923, it was sold to a German shipbreaking company and on October 16 it was prepared for towing to Hamburg, where the ship was soon cut into metal.

Battlecruiser "Kinburn" 1912 - 1923

Laid down on December 6, 1912 at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg.
Launched October 30, 1915
On August 21, 1923, she was sold to a German shipbreaking company and on October 16 she was prepared for towing to Kiel, where the ship was soon cut into metal.

The fate of most Russian dreadnoughts turned out to be rather sad. Battleships of the "Sevastopol" type stood on raids throughout the First World War, which did not at all contribute to raising the morale of the crews. On the contrary, it was the battleships that became the center of revolutionary ferment in the fleet - anarchists and socialist-revolutionaries enjoyed the greatest authority here. During the civil war, battleships were twice in battle : in June 1919, "Petropavlovsk" shelled the rebellious fort "Krasnaya Gorka" for several days in a row, having used up 568 shells of the main caliber, and in March 1921, "Petropavlovsk" and "Sevastopol" found themselves in the center of the anti-Bolshevik Kronstadt revolt, fought a duel with coastal batteries, having received with a number of hits.Nevertheless, they were restored and, together with the Gangut, served in the Red Fleet for a long time. But the fourth ship - "Poltava" - was not lucky. Two fires - the first in 1919, and the second in 1923 - made the battleship completely incapacitated, although the burned-out hull stood at the Naval training ground for another two decades, exciting Soviet designers to all kinds of semi-fantastic projects its restoration - up to turning into an aircraft carrier.

The Black Sea dreadnoughts, unlike the Baltic ones, were used much more actively, although only one of them, Empress Catherine the Great, met the German-Turkish Goeben in December 1915 in a real battle. The latter, however, used his advantage in speed and went to the Bosphorus, although he was already covered by volleys of the Russian battleship.

The most famous and at the same time mysterious tragedy occurred on the morning of October 7, 1916 on the inner roads of Sevastopol, a fire in the forward ammunition cellar, and then a series of powerful explosions turned the Empress Maria into a pile of twisted iron. The victims of the disaster were 228 crew members.

“Ekaterina” outlived her sister by less than two years. Renamed “Free Russia”, she eventually ended up in Novorossiysk, where, in accordance with Lenin’s order, she was sunk on June 18, 1918 by four torpedoes from the destroyer “Kerch” .. .

Emperor Alexander III” entered service in the summer of 1917 already under the name “Will” and soon “went from hand to hand”: the Andreevsky flag on the hafel of his mast was replaced by Ukrainian, then German, English and again Andreevsky, when Sevastopol was again in the hands of the Volunteer Army . Renamed again - this time to "General Alekseev", - the battleship remained the flagship of the White Fleet on the Black Sea until the end of 1920, and then went into exile to Bizerte, where in the mid-30s it was dismantled for metal. It is curious that the beautiful The French retained the 12-inch cannons of the Russian dreadnought, and presented them to Finland, which fought against the USSR, in 1939. The first 8 guns reached their destination, but the last 4, which were on board the Nina steamer, arrived in Bergen almost simultaneously with the start of the Nazi invasion to Norway. So the guns from the former Volya ended up in the hands of the Germans, and they used them to create their Atlantic Wall, equipping the Mirus battery on the island of Guernsey with them. In the summer of 1944, the guns first opened fire on the Allied ships, and in September they even achieved a direct hit on an American cruiser. And the remaining 8 guns of "General Alekseev" fell into the hands of the Red Army in 1944 and were "repatriated" after a long journey around Europe. One of these guns was preserved as a museum exhibit of Krasnaya Gorka.

But our most advanced battleships - "Izmail" and "Nicholas I" - never had a chance to enter service. The revolution, civil war and subsequent devastation made the completion of ships unrealistic. In 1923, the Borodino, Kinburn and Navarin hulls were sold for scrapping to Germany, where they were taken in tow. Nicholas I, renamed Democracy, was dismantled for metal in Sevastopol in 1927-1928. The Izmail corps lived the longest, which again they wanted to turn into an aircraft carrier, but in the early 30s it shared the fate of its brothers. But the guns of the battleships (including 6 "Izmail" 14-inch guns) served for a long time on railway and stationary installations of Soviet coastal batteries.

The ancestor of the dreadnoughts. HMS (His Majesty's Ship) Dreadnought.

The first superlinkors. Iron Duke. Caliber GK-343 mm.

Sea queens. Queen Elizabeth. The famous 5th Division Grad Flit-5 high-speed (25 knots) powerfully armed (4x2x381mm) and powerfully armored ships are the best battleships of the WWI.

In early 1905, in the very days when the Russian fleet was hastening to the shores of Japan to meet its doom, the Committee, created by the First Sea Lord John Arbuthnot Fisher, had already developed a plan for the reconstruction of the British fleet "from keel to keel". The admiral himself declared: “I will change everything! And I do not advise you to interfere with me - I will destroy anyone who gets in my way. In a memorandum sent to members of the Admiralty, Fisher wrote: "The new fleet will consist of four classes of ships and will meet all the requirements of modern warfare." He listed these classes: battleships with a displacement of 15,900 tons, capable of speeds up to 21 knots; armored cruisers (15,900 tons, 25.5 knots), destroyers (900 tons, 36 knots) and submarines (350 tons, 13 knots).

The committee, which was to revive the British fleet in a new capacity, included experienced naval officers, prominent shipbuilders and large industrialists. Together, they knew almost everything about artillery, armor and driving performance of ships, fire control and torpedoes, communications and fuel. Among its civilians were British science stars such as Sir Philip Watts, a shipbuilder who left his private company to take over as director of the Royal Dockyards at Portsmouth, and Lord Kelvin, the famed Irish physicist and mathematician at the University of Glasgow, who invented the temperature scale and the submarine cable. who made the international telegraph a reality. The Committee also included Prince Louis of Battenberg, rear admiral, chief of naval intelligence and nephew (by wife) of King Edward VII, 46-year-old captain John R. Jellicoe, who, like Fisher himself, had extensive experience and versatile knowledge in maritime affairs and to the subtleties who knew artillery. His fame did not go beyond the narrow circle of naval officers, but it was he who, in the hour of severe trials, was destined to take command of the newborn fleet.

First of all, the Committee set about implementing Fisher's long-standing and reverent dream - the creation of a battleship. Conducting artillery exercises of a ship, squadron, fleet, he often used Napoleon’s favorite formula “Frappez vite et frappez fort” (“To beat often and hard”) and for a long time nurtured the image of such a ship that would swim faster and strike more crushingly than before. Five years before his “accession”, he persuaded his friend V. X. Gard, who then held the position of chief builder at the Royal Shipyards in Malta, to make sketches of drawings of such an ideal ship. Fisher gave the imaginary battleship the name Anteycable, and the project the Committee began working on in 1905 was given the same name. It is not known who and when the name "Dreadnought" ("Fearless") was chosen, which was destined to become a symbol of a new era in shipbuilding and naval art.

However, this name, which at different times was borne by seven ships of the British fleet (the first "Dreadnought" fought with the Invincible Armada in 1588), followed a long tradition of "animating" a new warship entering service, giving it the name of its predecessor, once instilled fear in the enemies.

But whatever the name of the created ship, it marked a real breakthrough in navigation and - for all its novelty - was the brainchild of its time. Although later it was Fisher who was considered the creator of the Dreadnought, he did not at all belong to the defining and fundamentally new features of this battleship - high speed qualities combined with the fact that it was armed with exclusively long-range large-caliber artillery. The achievements of science in this area made it possible to increase the salvo distance more and more, and naval thought throughout the world gradually came to the conclusion that it was necessary to replace the "motley" naval artillery with heavy and homogeneous main-caliber guns.

In addition to the fact that this made it possible to conduct intense fire at a maximum distance, the unification of naval artillery greatly facilitated the search for a target and determining the distance to it. In the recent past, both were largely left to chance until, in 1912, Admiral Sir Percy Scott invented the electric PUAO (artillery fire control device). Until then, the guidance and target search systems remained at the same level as in Nelson's times. Officially, this was called "taking it into the fork", but it would be more appropriate to say "shoot as God puts on the soul."

An artillery spotter officer, being in the conning tower, ordered a series of volleys to be fired during the battle and, by bursts, "detected" the places where the shells fell. Then he made adjustments, using a speaking tube connected to the gun turrets to communicate with the gunners, and hoped for the best. Only after the target was taken into the "fork", that is, half of the shells went undershot, and half - in flight, was the true range of the target determined, and then very arbitrarily and approximately, since the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "fork" could be no less than an acre. Even the well-trained gunners of Admiral Togo in the Tsushima battle in half the cases "smeared": out of every 100 shells fired from a distance of 7000 yards, only 42 hit Russian ships, and 58 uselessly exploded in the sea.

Of course, while long-range artillery was "talking", small-caliber guns turned into ballast. But when the ships approached so close that all calibers could be brought into action, the rough approximation of the adjustment of the fire manifested itself especially brightly. It was often difficult for an officer to notice the bursts of small and medium-sized shells among the high columns of water thrown up by the main caliber shells. When he succeeded, the work for him was just beginning: 6-, 9-, and 12-inch projectiles going to the same target have different trajectories and, therefore, different elevation angles are required. Thus, the fire spotter in the pitch hell of battle had to shout out corrections for not one, but for all the calibers on board, into the speaking tube.

The first draft of a ship capable of carrying a large number of long-range guns was developed by a man endowed with outstanding talents, but who lived in a country whose fleet was weak and small. The Italian shipbuilder Vittorio Cuniberti had already given him the first gun platform and electrically powered projectile hoists. In 1902, he submitted to the government a design for a 17,000-ton battleship armed with a dozen 12-inch guns, 12-inch armor protecting the ship's vital centers. However, Italy did not have the money or “production capacity” to build it. The battleship remained in blue. Cuniberti shared his idea with the Englishman Fred T. Jane, publisher of the annual Warships, which included lists of ships that were part of the fleets of the whole world, and the opinions of leading scientists, often polar opposites. In 1903, Jane published Cuniberti's design and his own article entitled "The Ideal Battleship for the British Navy".

The "ideal battleship", in addition to large-caliber artillery, was supposed to have an unheard of speed of 24 knots, which was six knots higher than the average for that time. “The bull in the empty space of the circus arena consoles himself with the thought that since he surpasses the agile and agile bullfighter in strength, the battlefield will certainly remain with him,” Cuniberti declared with imagery worthy of the heir to the Romans, “but he is too slow to overtake an opponent, and he almost always manages to avoid the terrifying blow of the horns.

The appearance of the article in the yearbook caused the most controversial responses, which perfectly characterize the confusion in the minds that reigned at that time. Conservative-minded British experts reacted to her with a wide range of feelings - from indignation to polite bewilderment. Sir William White, who had previously been head of the shipbuilding department, found the proposal to remove auxiliary artillery from ships outrageous. The Engineer magazine was less categorical and expressed itself evasively: "The day will come when such a ship will appear in our fleet, but, in our opinion, not soon." However, that day has come. The President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, who loved the fleet very much, but poorly understood it, submitted to Congress a proposal to build a battleship with homogeneous and heavy weapons for the US Navy. In early 1904, this bill was approved, and the Americans laid down two ironclads. Meanwhile, at the shipyards of Japan, work was already in full swing. And it took Jackie Fischer all his diabolical zeal and eloquence to convince his inert compatriots: it's time to catch up with the "breakaway" world.

For the members of the Committee created by Fischer, the issue of heavy and uniform weapons was obvious, but, without causing controversy, was for them on a different plane: how many large-caliber guns should be on the ship and where to place them. They finally settled on ten (the Cuniberti project provided for 12), since, according to the unanimous opinion of the members of the Committee, the displacement of the future battleship should not have exceeded 18,000 tons.

They decided to place them as follows: one pair - on the nose; two more pairs - in the middle part of the ship (middle) on the left and right sides; and two more - closer to the stern, but in the center, so that all four guns could fire simultaneously from the sides and from the stern. This timing was of particular importance: six guns fired from the bow or stern and eight from the side, while the best battleships of the previous era, armed with four 12-inch guns, fired from the bow (or stern) with two guns and from the side with four. Thus, the "Dreadnought" in terms of its firepower was two times superior to any battleship firing a side salvo, and three times superior to any battleship firing from bow guns. The latter circumstance especially pleased the assertive and aggressive Fisher, who was firmly convinced that the enemy would always run away from the Dreadnought pursuing him and then fall under the deadly bow gun fire, more powerful than side fire.

The project documentation was prepared by May 1905, and the blueprints were sent to the Royal Dockyards in Portsmouth, where the hull was laid down on October 2. From that day on, the building moved forward at breakneck speed. Fischer got into all the details so lively, so stubbornly hurried and urged on the engineers and workers, that his invariable phrase "Push on - or fuck off!" became a proverb among the dockers.

However, he was far from being only customized - Fisher came up with and implemented many innovations that saved time at each stage of construction. One of these innovations was the standard, that is, interchangeable, parts of the structure. Just at the time when the Committee was developing the Dreadnought project, the battleship King Edward VII was being completed on the slipway, the massive hull of which was welded from several thousand steel plates of various configurations - they were cut from sheets brought from factories, and then for several months they were collected together and adjusted together - this work was reminiscent of compiling a “puzzle picture”. Fisher insisted that the Dreadnought's hull be mostly made of interchangeable standard rectangular steel sheets. They were brought from the factory, unloaded and put in the right place any of them, and all the delays - however, small ones - were associated with the expectation of sheets of a particularly complex configuration. This simple innovation saved almost a whole year of working time, and if on average the construction of a ship from laying to launching took 16 months, then the 527-foot Dreadnought hull literally took shape in just 18 weeks before the eyes of the astonished dockers - a negligible period. On February 10, 1906, the new battleship was prepared for launching.

Completion "at the wall" and the installation of weapons and equipment also took place with lightning speed. The capacity of the foundries in 1905 was such that it would have taken several years to make ten 12-inch guns. However, Fisher, who never reckoned with generally accepted norms and rules, achieved the immediate installation of eight guns intended for the battleships Agamemnon and Lord Nelson under construction. Thanks to this "interception", the work was again carried out well ahead of schedule.

October 3, 1906 "Dreadnought" has already entered sea trials. Instead of 3-3.5 years, during which ships of this class were usually built, the mighty armored battleship was born in one year and one day, that is, by the standards of that time, in the blink of an eye. Many rightly saw in this something providential. And although it was not Fisher who invented this hitherto unknown ship, no one disputed the decisive role of the admiral in the fantastic speed with which the Dreadnought was built, and in how wisely and resourcefully he led the creation of this Leviathan.

Sea trials "Dreadnought" became a real sensation. From Portsmouth, he went south to the Mediterranean Sea, and from there, across the Atlantic - to Trinidad, after which he returned to his native shores. Tests have shown that, at full load, the turbines are capable of providing the ship with a speed of 21 knots. Even more impressive was that the way to the West Indies and back (about 7,000 miles), the battleship passed at an average speed of 17.5 knots and without a single breakdown - a result unprecedented for ships equipped with piston engines. (all British dreadnoughts were originally equipped with steam turbines). And in general, the era of steam engines has come to an end. Turbines determined previously unthinkable speeds and ranges of ships.

The most crucial moment of the test was shooting. "Dreadnought" was to fire a volley with all sides - from eight 12-inch guns. Sir Philip Watts, director of the Portsmouth shipyards, where the new ship was born, was waiting for this moment with trepidation. “He was very gloomy and serious,” recalls one of the officers present at the shooting, “as if he was afraid that at the first salvo the ship would fall apart. However, there was a rumble, muffled by the distance, and the Dreadnought shuddered slightly. Dozens of people crowding on the shore did not even know that eight 12-inch guns had been fired at once. And the ship “shuddered a little” because it sent shells with a total weight of 21,250 pounds to 8000 yards.

Tests of the Dreadnought revealed only one design flaw: when the ship turned, its stability decreased. Its first commander, Sir Reginald Bacon, recalled that “at speeds above 15 knots with more than 10 degrees of rudder shift, the power of the machine was not enough to level the ship, and she continued to circle in place until the speed dropped to 15 knots. ". There was one more trouble - on the way back from the Atlantic, the speed fell by one knot for no apparent reason, and two days later, for no apparent reason, it returned to its previous level. It turned out that the lagging sheet of sheathing served as a brake. These problems were fixed quite quickly - as soon as the Dreadnought returned from sea trials. In general, they were unusually successful, and in December 1906, Fisher enthusiastically wrote: "Dreadnought" should have been renamed "Cool Egg". Why? Because it can't be broken!"

Equipping one ship with ten heavy 12-inch guns was certainly a major achievement. But weapons are not everything. Other dizzying engineering ideas have found their embodiment in the Dreadnought.

The forecastle "Dreadnought" was distinguished by its extraordinary length, a 28-foot bulwark ran along the bow. Due to these design features, the deck was not flooded with water in stormy weather, which dramatically increased the accuracy of aiming the guns. The nose below the waterline had a bulbous protrusion - this improved the seaworthiness of the ship. In the middle part, the case was straightened, which made it look somewhat like a box. Such contours softened the rolling. Along the sides below the waterline were underwater keels, which had the shape of a triangle in cross section with the apex pointing downward at an angle. These keels dampened the vibrations caused by the vortex flows from the propellers.

The ship had anti-torpedo protection - booms installed from the hull, and steel nets for intercepting torpedoes. Another means of defense against torpedo attacks was anti-mine artillery - twenty-seven 12-pounder guns, guided by hand. They were dispersed throughout the ship and were installed on superstructures, including on top of the gun turrets.

Going against age-old tradition, the Dreadnought's mainmast was three-legged. This design gave maximum stability to the Mars, from which the shooting data was transmitted to the towers. The idea itself was great. But the designers did not take into account one significant detail - the mast was located between two chimneys. Not only did the smoke from the front pipe seriously impede visibility, it was hot, and in stormy weather, when the fireboxes were working with might and main, the tubular structure of the mast was so hot that it was simply impossible to move along the ladder inside it and leading from the hold to Mars .

In every respect, the Dreadnought was the most sophisticated technical device of its time. She was longer (527 feet), wider (82 feet), and had a deeper draft (26.5 feet) than any older ship of the line. Its displacement was 17900 tons, 750 tons more than the largest warship of that time.

Each Dreadnought turret weighed 500 tons, and the weight of one main battery gun exceeded the weight of all the guns of Victory, Horatio Nelson's flagship, combined. The turrets stood on fixed barbettes reinforced with vertical steel beams and covered with drums welded from 11-inch armor plates. To protect the magazines with ammunition and other compartments, the middle part of the ship along the waterline was covered with an 11-inch armor belt. Behind the armor were bunkers, which had the shape of a cut wedge in cross-section, in which there was a large part of the 2900-ton coal reserve. Bunkers were the second protective belt.

In addition, watertight bulkheads ran from the keel to 9 feet above the waterline, dividing the hold into 18 hermetic compartments. This ensured the ship's high survivability - the engineers believed that the Dreadnought could withstand two direct hits from torpedoes while remaining in service. (If necessary, the Dreadnought itself could conduct a torpedo attack - five torpedo tubes were installed on the ship).

The power plant, setting in motion all this colossus, was the last word in technology. The classic reciprocating steam engines with their roaring and rattling pistons were a thing of the past. The Dreadnought was the first heavy warship to be powered by steam turbines. It had eight turbines of the Parsons system. Steam was produced by eighteen boilers of the Babcock and Williams system. Developing a power of 23,000 liters. with., the machine rotated four propellers. The turbines made it possible to develop a cruising speed of 17.5 knots. The maximum speed of the Dreadnought reached 21 knots. The cruising range was 6620 miles.

The twin balancing rudders were controlled by means of a helm from the bridge or from any of the four spare steering posts dispersed throughout the ship. Two of them were at command posts located on the tops of both masts, it was possible to get there only through the ladders going inside the tubular structure, covered with armor (these cavities were also used as a voice pipe).

A team of 773 people was required to manage the floating fortress. Placing it in the living quarters was another breakthrough into the future. By tradition, the sailors huddled in the cramped quarters of the bow, and the officers were located in relatively spacious cabins in the stern. On the Dreadnought, everyone was turned upside down: the team was placed in the stern - closer to the car, and the officers were given the middle part - next to the bridge. Each of the five Dreadnought towers was manned by a crew of 35 men. The actions of the team were brought to automaticity: in some 10 minutes, a twin 12-inch artillery mount could fire 12 shots at a target located 20 miles away. 850-pound shells were stored in a shell magazine located in the hold. On a suspended monorail, the projectile was fed to the pocket of the intake - the first link in the ammunition lifting system. Then, moving up, the projectile entered the deck of the powder magazine, where four powder charges were loaded into the intake. Even higher, directly under the tower, there was a working compartment, where the shot was completed. Here, the projectile and the powder charge were placed in the feeder, which, moving along the rails, curved in the form of an arc, fired a shot at the bolt. The feed mechanism worked hydraulically. The shot was sent into the barrel chamber by a hydraulic rammer - first the projectile, and then the powder charges.

The shutter was locked, and the barrels of the guns rose to the desired elevation angle, turning on pins - massive bushings on each side of the barrel. They rested on support bearings built into the walls of the tower. So the vertical guidance was carried out. At the same time, the entire turret rotated on its axis by means of a gear mechanism - a toothed rim and pinion. Thus, the angle of deflection of the barrel was set, i.e., horizontal guidance was carried out. The aiming angles were set from the central post by the officer who controlled the fire.

The recoil force of the guns rolled back approximately 18 inches, and the hydraulic knurler brought them to their original position, after which the guns were reloaded. But first, a small but extremely important action was performed. To exclude the possibility that the hot gases remaining in the barrel from the previous volley would throw a new charge directly at the gunners, after each shot the barrel chamber was cooled by a stream of water and compressed air.

"Dreadnought", like any absolutely new phenomenon, was not welcomed by everyone. Sir George Clark, Secretary of the Imperial Defense Committee, argued that it was sheer recklessness to take such a technological risk, and assured that "our policy in the field of shipbuilding is not to get ahead of ourselves, but to improve on what others have already tried." Sir William White, who until the advent of Fisher and Philip Watts was Director of the Portsmouth Dockyards, and therefore had reason to say that "the grapes are green", considered it unacceptable "to put all your eggs in one or two huge, expensive, stately, but very vulnerable baskets" . And the caustic Admiral Charles Beresford, Fisher's colleague and rival, said: "This class of ships will not give us any advantages."

Beresford, who commanded the fleet, could not stand the First Sea Lord, who was his immediate superior, and apparently transferred his dislike to Fisher's favorite brainchild. However, there is some truth in Beresford's remark. Such a qualitative leap in the armament of the Dreadnought gave rise to well-known problems that were unexpected for its creators: next to it, all existing battleships seemed hopelessly outdated, and this made the so zealously guarded numerical superiority of the British fleet meaningless. A whole armada of slow-moving, lightly armed battleships, protected by thin armor, would not be able to cope with a squadron of new dreadnoughts. Germany, no doubt, had to jump on the idea of ​​building such ships to close the gap, and Britain, if she wanted to maintain her priority and the title of "mistress of the seas", had to start a grueling naval arms race.

Not for its great accomplishments, His Majesty's ship "Dreadnought" got into the annals of history. There were no high-profile feats for him, his giant guns were silent throughout the war, and only once did the ship have a chance to participate in the battle. It happened in March 1915 on the North Sea: he met the U-29 submarine, rammed it and sank it. The Dreadnought is famous not for what it did, but for what it was. In 1906, when the ship entered service, it was so ahead of its time that in all the battleships launched after it, there was nothing fundamentally new - they were simply the embodiment of the ideas embodied in its concept. The emblem of the Dreadnought was a golden key clutched in a knight's gauntlet, which, of course, should have symbolized the ambitious aspirations of the Admiralty, which saw in the new ship the key to the door leading to undivided domination of the sea.

Starting with the battleships of the Orion series (1910), the so-called superdreadnoughts-GK became 343 mm and since then it has been constantly growing until it reached its limits in the English Queens and Sovereigns-381mm and the German Baerns-380mm.

However, in the Second World Civil Code on the Japanese Yamato, it reached completely unprecedented values ​​\u200b\u200bof 460mm, although history knows the light-line cruiser Furies with one such gun since WWI.

By far the best battleships of the First World War were the Queen Elizabeth battleships.

The spinning flywheel of the naval arms race was devouring huge amounts of money, but was not at all going to slow down. Following Great Britain, other countries began to build superdreadnoughts, and it was supposed to equip them with even more powerful guns. The Americans and Japanese opted for the 356mm caliber; Krupp announced the testing of several samples of 350-mm guns. (There was a suspicion that the König-class battleships would be the last to be equipped.) And then the Admiralty began to create the next generation of battleships, the main weapon of which would be a 15-inch gun. The significance of such a qualitative leap in the development of naval weapons is eloquently evidenced by at least the following fact: the mass of a 15-inch (381-mm) projectile was 885 kg - 2.3 times more than that of a 12-inch one! But the most amazing thing is that the British industry - as in the case of the Dreadnought - carried out the bold ideas of the designers in record time.

The battleships of the 1912 program of the year were supposed to be an improved version of Iron Duke, but the recent critic of the Admiralty W. Churchill, who headed this department a year ago, ordered the project to be revised and new ships built for 381-mm guns. Such a decision was extremely risky, since these guns did not yet exist even on paper! But on the eve of the World War, Churchill considered it unacceptable to waste time waiting for the tests of new artillery, and the designers set to work, relying more on intuition than on mathematical calculations. But here's the paradox: the project, born in such dramatic circumstances, was embodied in a ship that is rightfully considered the best battleship of the 1st World War! It was the Queen Elizabeth, the second ship after the Dreadnought, which threw admirals and shipbuilders of all countries into confusion.

At first, the new battleship loomed like an enlarged Iron Duke, but the middle turret was soon abandoned: eight 381-mm guns with a rate of fire of two rounds per minute per barrel, and so provided a larger broadside than any of their predecessors. The freed space tempted to install additional boilers and increase the speed to 25 knots! But it was impossible to do this while maintaining the coal-fired heating of boilers. Switching to liquid fuel, of course, solved this problem and also saved several hundred tons of weight, but dependence on oil supplies from the Middle East frightened the British government. After a heated discussion, Churchill insisted on making a decision to buy shares in Iranian oil companies, which would ensure guaranteed access to "black gold" deposits. At the same time, the First Lord of the Admiralty gave the go-ahead for the construction of pure oil battleships for the British Navy.

An experienced 15-inch gun with a barrel length of 42 calibers was manufactured by the military plant in Epsvik in just 4 months. The results of his tests exceeded all expectations. The accuracy of firing even at the maximum range (at the range - 32 km; for ship installations, due to the lower elevation angle of the trunks, the range did not exceed 21.4 km) was excellent, and barrel wear was very insignificant.

"Queen Elizabeth" entered service in January 1915 and immediately attracted close attention. Although he did not develop the design 25 knots, but still a huge and high-speed battleship in many respects anticipated the concept of the battleship of the future and cast doubt on the further development of the class of battlecruisers. True, for speed and heavy-duty weapons, they had to pay, as always, with armor. Although the defense was basically the same as the Iron Duke design, and the thickness of the main belt was even increased by one inch (because of which it had to be reduced elsewhere), the dissonance between offensive power and defense became obvious. The only useful innovation was the appearance of a solid 50mm anti-torpedo bulkhead that extended along the side for most of the length of the hull.

On February 0, 1906, the battleship Dreadnought was launched, whose name became not only a household name, but also personified the power of the fleets of the first half of the 20th century. Dreadnoughts were mainly called the most powerful and massive armored artillery warships, which belonged to battleships. Battleships were used in the 20th century to destroy enemy ships as part of a combat formation and artillery support for land operations. It was an evolutionary development of battleships of the second half of the nineteenth century.

"Dreadnought"- English battleship, whose name has become a household name. Fundamentally new was the placement of artillery of the main caliber in five two-gun towers, three in the diametrical plane and two onboard. Immediately after the appearance of the Dreadnought, all battleships with standard armament of the four main caliber guns were instantly outdated. The second feature of the Dreadnought was the rejection of the medium caliber - at that time 152-mm guns, which were previously installed in towers or casemates. To repel destroyer attacks, the ship carried twenty-four 76 mm guns. At the beginning of the First World War, the fleets of the leading countries of the world had much more powerful battleships than their English predecessor. The Dreadnought won its only victory not over an armored battleship, but over the German submarine U-29, which on March 19, 1916 came under a giant ramming attack. It is noteworthy that the submarine was commanded by Captain Weddigen, who in the fall of 1914 sank three British cruisers one after the other within two hours. In 1921, the Dreadnought was expelled from the fleet and cut into metal two years later.

"Pocket Battleship"

If you try to designate the smallest ship of the line in terms of displacement, then with certain reservations it can be called the pocket battleship "Admiral Graf Spee" and two ships of the same type with it. The "pocket battleship" Admiral Graf Spee was built within the constraints of the Versailles-Washington system. And although in Germany (as well as in other countries of the world) the permissible tonnage was exceeded by 11%, the ship turned out to be of a very modest displacement, but with powerful, as it turned out to be the misfortune of the British, weapons. Since it was not entirely clear what class these three German ships belonged to - armored cruisers or battleships (armadillos in the German classification), the term “Pocket battleship” arose in England - “pocket battleship”. In 1939, eleven merchant ships became victims of the Admiral Spee in the Atlantic. December 13, 1939 "pocket battleship" entered into battle with three English cruisers. During the tense battle, both sides were seriously injured. The inability to quickly repair the damage and the danger of the approach of other British ships forced the commander of the Admiral Spee, after consultation with Berlin, to destroy the ship. December 17, 1939 "Admiral Spee" was blown up in the raid of Montevideo. Ironically, 25 years earlier, the German squadron of Vice Admiral Spee, whose name the "pocket battleship" bore, also perished in the Southwestern Atlantic (the Falkland Islands region).

"Marat"

In Russia, shortly before the First World War, the construction of battleships of the Poltava type began. Each of them carried three 305 mm guns in four turrets. Based on the experience of the Russo-Japanese War, the anti-mine caliber was strengthened, consisting of sixteen 120 mm guns. And if in the First World War the ships in the Baltic did not show themselves, then in the future they actively participated in the Great Patriotic War. The battleship "Marat" (until 1921 "Petropavlovsk") was used in the defense of Kronstadt. In September 1941, the Marat was severely damaged during a German air raid when a German ton bomb blew off the entire bow up to the second turret. The ship landed on the ground, and then was used as a fixed firing battery. In 1943, the battleship was returned to its original name. And in 1950, the battleship was reclassified into a non-self-propelled training ship and renamed Volkhov again, but three years later it was expelled from the fleet and scrapped.

"Paris Commune"

The Soviet battleship of the same type with the Marat was the battleship Paris Commune (Sevastopol until 1921), which operated during the Great Patriotic War on the Black Sea. During the war, the battleship made 15 combat campaigns, fired 10 shots at enemy positions. At the same time, the ship itself repulsed 20 enemy air raids, destroying three German aircraft. On May 31, 1943, the name "Sevastopol" was returned to the battleship. On July 8, 1945, the battleship was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In the post-war period, Sevastopol was used as a training ship, and in 1956 it was expelled from the Navy and dismantled for metal.

Battleship "Yamato"

The largest battleships built in the world were two Japanese Yamato-class battleships. "Yamato" and "Musashi" of the same type carried nine 460 mm guns each. The displacement reached a record 72 thousand tons for a battleship. However, the combat biography of the giant turned out to be much more modest. The battleship began to be actively used only from 1944, when the Japanese command, having lost a significant part of the aircraft carriers, tried to intensify the operations of large artillery ships. During the battle in Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the Yamato, as part of Admiral Kurita's strike formation, broke through to a group of American escort aircraft carriers, and only the indecision of the Japanese admiral, who at a critical moment for the Americans withdrew his formation from the battle, saved the American fleet from more significant losses. . In April 1945, the Yamato was included in the group of Japanese ships, which was supposed to strike at the American forces off Okinawa. The suicidal campaign of the Japanese formation (except for the Yamato - the light cruiser Yahagi and 8 destroyers) ended in disaster when, on April 7, 1945, Japanese ships sailing without air cover were attacked by American aircraft.

Having received damage from 10 torpedoes and 13 bombs, the Japanese battleship sank with most of the crew. Together with the battleship, 3,061 people died; only 269 were saved. American losses amounted to 10 aircraft. Even during the war in Japan, there was a gloomy saying: “There are three useless things in the world - the Egyptian pyramids, the Great Wall of China and the battleship Yamato.

Battleship "Richelieu"

Sometimes battleships of the French type "Richelieu" (two units) are rated as the most advanced in the history of shipbuilding. With a relatively small displacement, the ships had good armor protection and powerful artillery. A feature was the placement of main battery artillery in two towers in the bow of the ship, four guns each. The fate of the battleship, however, like most of the French fleet in World War II, was not easy. In Dakar, the battleship was attacked by British aircraft, withstood an artillery duel with English battleships, and after a series of twists and turns, the battleship's crew went over to the side of the Allies. "Reshilier" was sent for repairs in the United States and then included in the British fleet, and after the war was returned to France.

Battleship "Arizona"

One of the most important tragedies of the Japanese air strike on Pearl Harbor is associated with the name of this battleship. During the air raid, the battleship received four direct hits from air bombs. As a result of the detonation of ammunition in the bow cellars, the Arizona broke into two parts and sank within a few minutes. Of the approximately 1,350 people on board, 1,177 died. In memory of the battleship that died with almost the entire crew in 1962, a special memorial was built over the site of the death of the Arizona.

"Bismarck"

Battleship of the German navy, one of the most famous ships of World War II. Named after the first chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck. During his only campaign in May 1941, he sank the British flagship, the battlecruiser, in the Danish Strait "Hood"(English) HMS Hood). The hunt for the Bismarck, which began after this, ended with the sinking of the British fleet three days later. The Bismarck type was originally created as the heir to the "pocket battleships" and was mainly intended for conducting raider operations against merchant ships. The Bismarck was the largest battleship in the world during its service, and the Bismarck class remains the third largest (after the Japanese Yamato and the American Iowa) battleship class of all time. On May 27, after a heavy and lengthy battle with the English squadron, the Bismarck team opened the kingstones and left the ship. Some of the crew members made no attempt to swim away, but climbed on the bottom and went under the water along with the ship. In total, out of 2,200 people of the Bismarck team, 1995 people died.