The cruiser "Varyag". Fight Chemulpo 27 January 1904 of the Year. CH 6. Across the oceans
Let's start with the tests. For the first time the cruiser 16 came out on them in May 1900 was still unfinished, the first day went with the speed of 16-17 nodes and there were no problems. However, the next morning, when the vapor pressure was brought to 16-16,5 atm. and the runs with the speed of 21-22,5 knots were started. After an hour, the bearing of the connecting rod of the high-pressure cylinder (CVP) of the left-hand machine cranks up. It was cooled and tried to continue the tests at the same speed, but now the molten white metal from the crank bearing of the high-pressure cylinder of the right machine is in use. As a result, the tests had to be interrupted and returned for troubleshooting. A day later (May 19 1900) again went out to the ocean, where two hours went - there were no problems, apart from the red hot flue doors of the boilers.
Then it was time for official testing, and the 9 July 1900. The cruiser first made the transition in 400 miles to the Boston raid, in the 50 miles from which there was a measuring mile 10 miles long. The 12 July took place on it, the cruiser made three runs with a speed of 16 knots, and then two runs with a speed of 18, 21 and 23 knots. respectively. It was then, on the last run, the cruiser showed its record-breaking 24,59 ties, while the weather had become very bad by that time, heavy rain was falling, and the excitement reached 4-5 points.
The results of these tests could be regarded as a great success, especially as 9 and 12 in July, the Varyag machines and boilers worked perfectly. But alas, on July 15, during the 12-hour run with the speed of the 23 node, at the eighth hour knocked out the cover of the CVP, which, of course, completely damaged one of the cars (left). Naturally, the tests were interrupted.
The cylinder had to be made new, so the cruiser was able to exit the following tests only two months later, 16 September 1900 g. The first 24 hourly run with speed of 10 knots was completed without incident, and therefore, having made the necessary preparations and waited a two-day storm, September 21 “Varyag »Re-entered the main test - 12-hour run with speed 23 knots. On it, the cruiser demonstrated an average speed of 23,18 knots. Therefore, it was possible to say that the tests of the ship were successful. But there was one caveat - during the run of one of the boilers the tube broke, which caused the boiler to be decommissioned for an 3,5 hour. And some five hours later, after the completion of the tests, the right fridge flowed.
But all this was still half the trouble - the problem was that after the tests, it was necessary to conduct a full audit of the power plant. And here she showed a very unattractive picture of the state of the ship:
1. A layer of scale and other "precipitation" was found in the tubes;
2. The tubes, which were located in the lower rows and, accordingly, were most susceptible to heating, sagged massively;
3. There was a "tearfulness" - the contact points of the tubes with the junction boxes lost tightness and leaked;
4. And vice versa, the nuts that held the clamping brackets (that is, the mechanism of fastening the tubes to the boiler), stuck together in mass order;
5. In one boiler, the junction box cracked - as it turned out, it was formed at the manufacturing plant, but was stained so successfully that the monitoring commission did not find it. However, now that the boilers had to work at full capacity, the crack spread further.
Of course, the tests for it is to identify various shortcomings of the ship. But attention is drawn to the fact that in both cases of long twelve-hour runs at full speed on the cruiser there were breakdowns, despite the fact that after the completion of the second run the condition of the boilers turned out to be such that they needed to be disassembled, cleaned and assembled, with which they managed to cope only towards the end October, that is, more than a month after sea trials.
As it is known, the cruiser Varyag left 10 March 1901 for Philadelphia, but already at noon March 11 stopped in front of the entrance to Delaware Bay near Lewis, where they waited until March 14 to test the steering drive in the bay. Then the cruiser made the transition to the Hampton raid - a full supply of coal was accepted, and finally, on March 25, the cruiser went into the ocean. Already on the first day of the journey a storm began, gusts reached 11 points. The cruiser’s cars had no breakdowns, but an increased consumption of coal came to light, which forced the 3 cruiser in April to enter the Azores, which was not supposed to do initially. Here we waited for the storm at anchor, having both vehicles of the cruiser in constant readiness, and on April 8 the Varyag again set sail.
14 April cruiser arrives at Cherbourg. As we see, the transition did not take much time - less than a day from the parking place to Lewis, then - a day to the Hampton raid, from which Varyag left only 25 in March, and 3 in April, after 9 days, he anchored from the Azores of the islands. The road from them to Cherbourg took 6 more days, and all, it turns out, the cruiser was in motion 17 days.
However, by the end of these 17 days, the Varyag power plant had come to such a state that the commander of the cruiser V.I. Baer was forced to leave the ship entrusted to him for a very long repair in Cherbourg - they sorted out mechanisms, opened the cylinders of the main machines. It was assumed that the team could handle this in two weeks, but finished in 11 days, and on April 25 the cruiser again went to sea. After 5 days, the "Varangian" arrived on the Revel raid, and from there on May 2 left for Kronstadt, where he arrived the next day without incident.
As a matter of fact, “Varyag” (with the possible exception of the only short-term exit to the sea) was located in Kronstadt until the very departure to the Far East. At this time, the cruiser was subjected to various kinds of modifications and corrections, as well as fine-tuning artillery. But it is of interest that it was in Kronstadt that damage to the hull was revealed - flora in the areas of 30-37; The 43-49 and 55-56 frames have a deflection arrow from 1,6 to 19 mm. The reasons for this were not identified, but the cruiser "survived" the docking without additional deformations, and it was decided to assume that all this was not dangerous. Perhaps this was indeed the case, and the hull was deformed, for example, during the launch of the ship into the water.
Varyag left Kronstadt only 5 in August 1901 g, and reached without breakdowns ... exactly to Tolbukhin lighthouse (2,8 miles from Kotlin Island, where Kronstadt is actually located), and there, at the cruiser, the stock spool of the CWD of the left car broke, the ship went further under one machine. A day later (August 7) they put a spare stock, but alas, as soon as they made a move, the latter broke again. So the cruiser came to Denmark on the same machine (this happened on August 9) and already there they found out and tried to eliminate the cause of the breakdown, while the parts had to be ordered at the Burmeister and Vine factory.
In principle, all this was not something supernatural, repairs could be completed fairly quickly, but Varyag went to sea only on August 28 for reasons of the protocol - the widowed sovereign-empress Maria Feodorovna waited for the visit, then the royal yacht “Standart” and marching with him armored cruiser "Svetlana". The next day, we met "Hohenzollern" and went to Danzig, where the meeting of the two emperors took place, and then "Standart" and "Svetlana" left. But "Varyag" could not follow them, and was forced to spend an extra two hours on the German roadstead. The reason is the breakage of the rolling machine, as a result of which the cruiser could not be removed from the anchor.
Without a doubt, this failure lies entirely on the conscience of Russian sailors - the investigation showed that it occurred because of the erroneous actions of the watch engineer-mechanic. But why was he wrong? The fact is that the preparation for the royal reviews is, of course, tedious and nervous, and the crew of the “Varyag” is just that. But the problem was also that already in Danzig (if not earlier), the mechanical engineers of the cruiser faced the necessity of another reassembling of mechanisms, more precisely - bearings of the right machine, and they were still repairing when the cruiser had to be removed from the anchor and left the raid ...
By the way, one should not think that the problems with the power plant were the only difficulties that the crew encountered - the electrical equipment was constantly breaking down, including the dynamo. As it turned out, the reason was that the shafts of the latter, according to the specifications, had to be forged, and were cast. Subsequently, the ITC issued a request to Charles C. Crump for their replacement.
“Varyag” continued to accompany “Shtandart” and “Svetlana” - on September 2 the cruiser was in Kiel, the next day - in Elbe, on September 5 - in Dunkirk. Here the ship once again began to prepare for the transition to the Far East. Including the consequences of the “Danzig error” were corrected, cars and boilers were once again checked.
From Dunkirk, the cruiser left 16 September 1901 in Cadiz, where he stayed 5 days, and then September 27 came to Algeria. At sea, the ship spent only 6 days after leaving Dunkirk, where the power plant was being repaired and inspected, but again stopped in Algeria for a complete bulkhead of machines, including low and medium pressure cylinders.
Varyag left Algeria on October 9, and October 23 entered the Salaminskaya bay, spending a total of days on the sea 9 (stood for four days in Palermo, and one day in the Court’s bay, where he was to undergo combat training for a month, however, the cruiser was recalled the very next day after arrival. The ship commander received an encryption, from which it followed that the plans had changed and the cruiser, instead of training in the Gulf of the Court, would have to go to the Persian Gulf to demonstrate the Russian flag for three weeks. A funny incident is connected with this episode. The encryption was completely secret, only two people knew about its content on the cruiser: the commander of the Varyag, V.I. Baer and senior officer E.K. Kraft. The latter, with great surprise, informed V.I. Baru, that the suppliers of supplies know very well who the cruiser will go to the Persian Gulf ...
So, V.I. Baru had to undergo a fairly serious transition, and then he had to represent Russian interests in low-income ports of the Persian Gulf for a long time. So, the commander is not so sure about the power plant of his ship that he asked to delay the output until November 6. The permission was obtained, and within two weeks the mechanical engineers again sorted out the main and auxiliary mechanisms of the cruiser, including refrigerators, because, in addition to other problems of machines and boilers, salt water was also added, the use of which led to the rapid withdrawal of the boilers out of service.
It seems that after such a repair everything should have been in order, but where it is - on the second day of leaving Salaminskaya Bay (held on November 6) salinity again appeared in 7 boilers. And the next day (November 8) flowed tubes in three boilers, which had to be urgently removed from the action. We tried to completely change the boiler water, for which we had to stay at Suez for two days - but just an hour after the Varyag entered the Suez Canal, the salinity reappeared. I had to stop the trip again for a day and “gut” my left fridge. It turned out that at least 400 of its pipes (after two weeks of repair in Salaminskaya Bay!) Are unreliable and had to be silenced.
Now V.I. Beru had to disassemble the 9 boilers of the feed group, which were fed from the left cooler, and it was not possible to do this with the help of the machine crew alone, and it was necessary to use the combatants in this work too. While Varyag was following the Red Sea, the 5 000 of the boiler, evaporation and circulation tubes were inside and out and cleaned, inside and out.
Did these measures help? Yes, not at all - on the contrary, the first, really serious accidents followed. So, November 14 broke the tubes in one boiler, November 15 - in two at once, and November 17 - in one more. Eight people were scalded, one very seriously. The most unpleasant thing was that the broken tubes were neither burned-out nor clogged - there were no defects or deposits of deposits on them. As a result, we had to stay in Aden for four days - in addition to loading coal and supplies, we again sorted out boilers.
All these, we are not afraid of this word, unprecedented efforts were crowned with “success” - the whole 13 running day cruiser “Varyag” did not have major accidents of its power plant and refrigerators. Five days, from 22 to 27 in November, the cruiser went along the Gulf of Aden to Muscat, then a three-day trip to Bushehr, a day to Kuwait and two to Ling ... in each of the above ports Varyag stopped for several days and received guests-local sheikhs and other public. But nothing good will last for a long time, and in Ling two days (13-14 December) again went to repair cars. Daily transfer to Bandar Abbas, a three-day stay there and a three-day transfer to Karachi. There, “Varyag” spent four days, taking 750 t coal and, of course, spending the prevention of machines and boilers.
25 December The cruiser left Karachi and after 6 days, December 31, arrived in Colombo. The Port Arthur squadron was within reach, and Petersburg demanded the earliest possible reunification with the squadron, but V.I. REM categorically does not want to attach an incompetent cruiser to the squadron, and requires a two-week stop to repair mechanisms, including: opening and reassembling the cylinders of the main machines, circulating and air pumps, spool boxes, inspection of bearings, gaskets and valves. In addition, many pipes in refrigerators should be replaced again, and they should be boiled down in soda.
This time was given, but the cruiser did not “come in order” - after leaving 15 from Colombo in January 1902 in the morning, in the evening it was necessary to slow down due to the warming up of the high-pressure cylinder bearings. A week later, on December 22, Varyag arrived in Singapore, loaded coal during the day and carried out preventive work for three more days. From December 26 - a week at sea, February 2 came to Hong Kong and stood up again for a week, doing a complete overhaul of mechanisms. By this time, the number of tubes replaced in boilers and refrigerators has already reached 1, 500! The ship remained 2 to Port Arthur - four days from Hong Kong to Nagasaki, and from there - three days to Port Arthur, but taking into account the parking in Nagasaki, only February 25 arrived in Arthur.
What can we say about the power plant "Varyag" on the basis of the foregoing? Sometimes, on the Internet, one has to read the version that while the commander of the cruiser was commanded by V.I. Rem, then everything was more or less in order with the cars and boilers, but VF came here. Rudnev - and everything collapsed ... Meanwhile, the facts show the opposite.
Without a doubt, the cruiser Varyag reached and even exceeded the contract speed at the tests. But in both cases, carrying them out by the 12-hour run at full speed, the Varyag power plant was damaged: in the first case the cylinder cover was torn off, and in the second one of the boilers failed, and at the end of the tests the cruisers boiled requiring factory repair. Then the cruiser made the transition first from Philadelphia to Kronstadt, and from there, passing through the Baltic Sea and escorting the royal yacht to Port Arthur, with a long stay in the Persian Gulf.
So, from the moment of leaving Philadelphia to the moment when the cruiser dropped anchor in Port Arthur, the Varyag spent 102 days on the go. But in order to provide him with these 102 days of progress, V.I. Rem had more than 73 days to repair the ship at various stops and in ports! We cannot specify the exact number, because we do not know how long Varyag was repaired in Denmark, and how much preventive maintenance of cars took in Dunkirk - accordingly, the author was forced to exclude the repair time in these ports completely. In addition, the days mentioned 73 did not take into account the repair work that the cruiser made on the move, as was done, for example, in the Red Sea. Again, when we talk about 102 running days, we mean the total time the cruiser was at sea, but not the time in which he was at least relatively healthy: for example, the 102 days included in the specified 4 days when the Varyag was traveling from Kronstadt to Denmark in one car, and the days of the accidents of its boilers when the cruiser was moving towards Aden. If we introduce these amendments, we get a completely horrifying picture impossible for a warship - in order to ensure that the newest ship 24 has an hour to sail, it took almost as much time to repair its power plant at anchor! And we must understand that during the transitions the cruiser almost always went at all to the economic speed of 10 knots, not at combat.
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But the situation with the machines, boilers and refrigerators "Varyag" was infinitely far from normal. And, having understood the schedule of repairs, it is very difficult to blame the crew for poor ship maintenance. Suppose the Russian machine team was made up of profane, but in this case how to explain the output of the material part during the test runs, where everything went by and under the control of plant specialists? But when accepting the Varyag, there was never a case when he went with the maximum speed to the 23 of the 12-hour unit and had nothing to do with it. On the way to Russia, the cruiser had to be delayed for 11 days due to the necessity of busting cars and boilers - no transport, or, especially, a passenger steamer demanded this, and the latter often went to the Atlantic even faster than the Varyag. It seems that at the time of entry into Kronstadt the cruiser was in order, but once he got out, the breakdown followed one after the other, the cars and boilers were constantly in need of repair. It is hard to imagine that the Russians in a matter of days at sea managed to break up the American equipment! But the version that the Varyag cars, boilers and refrigerators were simply not brought up to standard by C. Crump, in the above history The operation fits very well.
But back to V.I. To Bar, in his personal opinion, with the Varyag power plant everything was completely bad, and he regularly sent reports “upward”. One of his reports on the problems of "Varyag" with boilers in the Red Sea, Admiral PP Tyrtov ferried V.P. Verkhovsky with a very snide resolution: "to formulate opinions about the properties of the boilers of Nikloss". However, the Varyag team could not help it.
With a truly titanic effort, constantly repairing Varyag, V.I. Rem nevertheless led the cruiser where ordered. But in what condition? When the Varyag left Nagasaki for Port Arthur, the junior flagship of the squadron, Rear Admiral K.P., raised the flag on it. Kuzmich. He, of course, wanted to test the new ship, and arranged a series of checks on various systems of the ship, including its power plant. But when the cruiser tried to develop a full stroke, the bearings started to knock at 20,5 speed, and the speed had to be reduced to 10 nodes.
Further checks also did not inspire optimism. As we said earlier, Varyag arrived in Port Arthur 25 February 1902 r, and February 28 went out to sea and, after firing practice, tried again to get off the ground. The result is catastrophic, the rupture of several tubes, the knocking and heating of many bearings, while the speed never exceeded the 20 nodes. These two tests allow us to safely say that, despite all the efforts of the crew, the cruiser arrived in Port Arthur completely incompetent and demanded immediate repair.
The statement of work on the mechanisms, compiled by 28 February, included:
1. Inspection and repair of all bearings - 21 day;
2. Bulkhead spool drives and spools and checking them - 21 day;
3. Inspection of cylinder pistons and checking their movement - 14 days;
4. Leaching of refrigerators, replacing pipes with new ones, packing glands and hydraulic testing - 40 days;
5. Replacing the overhead valves of boilers and bottom-blowing valves - 68 days.
Some of these works could be done at the same time, and some (on the fifth point) could be postponed altogether, producing parts in capacity when there was time for this: nevertheless, the cruiser immediately needed two months of repairs, which could be done only with the full voltage of the machine crew.
Nothing like this happened with other ships arriving in the recruitment of our Pacific forces. Take the same "battleship cruiser" "Peresvet". An interesting opinion was expressed about him by the commander of the Pacific squadron, Vice-Admiral N.I. Skrydlov, who stated in a report to St. Petersburg: “There is no complete training at Peresvet, and the order of service on it leaves much to be desired.” Officers of the “battleship-cruiser” N.I. Skrydlov scolded in the presence of sailors (which, obviously, should not have been done). Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich described it this way: “In his opinion, which he laid out in the most non-parliamentary terms, neither we nor our ship were good enough. We were the most notorious and hopeless laymen who ever stepped aboard the ship, and the commander - the worst of all! ”. But despite such a derogatory assessment, the Peresvet power plant was in a relative order, and the ship on arrival was not sent to the reserve or for repair, but remained in the existing squadron to catch up on the “combat and political” training. In addition to Peresvet, minelayers Amur and Yenisei also came, their cars and boilers also worked fine and did not require repairs. At the same time, the Varyag needed to be immediately put in for repair, however the officers of this cruiser did not call N.I. Skrydlov no reproach.
It must be said that according to the results of the inspection of “Varyag” and “Peresvet”, oddly enough, N.I. Skrydlov spoke about the advantage of the ships of domestic construction. Of course, he noted that “Varyag” is not bad at all, and it would be nice to adopt a number of its decisions for our own ships. This concerned, for example, the placement of a dressing station under the armor deck, an extensive “network” of negotiation tubes, magnificent steam boats, considered the best throughout the squadron, etc. But at the same time N.I. Skrydlov noted that the construction of the cruiser "was of a market nature, and the desire of a private plant to save reflected unfavorably on the solidity of the hull and the finishing of parts."
But the admiral's comment on the Varyag cars was especially interesting:
In this regard, the opinion of N.I. Skrydlova apparently echoes the results of studies of the Varyag mechanisms, undertaken by engineer I.I. Hippius. Thus, we see that the thesis that “When V.I. Bare with the Varyag boilers was all good, ”is not confirmed at all. Serious problems with the mechanisms pursued the cruiser from the very beginning of his service.
To be continued ...
- Andrei from Chelyabinsk
- The cruiser "Varyag". Fight Chemulpo 27 January 1904
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The cruiser "Varyag". Fight Chemulpo 27 January 1904 of the Year. Part of 3. Boilers niklossa
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