Ishmael battlecruisers
The first armored cruisers of post-war construction were created, in essence, on the pre-war concepts, the experience of the Russian-Japanese war in them was minimally taken into account. A series of ships of the type “Admiral Makarov” was built on the model and likeness of the “Bayan” because this ship showed itself well in battles, while at the same time almost no work was done on the project’s shortcomings. As for Rurik II, of course, it was fundamentally different in design from the pre-war armored cruisers, but the international competition for the best design of the armored cruiser was held in July 1904, just then V.K. Vitgeft led his squadron to break through to Vladivostok. A contract for its construction was signed only two weeks after the Tsushima disaster. Thus, when creating the Rurik II, military experience was used to a minimum extent: it was, of course, already obtained, but not yet generalized and analyzed.
In 1906, the Maritime General Staff (MGS) surveyed naval officers as to what the future armored cruiser should be. As it usually happened in such cases, the most polar opinions were expressed: from extreme to prophetic. For example, the captain of the 2 rank, K.I. Defabr considered the armored cruiser as a class of the ship “completely useless. For the squadron, it is weak; for reconnaissance it is heavy and expensive. ” But Vice Admiral K.K. Even then, De-Livron pointed out that “the type of armored cruiser will probably be on par with the battleships, and both will have to take part in the line battle together.”
Basically, the prevailing opinion was that the armored cruiser to the Russian imperial the fleet necessary. However, most opinions agreed that the artillery of such a ship should be as close as possible to squadron battleships: for example, 4-6 254-mm guns or 2-4 305-mm guns were called the main caliber. At the same time, a very high speed was expected from the armored cruiser - at least 23-24 knots. A number of officers, mindful of the "Pacific concept" of the cruising war against England, also noted the need for a long range.
Thus, we can state that in these years the views of the Russian sailors on the place and role of the armored cruiser echoed remarkably, and were very similar to the views of the English sailors. As in England, in Russia they wanted to get a ship capable of acting on ocean communications (only in England - for the purpose of protection, in Russia, respectively, on the contrary). Just as in England, Russia believed that the armored cruiser was too big a ship to refuse to use it in a general battle. Hence, a similar vision of the use of this ship in battle - for example, Lieutenant Count A.P. Kapnist wrote in his note:
In other words, the armored cruisers were seen as a “high-speed wing” under the main forces of the squadron, and for this they needed heavy guns and high speed. Already only these two requirements led to the fact that the displacement of the new armored cruisers should have approached the battleships, and it is clear that it was not possible to provide a level of protection similar to the latter. Therefore, no one demanded a strong booking, but when asked what would happen if the ships of the “high-speed wing” “turned their attention” to the enemy's battleships (again, extremely similar to the British ones) reasoned that: “Thanks to the speed advantage armored cruisers will be able to accept or not accept battle with battleships, and if accepted, then for positions and distances advantageous for themselves. ” Probably, John Fisher would be very surprised to learn how widely his ideas about the role of armored cruisers are popular in the ranks of Russian fleet officers.
Of course, after the appearance of the Dreadnought, all projects had to be crossed out and start from scratch: and so, March 18 1907 were determined by the performance characteristics of the armored cruiser of the Dreadnought era. Looking at them, we will see a very great similarity with the British Invincible, but one should not see this as “ape”, because similar views on the concept of armored cruisers should have generated similar projects.
Strictly speaking, the Russian armored cruiser was supposed to be a little better than the British Invincibles and Indefategebls. His weapons were supposed to be the same 8 305-mm guns, but it was about domestic 52-caliber "buttresses", superior in their fighting qualities to the British 45 and 50-caliber twelve-inch guns. Mine caliber, like the British, was represented by 16 * 102-mm guns. The speed should have been 25 nodes, that is, half a node lower than the English, but the defense was slightly stronger.
True, the main armor belt had a thickness of just 152 mm, like the English battlecruisers, but besides it, the second and third armor belts with a thickness of 76,2 mm were also supposed (the British did not have any). In addition, although this is not explicitly stated in the sources, the Russian shipbuilding after the Russian-Japanese war prevailed over the need for a full reservation of the waterline: most likely, the tip of the Russian armored cruiser was supposed to be protected by armor, while Invinsible was fed after the stronghold defended only karapasnoy armored. The horizontal booking of the Russian ship was almost the same: the main armored deck made the same 50,8 mm bevels, in the horizontal part it had only 31,7 mm (in British - 38 mm), but the upper deck reached 44,1 mm (in English - 25,4 mm). Thus, the cumulative horizontal defense was supposed to make up the Russian cruiser 75,8 mm, and the English had 64 mm. The main armored deck of the Russian ship was thinner, but the enemy shell that hit the board under the upper deck had to break through the 76,2 mm belt first, and the English ship had nothing. The defense of artillery in the Russian armored cruiser was supposed to be stronger - 254 mm towers and barbety against 178 mm British armor, conning tower 305 mm against 254 mm.
Thus, we see that the Russian ship was supposed to have a slightly better defense than the British one, but in general it could not withstand the 280-305 mm projectiles (except for the main deck and barrels / barbets of the main caliber). As for speed, it was determined by 25 nodes - half a node less than the English.
However, all these advantages and disadvantages remained on paper: the lack of funds in the Russian empire prevented even the laying of the dreadnoughts, the main force of the fleet, what could be the dream of the battle cruisers (they were called linear only in 1915 g), but because Essentially, since 1907, we designed and built the battlecruisers, then in the future we will call them that). Years passed, and, of course, the above technical specifications soon did not look sufficient, so 1909 had undergone significant adjustments.
By this time, the service during the squadron was already considered the appointment of a battle cruiser, and “deep reconnaissance” and “coverage of the enemy’s head” were seen as the main tasks. Strangely enough, but in Russia, literally in a couple of years, naval thought shifted from the British concept of building the battlecruisers to the German one, according to which ships of this class were primarily a “fleet wing” during a squadron. Although it would be more correct, it would probably still be a question of some kind of intermediate variant, because actions on communications continued to be put in the task book for Russian battlecruisers: they simply were no longer considered the main ones and they, if anything, could have been sacrificed. At the same time, having defined the “squadron” role of the battle cruisers, the domestic military science did not slow down with a completely correct conclusion: once ships of this class have to fight enemy battleships, then they should be protected at the level of battleships. At the same time, unlike the German fleet, in 1909 g it was considered possible to sacrifice the number of guns, but not their caliber, that is, the battlecruisers should receive the same guns as the battleships, only in a smaller number. Thus, the domestic admirals came close to the concept of high-speed battleship, and thus almost were ahead of the rest, if ...
If it were not for one extremely annoying mistake, which became key in determining the protection of our heavy artillery ships.
Despite the fact that the work on creating 305-mm / 52 artillery systems was in full swing, and in spite of the fact that its power far exceeded the capabilities of the old 305-mm / 40 tools of the Russo-Japanese War, it seems that the true capabilities of the new generation of twelve-inch artillery systems neither in MGSh nor in MTC were not realized. It is impossible to explain in any other way that, when designing a linear cruiser, it was considered necessary to protect it from 305-mm projectiles at 40-60 cable distances, and ... at the same time, only an 190-mm thickness armor belt was considered sufficient for that mm armor for him! However, the above condition was minimal, but in general there was a requirement to protect the battlecruisers at the level of dreadnoughts - only the thickness of the main armor belt of the Sevastopol should have been just 50 mm.
In general, the next iteration of the project looked like this - at first MGSH decided to raise the speed to 28 nodes, allowing to increase the displacement to 25 000 t (more than the battleship!), While removing one 305-mm three-gun turret (i.e. was to make 9 305-mm cannons in three three-gun turrets), while the mine artillery and armor protection had to duplicate that of dreadnoughts like "Sevastopol". That is, the Russian understanding of the fast-moving battleship was actually proposed (alas, with its lack of protection), but MTK still found such innovation excessive and reduced the required speed to 25 nodes, and the displacement - to 23 000 t. Again, conceptually it was quite a worthy decision - to build a battle cruiser of equal size and body armor with a battleship, and with guns of the same caliber, but at the expense of reducing the number of barrels to increase speed. A similar concept, perhaps, even surpassed the one under the influence of which the Derflinger was created (after all, not only the number of guns of the main caliber was reduced, but also the thickness of the armor compared to modern battleships), inherited by battlecruisers spoiled everything.
As a result, we came to the ship, which, with an absolutely correct theoretical concept ... turned out to be extremely close to the British battle cruisers of the Lion type. In this respect, the project of engineer I.A. Gavrilova.
The ship’s displacement should have been 26 100 t., The power plant with the rated power 72 500 hp. should have reported speed - 28 nodes, afterburner - 30 nodes. The main caliber was represented by ten 305-mm / 52 guns, placed linearly-sublime in three and two-gun towers. At the same time, Gavrilov would prefer to use 356-mm guns, but did not have their weight data, however, in his view, it was possible to replace 10 * 305-mm with 8 * 356-mm without increasing the displacement. The thickness of the cutting armor, towers and barbets, apparently, was 254, 254 and 203 mm, respectively. But the ship's armored belt had only 203 mm of thickness, and the range at the economic speed of 13 knots was 4 100 miles. Attention is drawn to the not too oceanic range of this ship, but there was nothing to be done about it - any attempts to increase it entailed the most serious increase in displacement.
In principle, specifically for 1910 g, this was a pretty good project, especially when replacing twelve-inch guns with 356-mm. The output would have been a kind of Russian "Congo", despite the fact that the British themselves considered the latter superior to the "Lions", and the "Lions", in turn, still had a certain advantage over the German "280-mm" battlecruisers, including even "Seidlitz ". But, of course, weak armor protection remained the most serious shortcoming of this ship.
Of interest are plans for the power plant of future ships. In this regard, the 10 MTC January 1911 g recommended that designers implement it in three versions:
1. With steam turbines;
2. Combined, with steam turbines and diesel engines;
3. And finally, pure diesel.
Such a strange “diesel optimism” was also due to the fact that MTK had information, “that the Kolomna Plant is completing the production of such [engine] with a power of 1000 hp. on the cylinder. " The black humor of the situation lies in the fact that today, almost 108 years after the events described, the Kolomna Plant did not master the production of reliable diesel engines for surface combatant ships (which, in fact, was the reason for ordering diesel engines for 2011-2020 in Germany, the company MTU). However, even then hopes for the "diesel engine" of the battle cruisers were associated not only with Kolomna - according to other data, "Blom und Voss" was able to supply engines with 2 500 hp power. on the cylinder. Here, I must say, the wishes of the sailors of Russia coincided with their German counterparts - the same A. Tirpitz believed that equipping German battle cruisers with diesel engines was a matter of the very near future.
Interestingly, although no international competition was announced, the desired performance characteristics of the battle cruiser somehow became generally known. Campaigns offered their projects: the German Blom and Foss and the British Vickers. The Germans offered a ship in 26 420 t with 8 * 305-mm and speed in 30 nodes with power EU 95 000 hp. The British - with a displacement in 29 000 t, 28 knots, with eight 343-356-mm and 203-mm armor .
However, the decision to build armored cruisers has not yet been made: given the fact that the “Baltic Fleet enhanced shipbuilding program for 1911-1915 years” was necessary to be coordinated not only with the Sovereign, but also with the State Duma (the latter was certainly not fast) 1911 g should have been wasted - no more time to lay the ships this year. Accordingly, there was a time to improve the project.
18 June 1911 I.K. Grigorovich approved the revised “Design Assignment of Armored Cruisers for the Baltic Sea”, according to which many characteristics of the ship received a significant refinement: for example, the main caliber of the ship was determined in 9 * 356-mm guns in three towers located in the center plane of the ship. Mine caliber reinforced to 24 130-mm guns that were required to be placed in the casemates. The basis of the protection was 250-254 mm of armor belt not less than 5 m in height, in the extremities (outside the citadel to the stem and stern) thinning to 125-127 mm, while 50 mm of armored partition and bevels of the same thickness were located behind it. The citadel was supposed to lock 250 mm by traversing. Above the main armored belt, which should have been protected by machine rooms, boiler rooms, as well as sub-towers of all three towers of the main caliber, there should have been an upper armored belt, 125 mm thick, reaching the upper deck, while he could go to the bow in the nose, but stern they were not allowed to book from the citadel. The cabin booking was 305 mm, the towers 305 mm, and the forehead of the towers was even 356 mm and the roofs were 127 mm, the thickness of the barbets was set to 275 mm. The latter was considered “in aggregate”, that is, above the upper deck, where there was no any additional protection, the thickness was 275 mm, below, behind the 125 mm upper armor belt - 152 mm, etc. Deck booking was somewhat unusual - the horizontal part of the lower deck (from which the bevels departed to the armored belt) was not armored at all and had only 12,5 mm mm steel flooring, the middle deck had to have 25 mm, the upper deck - not less than 37,5 mm.
The speed requirements were somewhat lowered - it was decided to be content with 26,5 knots, but one should not forget that this is speed at the rated power of the machines, that is, without speeding them up.
And then an international project competition was organized: the “Design task for the design of armored cruisers for the Baltic Sea” ”on August 11 1911 g was sent to six Russian and seventeen foreign shipbuilding enterprises. The response was very lively: many companies showed interest in such a “tasty” order. As a result, such a large number of projects were submitted to the competition that their detailed description would require a whole cycle of articles from us, so we will limit ourselves to the most general information.
In general, shipbuilders tried to honestly meet the requirements, although there were certain deviations from the “Task” in individual projects. The largest project turned out to be the British company “William Bairdmore K” - they said in a covering letter that the ship with the characteristics desired by the Russian Naval Ministry would have a normal displacement in 36 500 t., Which is obviously irrational, since no country builds or even intends to lay ships of similar displacement. The company also indicated that the British battlecruiser with 8 343-mm guns had only a 27 500 t displacement, and that there was no point in creating a ship for one cannon more and on 9 000 t heavier, therefore she limited herself to sending a draft design. And at the same time, she also presented a lightweight version of the cruiser on the 9 * 305-mm displacement in 29 500 t. The smallest (of the realistic) variants was the project of the German Blom and Foss - only 27 311 t., But it was abandoned because this could only be achieved with the use of steam boilers used in the German navy. By the way, “Blom and Foss” also became the leader in the nomination of the most “prolific” company - its experts prepared the 11 variants of the battle cruiser with 9-10 356-mm guns and the displacement up to 34 098 t.
Of course, there were many initiative projects. So, for example, the Baltic Shipyard proposed a purely diesel ship, in this case, according to plant specialists, the displacement of the battle cruiser would be just 24 140 t (I must say, simply enchanting optimism).
But the most "all-powerful" of the projects presented was the creation of mechanical engineer A.F. Bushueva, who managed to displace the ship in 30 000 t shove as much 15 * 356-mm guns - again, due to the use of diesel engines.
When selecting projects, in addition to the usual criteria in such cases (elaboration, accuracy of calculations, realism, etc.), the MTC also took into account seaworthiness, which was measured by the presence and height of the forecastle, as well as the all-time arrangement of artillery in the center plane. It must be said that enough projects with a linearly elevated position of artillery were sent to the competition (although the classic version - two linearly elevated ones in the bow and one - in the stern no one submitted). But they were swept aside right away due to the fact that, according to Russian views, such placement reduces the survivability of the ship. But the same Germans had a very interesting project of a ten-cannon ship with a linearly elevated arrangement of four towers (three-gun in the extremities, two-gun — elevated above them).
According to the results of the competition, project No. 6 of the Admiralty Shipyard with a displacement of 29 350 t was recognized as the best one (however, as it worked out, its displacement fairly quickly reached 30 000 t). This ship met the requirements of the “Task” almost completely, both in terms of armament, and in terms of protection and speed.
Without a doubt, option number 6 for 1911 g should be considered very successful for the battle cruiser. From the point of view of protection, this ship was in an intermediate state between British and German battlecruisers, while the assumed armor on it was quite suitable for protection against German 305-mm guns - the defense was not absolute, but recall that on real combat distances the German shells caliber "through time" even coped with 229 mm armored plates of the British battlecruisers. Immediately they were confronted by 250 mm armor with a 50 mm bulkhead behind it. In addition, the British ships 229 mm armor defended only the boiler rooms and engine rooms (and the third tower), and the side opposite the other towers had only 127-152 mm. The height of the Russian armored belt also exceeded the British. Artillery defense (305-356 mm turret with 275 mm barbet) surpassed even that of Derflinger. (270 and 260 mm, respectively). The horizontal defense of the Russian project was rather weak; well, the British and German battlecruisers didn’t impress the imagination at all; here we can talk about approximate parity.
Thus, although Project No. 6 was not at all invulnerable to 305-mm projectiles, it would still be very difficult to pick it up. High-quality 343-mm projectile projectiles would have coped fairly easily with 250 mm side armor, but the British had them only by the end of the war, and Russian defense was quite good against semi-armor 343-mm projectiles like the ones used in Jutland. At the same time, the armament of the Russian battlecruiser — nine 356-mm cannons surpassed that not only in the Germans, but also in the English “brethren”, and the development of high-quality armor-piercing ammunition in the Russian fleet after Tsushima was given special attention. Even the excellent in any respect, the protection of "Derflinger" could well be punched by them. At the same time, the Russian cruiser was not at all a slug, in terms of speed it would have fully corresponded, if not to the British, then to the German battle cruisers.
Thus, the Maritime Ministry really came close to creating the “not having an analogue in the world” line-cruiser - in terms of combat characteristics it would have outpaced both the British Congo and Derflinger and Tiger, but ... the design of the first ships of this class in Russia was just beginning .
To be continued ...
- Andrei from Chelyabinsk
- Battle Cruiser: Fon der Tann vs Indefatigeble
Battle Cruiser: Fon der Tann vs Indefatigeble. H.2
Line Cruiser Rivalry: Moltke vs. Lion
Line Cruiser Rivalry: Moltke vs. Lion. H. 2
Line Cruiser Rivalry: Moltke vs. Lion. H. 3
Rifle battle cruisers. "Seidlits" vs "Queen Mary"
Line Cruiser Rivalry: Derflinger vs. Tiger
Congo-class battlecruisers
Rifle battle cruisers. "Derflinger" against "Tager". H. 2
Rifle battle cruisers. "Derflinger" against "Tiger"? H. 3
Line Cruiser Rivalry: Rinaun and Mackensen
Line Cruiser Rivalry: Rinaun and Mackensen
Rifle battle cruisers. Large light cruisers "Koreydzhes"
Rifle battle cruisers. "Hood" and "Ersatz York"
Rifle battle cruisers. "Hood" and "Ersatz York". H. 2
Rifle battle cruisers. "Hood" and "Ersatz York". H. 3
Rifle battle cruisers. Unrealized projects
Rifle battle cruisers. Unrealized projects. H. 2
Information