Jewels of the Russian Imperial Navy. "Pearls" and "Emerald". Design features
At the same time, 6 August 1904 has entered the factory tests of “Pearls”. For “Emerald” this date can be considered the 19 of September, when it went to sea to test machines. True, before that, Izumrud made the transition from the Nevsky plant to Kronstadt, and Zhemchug officially officially joined the campaign on July 15, but this was due to the desire to complete the acceptance of these ships as soon as possible and prepare them for the march to the Far East as part of the 2 th Pacific Squadron. In fact, factory testing at sea was started at the time indicated above.
Consequently, almost 3 years have passed (rounding) for Emerald from the day construction began to factory sea trials, and for 3 years and 6 months for Emerald. Against the background of similar terms of “Boyarina” (2 years and 7 months), and, moreover, “Novika” (1 year 5 months), such terms do not look very good. Of course, on the one hand, the construction time of the “Pearl” is artificially delayed by a long preparatory period, and the difference between the “Emerald” and “Boyarin” seems to be not so great. Moreover, the "Emerald" was accepted into the treasury on September 24, 1904, that is, from the time the construction work began to reception fleet all the same 3 years have passed. But you need to understand that at the time the factory sea trials began, the Emerald was much less completed than the Boyarin.
A Danish-built cruiser entered the fleet through the 2 of the year and the 9 month. after the commencement of work on it, and at the end of the specified period, the Boyar was a completely ready combat ship that had undergone an almost complete course of tests (mine apparatuses were not tested and, for some reason, the bells of a loud battle). The ITC specialists who examined it in Kronstadt did not find any particular reason for complaints, and although the cruiser still went to Denmark on the way to the Far East to carry out repairs, these works were minor and very insignificant.
At the same time, Izumrud was officially accepted into the treasury of 24 in September, that is, on the very first day of official sea trials, and even by the time they left for the Far East, a number of cruiser units were not ready, so individual systems were accepted even in Madagascar, but something was not put into operation at all. In other words, 3 November 1904, the ship went on a voyage banally unfinished and did not pass the full test cycle.
Thus, if we consider the end of the construction and acceptance of the cruisers of the Nevsky Plant to the treasury, the date of their launch, then the time of their construction for Pearl and Emerald was 3 of the year and 8 months. and 3 of the year and 1 months Interestingly, for the "Pearl" it happened after the fact, while the cruiser was taken backdated by the Russian Imperial fleet: 28 in January 1905, it was decided to assume that the "Pearl" was commissioned in 2 in October 1904.
Perhaps, we can say that if Pearls and Emerald did take a full course of tests, and all the necessary related work would have been done on them, this would extend their commissioning time by a couple more months. . Taking into account that the preparatory period during the construction of “Pearls” was unnecessary, and it was not due to the fault of the plant, it is most likely possible to speak about the average construction period of the 3 year and 3 of the month with the planned construction time of the 2 year of 4 month for the first ship and 3 for the second. Boyarin built 2 of the year and 9 months, Novik - 2 of the year and 4 months, and against this background, the results of the Nevsky plant, of course, do not look, but, on the other hand, we can not say that they are completely failures, especially given the fact that the company for a long time was not engaged in warships larger than destroyers. Still, oddly enough, to some extent, the timeliness of the construction was influenced by ... the elements, since the cruisers suffered from floods twice. For the first time, not directly, the ready-made evaporators for cruisers were damaged at the R. Krug plant, and the delivery of dynamo machines was disrupted at Siemens Galsk. But 2 December 1903 r. With the pressure of broken ice "Pearls" tore off the mooring lines and pulled 533 m from the extension wall, where he was stuck in an icy traffic jam. "Emerald" stuck to the shore, his nose was aground. Fortunately, both cruisers did not receive damage to the hull, so hardly all of this led to significant delays in the construction - nevertheless, as they say, the fact was the place to be.
We will return to the question of the quality of the construction at the end of this cycle of articles, and now let us move on to the construction of Pearls and Emerald. However, due to the fact that both of these cruisers were built according to the Novik project, it makes no sense to describe it in detail: we’ll focus better on the differences between the ships built by the Nevsky Plant and its German prototype.
Artillery and mine weapons.
Initially, the project was supposed to be almost complete copying of the Novik, the cruisers should have received 6 * 120-mm, 6 * 47-mm guns, and also one 63,5-mm Baranovsky paratrooper and 37-mm gun to equip boats. In addition, it was supposed to install two 7,62-mm machine guns on Mars, and the mine armament comprised 5 * 381-mm torpedo tubes, two throwing vehicles for boats and 25 mines barriers. Thus, the difference was only one and only mine apparatus, since according to the original design, Novik had to have 6.
Only the question with 37-mm guns is incomprehensible. In the original project of "Emerald" and "Pearls" such a gun was one, and was intended to arm the boat, and on the "Novik", perhaps, guns of this caliber were not perfect. But then, at some point in time, both the Novik and the cruisers of the Nevsky Plant appeared on 2 * 37-mm guns, which were to be mounted on the wings of the stern bridge. Unfortunately, the author does not know the exact date of the decision to install these cannons; one can only argue that this happened before the moment when the question arose of strengthening the artillery of the Nevsky Zavod cruisers, that is, until October 1903. As a result, on Novik 37 mm guns were installed exactly where it was planned, but on the Emerald and Zhemchug, they were ultimately placed in the 92 frame, that is, at the stern, between the stern bridge and the extreme pair of airborne 120-mm guns.
It is also not clear at what time “Pearls” and “Emerald” got the second pair of machine guns, which were placed on the wings of the nasal bridge: the first couple, like on “Novik”, was located on Mars.
But, by and large, all this stuff. But the catalyst for the first major change was the Grand Duke Alexey Alexandrovich, our notorious General-Admiral, and I must say, this time his order was absolutely reasonable and correct. He ordered to completely remove from the "Pearls" and "Emerald" all mine weapons, both torpedo tubes and barrage mines.
Taking into account the fact that domestic torpedoes of 381-mm caliber could overcome only 25 meters even on 900 units, they did not pose any danger to the enemy in a sea battle. The only purpose that they could think of was the rapid destruction of captured transports. But, since the Russian 2 class X armored cruisers were not intended to act on communications, even this extremely situational advantage, for which, by the way, 5 mine vehicles were not required, they were not needed.
But the danger from the torpedoes was very serious - the narrow and long hulls of the cruisers did not leave space for mine apparatuses in the hold, so that they could be placed only in the surface part of the hull without any protection. Naturally, the hit of enemy shells could lead to the detonation of mine ammunition, which, in turn, would lead to severe damage, or even the death of the cruiser. So the desire of the General Admiral to deprive the Pearls and the Emerald from the self-propelled mines and the mine barriers was a great solution, which, moreover, also saved the displacement.
The next step was made by the captain of the rank of 2, P.P. Levitsky, who at the beginning of 1902 became the commander of the "Pearl", and before that was watching the construction of cruisers. According to his idea, in October 1903 addressed the issue of installing an additional two 120-mm guns, due to the weights that were released as a result of the removal of mines and mines. However, the decision was delayed: apparently, none other than Stepan Osipovich Makarov moved this case from its place. Of course, in his extravagant manner.
As you know, S.O. Makarov considered the armorless cruiser with a displacement of 3 000 tons, the 203-mm and 152-mm armaments and the moderate course of 20 nodes to be the ideal type of warship "armless ship", and remained a supporter of this theory until his death. And now, on receiving 1 on February 1904, the appointment of the commander of the 1 Pacific squadron, Stepan Osipovich immediately submitted to the Maritime Ministry a proposal for a very global restructuring of Pearls and Emeralds.
In short, the idea of S.O. Makarova was quite simple (in words). He proposed to “throw away” one steam engine along with boilers, which was to ensure the order of 270 t. Weight savings. Instead, according to Stepan Osipovich, it was necessary to install 2 machines with 100 horsepower in the boiler room. “For cruising in a quiet way”, increase coal reserves by about 100 tons, and also completely change the composition of artillery weapons, replacing 6 * 120-mm, 6 * 47-mm and 2 * 37 mm guns with 1 * 203-mm, 4 * 152-mm and 10 * 75-mm guns and, in addition, return the mined vehicles to the ships on the 4. This should have added to the 112 cruiser a ton of weight, thus, taking into account the “sosilnyh” machines and the additional reserve of coal, the reserve from removing the machine turned out to be exhausted. The speed of the cruisers should have fallen on the 2,7 node, and the SO Makarov believed that the remaining 22,3 ties. will be quite enough. The fact that the speed of "Pearls" and "Emerald" were allowed to reduce to 24 knots., He obviously did not know.
I must say that the main inspector of shipbuilding N.I. Kuteynikov immediately declared: “After all, this is a new excitement of the issue of a non-battle combat ship!”, But I must say, he was a great opponent of the latter. Nikolai Yevlampievich, nevertheless, was political: he did not try to defend his point of view, but agreed with all the reasons of S.O. Makarova. But at the same time he informed the chairman of the ITC that such a restructuring would delay the deadlines for the delivery of cruisers for at least 9 months each: it is clear that during the war no one would go for the like.
Nevertheless, it can be assumed that the ideas of Stepan Osipovich, at least, had the positive effect that the rearmament of “Pearls” and “Emerald” was off the ground, and both cruisers received an extra pair of 120-mm guns, located instead of the average pairs of 47 mm guns. The latter moved to the wings of the stern bridge, where 37-mm guns were to be located, well, and those, in turn, took their place on the upper deck at the 92-frame, as mentioned above.
However, the negative also came out - under the influence of the proposal of S.О. Makarov, the 3 from the 5 of the mine apparatuses provided for by the initial design was returned to the Nevsky Zavod cruisers - one stern and two traverses, the latter were placed in the hull under the nose 120-mm gun.
Thus, the Pearl and Emerald armaments eventually comprised 8 * 120-mm, 6 * 47-mm, 2 * 37-mm guns, 4 * 7,62-mm machine gun and 3 * 381-mm torpedo tubes. Weight savings amounted to tons of 24 from the original project.
Unfortunately, neither “Pearls” nor “Emerald” got the side fins that were extremely important for them. The fact is that the operation of the Novik showed that the narrow and long hull is subject to heavy rolling, which is why the cruiser turned out to be a very unstable artillery platform. In 1903, (apparently, closer to June) P.P. Levitsky proposed installing such keels on the cruisers of the Nevsky Plant. According to the results of calculations made by engineer Skvortsov, MTK authorized the installation of such keels with a length of 48,8 m and “depth” of 71,12 cm - they significantly improved seaworthiness, although they caused a slight loss of speed. The plant even started the production of these keels, but alas, it quickly became clear that their installation would still delay the launch of the cruisers into the water, and their installation had to be abandoned.
Reservation
It was completely identical to Noviku - the deck had 30 mm in the horizontal part (20 mm of armor on 10 mm steel substrate) and on 50 mm bevels (35 mm of armor on 15 mm substrate). To protect the protruding parts of the vehicle over the armor deck, 70 mm glacis (55 mm armor on the 15 mm substrate) were provided, which were covered with 30 mm armor on top. Just as on the Novik, the conning tower and the pipe from it under the armor deck had 30 mm armor of thickness, and the artillery was covered with armor doors. Unfortunately, there are no correct data on the weight of armor protection on the Novik and cruisers of domestic construction, so it is not possible to identify the presence of over- or underweight.
Power plant
With machines and boilers, everything was very predictable. It is known that on the Novik, Schihau boilers were used, which were, in fact, modernized Thornicroft boilers. As can be seen from stories cruisers, this decision was fully justified: despite the extreme intensity of operation, they proved themselves quite reliable, and began to “hand over” by the end of the cruiser service. But at the time of making a decision on the power plants of the “Pearls” and “Emerald”, the Russian Imperial fleet did not yet have experience in their operation and treated the new type of boilers with a certain caution. So, overseeing the construction of the cruisers "Pearl" and "Emerald", the senior mechanical engineer N.I. Ilyin, having been on Novik's tests in Danzig, wrote to Major General N.G., Chief Inspector for the Mechanical Part of the Fleet. Novikov: “Recognizing some of the advantages of the“ Sheikhau ”boilers in the sense of achieving a more complete combustion of fuel in them, one cannot help paying attention to some of their negative qualities.” N.I. Ilyin pointed to the design features that prevented their thorough cleaning, the difficulty of the lintels and the blocking of the water tubes, the excessive curvature of these tubes, which contributed to the accumulation of scale and their frequent burnout. Nevsky Plant insisted on using Yarrow boilers, but it had its own interest in this business: first, building the destroyers, the plant already had considerable experience in producing Yarrow boilers, and secondly, its owners were so sure of receiving an order for cruisers own project that started, slowly, the production of boilers system Yarrow for them. Thus, the Nevsky Zavod already had a certain reserve, which, however, could not use if a different type of boiler was selected for cruisers.
The case ended with the fact that the ITC submitted to the Naval Ministry an extensive explanatory note in which it compared the boilers of various systems, including even the Nikloss boilers. According to the results of the comparison, the MTC specialists recommended using the Yarrow boilers as the most tried and tested: it was noted that their design is the simplest and most convenient for maintenance. It was also taken into account that the Nevsky plant is capable of producing boilers of this type itself, without foreign assistance. The result of all this was the resolution of the Marine Department Manager: "I agree to Yarrow ... Speed below the 24 nodes is unacceptable."
As a result, Pearls and Emerald received Yarrow boilers on 16, while Novik had 12 Schihau boilers. Unfortunately, this decision led to an increase in the mass of the power plant of the cruiser, but it is very difficult to say how much.
Of course, we have the numbers kindly provided to us by V.V. Khromov in his monograph "Pearl-type cruiser". According to his data, the mass of the boilers and mechanisms of the Novik cruiser was 589 t, while the Pearl and Emerald masses had the 799 t, that is, the power plant with the Yarrow boilers seemed to be heavier on the 210 t.
But, firstly, the question arises here of the correctness of the separation of the weights on the summary, that is, the weight of the same components could appear in various articles of the weight lists. And indeed - if we look at the weighted summary that A. Emelin cites in the book “Cruiser Novik, we will see completely different numbers.
We see that the structure of the weight reports is very different, and according to A. Emelin it turns out that the weight of Novik’s machines and boilers is already 790 T. What is the difference between these two figures?
On the one hand, it is obvious that A. Emelin in the cars and boilers also had a mass of boiler water, which V.V. Khromov is given separately, and this is still 63 T. Total, we have the difference not 589 T vs. 790 T, but only 653 vs. 790 T. Then, in V.V. Khromova placed in a separate line of steam lines, dynamo and ventilation, in the amount of 138 and at least part of this “sits” in 790 and A. Emelin. This conclusion is made because in other articles of the load for these steam lines, dynamos and so on. there is simply no space left: the hull according to V. Khromov is even heavier, and in the article “Various equipment” (97 tons) there are obviously boats and davits (46 tons), that is, no more than 51 tons remain for steam pipelines.
So, unfortunately, the same "leapfrog" with weights is possible in the separately taken table V.V. Khromova: it is possible, for example, that part of the weights, which at Izumrud are in the article “Main mechanisms and boilers”, for Novik are taken into account in the mass of the hull or in “Ventilation, steam line, dynamo”. One should never forget that the Novik is a German-built cruiser, and the Germans didn’t carry the weight of the ships in the same way as we did. Therefore, it cannot be argued that the decision to switch to Yarrow boilers cost us 210 tons of extra weight only on boilers and machines - this could be a mistake.
For example, it is very difficult to understand why under the article “Ventilation, steam pipe, dynamo”, Izumrud had savings in comparison with Novik in 24 tons. Emerald boilers are larger, in theory, and the strapping should be more, besides, on the cruisers of the Nevsky Plant, a device was provided for blowing the Kingston steam (on Novik, it was “flushed” with water). Moreover, the mass ratio of feedwater for boilers looks altogether strange - just 63 t from Novik and 196 t from Izumrud. More than triple the difference! Again, there is a feeling that these figures are not equivalent: perhaps 63 tons for Novik are the water that you need to have directly in the power plant, and 196 t for Izumrud is the same, but also the supply of such water additionally?
Why do we talk about it in such detail? The fact is that usually "Pearls" and "Emerald" appear in comparison with "Novik" overloaded, and from this less high-speed ships. Many people interested in naval history, on this basis, consider them less successful, and curse domestic shipbuilders who made ships heavier and slower than their foreign prototypes. Of course, in some cases this is exactly what happened, but is it possible to attribute the construction of “Pearl” and “Emerald” to such cases?
Of course, both the Emerald and the Pearls turned out to be heavier than the Novik, and, at the same time, showed a lower speed on the tests. However, part of the “overweight” cruisers of the Nevsky Plant appeared as a result of quite conscious decisions of the fleet leadership, who were striving to improve the Pearls and the Emerald regarding their Novik prototype. That is, there was a conscious desire to sacrifice a certain amount of speed, but to get some other benefits for this. Another thing is the construction overload, which was, of course, pure evil, connected either with an incorrect calculation of the weights, or a bad weight discipline.
Therefore, we will try to figure out how many tons Pearls and Emeralds added to Novik as a result of conscious management decisions, and to what extent as a result of the worse quality of the Nevsky Plant and its contractors in comparison with the Schihau shipyard.
So, it turns out that if the numbers are V.V. Khromova is absolutely correct, then replacing the Schihau boilers with Yarrow boilers, caused by the Marine Ministry’s desire to provide an acceptable balance between the reliability of the power plant and its weight, “cost” Pearls and Emeralds in 343 tons of payload weights, boilers and water supplies for them.
At the same time, besides the design of the boilers, there were other changes. As we have said earlier, the Novik did not get the range, but this happened because the design of the cruiser chassis did not provide for uncoupling couplings on the shaft lines. As a result, when trying to follow an economic move under the left and right machines, the Novik central screw could not rotate with the oncoming flow of water and created too much resistance to save coal. As a result, the ship even on an economic move had to drive all three cars. But on the "Pearls" and "Emerald" disconnecting couplings were installed, and this, undoubtedly, would have a very positive impact on its range. In addition, zinc rings were installed on the stern shaft, which greatly reduced electrochemical corrosion. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that these innovations have greatly increased the mass of the power plant — perhaps it is a question of tons, but hardly tens of tons.
In addition, one more question remains open. Obviously, the Yarrow boilers were still somewhat heavier than the Schihau boilers, but how much is this weight gain associated with the design of the boilers, and how much - with the domestic performance? In other words, V.V. Khromov gives a lot of cars and boilers 799 tons, and how much would we weigh exactly the same cars and boilers if the same Germans took up their production?
Usually the author in the section “Power Plant” gives a description of the sea trials of the ships, as well as the fuel reserves and the cruising range. But now we only note that the stock of coal in the normal displacement of Novik and Izumrud was the same - 360 tons. But we’ll put everything else in a separate section, which will be published after analyzing all the weights of the cruisers built by the Nevsky Plant.
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