English fast walkers of the Russo-Japanese War
Attack on February 9, 1904 in the genre of musha-e (the destroyers clearly do not qualify as sumo-e)
The 1st Destroyer Squadron included the newest Japanese destroyers, Akatsuki and Kasumi. The reason they managed to remain undetected before the attack was simple: the silhouette of these ships was indistinguishable from the Russian Sokol-class destroyers. They were indistinguishable because they were based on the same prototype – Royal Navy fighters...
Serving on Royal Navy destroyers is not a piece of cake... You get a cash bonus for it!
Creating a modern fleet practically from scratch, the Japanese paid a lot of attention to the high-tech of that time – torpedo boats. The Land of the Rising Sun experimented with French, German and English torpedo boats and eventually settled on the products of the British military-industrial complex. Fortunately, the notorious Sir John "Jackie" Fisher, a man whose level of vision was not inferior to Elon Musk, often managed to influence the order of ships in His Majesty's Navy. However, there was a difference: the mistakes of this visionary did not cost money to shareholders, but the lives of British sailors...
Young Rear Admiral John "Jackie" Fisher - Elon Musk of the late 19th century
Although Fisher is considered the "father of dreadnoughts", in fact, according to his vision of the future, not only they were created, but also battlecruisers (a rather controversial class of ships), and destroyers. With the latter, the situation was as follows.
The Thornycroft and Yarrow firms, which supplied not only the Royal Navy but also half the world with their products, repeatedly tried to build torpedo ships larger than destroyers (at that time, essentially torpedo boats). But the Lords of the Admiralty did not want to hear anything about it, having placed their bets on torpedo gunboats (in Russia they were called "mine cruisers"), which were supposed to sink destroyers. 33 of these ships were built, but the sailors did not like them much: the displacement was too large, the armament was too heavy, and the seaworthiness was terrible.
That same "Swift" from the "White" company
In 1884, the small (compared to Yarrow and Thornycroft) firm White built a large destroyer, Swift, at its own expense. The plan was to build a ship so good that British admirals would be physically unable to refuse it! Unlike standard 60-ton destroyers, Swift had a displacement of 140 tons and showed an excellent speed of 23,5 knots on the measured mile, which was excellent for that time.
Considering that the main potential enemy of the Royal Navy at that time were the French, who had 20-knot destroyers, the new ship received not only torpedo armament, but also a fairly strong one for its size. artillery: 4 37mm guns. It was assumed that its main prey would be enemy mine ships.
Admiral Hyacinth Theophilus Ob – the voice of the “young school”
But the speed of torpedo boats by that time was growing by leaps and bounds: in 1892, the French torpedo boat No. 149 demonstrated a speed of 24,6 knots during trials, the Lancier and Chevalier a year later – 25,6 and 27,2 knots, and in 1896, the sea-going torpedo boat Forban conquered the 30-knot barrier. And the French built torpedo boats by the dozens!
The "Young School" of Admiral Hyacinthe Theophile Aube relied on the idea of "mobile defense": the stronger armored fleet of Great Britain was opposed by numerous detachments of destroyers based in all ports of the coast, concentrating, as needed, in the port closest to the concentration point of the Royal Navy.
Alfred Yarrow - the shark of British capitalism
The Admiralty bought the Swift, but did not place orders for large destroyers. In 1892, Alfred Yarrow himself approached Fisher, presenting a design for a fairly large ship, capable, in his opinion, of dealing with the hordes of French torpedo carriers. weaponsThe young rear admiral was interested in the proposal and supported it. He also came up with a name for the new class of ships: "We will call them destroyers, since their task is to destroy French destroyers."
"Hornet". Sometimes the model is clearer than the photo...
The lobbying yielded results: soon the Admiralty announced a competition for a destroyer with a displacement of 200-300 tons. In 1893, the Yarrow company built the first destroyers, the Havoc and the Hornet. These were very progressive ships for their time. The Hornet was the first to install water-tube boilers weighing 43 tons, instead of fire-tube boilers weighing 54 tons. For ships with a displacement of less than 250 tons, the weight gain was more than significant!
As a result, during the tests, the Havoc showed 27,6 knots, and the Hornet – 28,2 knots.
Thornycroft favoured twin-funneled ships. The Daring fighter.
Yarrow's main competitor, Thornycroft, built a 270-ton fighter with a triple-expansion steam engine, but the ship was unable to reach speeds above 24 knots, as shipbuilders first encountered the phenomenon of cavitation: steam bubbles form on the surface of the propeller blades - water evaporates at high speeds and the propeller begins to "slip".
There was no theory of cavitation at that time, and the company's engineers began to change propellers at random: they managed to reach 27 knots only on the seventh pair, which had an area 45 percent larger than the first...
The three-inch gun from the cruiser Gromoboy, the main caliber of the British destroyers was not much different...
The new ships had three “chips”.
The first (and main) one is powerful artillery weapons.
The second is a speed of 26–27 knots.
And the third is mass character!
If before the advent of fighters, the standard guns on a destroyer were 37-mm guns (remember the Swift), then Fisher's fighters had one 76-mm gun and three 57-mm guns: such a set of artillery could quickly tear apart the old 60-ton destroyer, like a Tuzik a heating pad. However, it was also envisaged to use the new ships as traditional destroyers - with two guns replaced by a pair of rotating torpedo tubes.
57mm Nordenfeld gun on a coastal mount in the Vladivostok Museum of the Pacific Fleet. Destroyers had similar guns...
The increased displacement had a second advantage: in addition to installing powerful artillery, it made it possible to increase the power of the steam engine, which in turn provided a significant increase in speed. By adding "one" (artillery) plus "two" (increased speed) and adding "three" (mass), the British knocked out of the hands of the young French school its main trump card - torpedo forces capable of threatening the British armored squadrons. At the same time, the fighters, having their torpedo tubes, themselves posed a threat to the enemy linear forces.
"Bring beer and graphite!" British officers joked that in order for the Hornet to reach the speed required by the form, the stokers had to be given beer to make them work harder, and the bottom had to be greased with graphite...
Hornet was the first four-pipe fighter (Havock had two pipes) with advanced water-tube boilers. Four pipes (the number of boilers) were not a whim of shipbuilders, they provided less smoke at high speeds and better engine performance. However, unlike Yarrow, Thornycroft preferred a two-pipe design: their Daring and its sister ship Decoy made more than 28 knots and were distinguished by their trademark reliability.
The torpedo armament of the Hornet and Havoc initially consisted of three torpedo tubes: one fixed one in the bow, and a two-tube rotating one in the center plane (interestingly, the two tubes of this device were directed in opposite directions, which, according to the engineers’ idea, allowed them to fire simultaneously at both sides).
However, the bow torpedo tube on the Havoc soon had to be abandoned: high-speed fighters often rammed the torpedo launched forward: the maximum speed of the newest Mk 2 torpedoes of 1892 was only 30 knots, but it still had to be gained... The Hornet retained the bow tube, but in 1902 lost two pipes on the deck.
Port Arthur "falcon" "Angry". The destroyer was commanded by Alexander Kolchak, the Japanese armored cruiser "Takasago" was destroyed by the mines he laid
The first 42 British fighters were later called "A-class" and became the prototype of the Russian Sokol-class destroyers. Compare the performance characteristics of these ships: displacement of 240 tons, speed of 26,5 knots, armament - 1x75-mm and 3x47-mm guns, two rotating torpedo tubes. And yes - 4 pipes, like the Hornet.
However, there is nothing strange about it: the project was proposed to the Russian naval department... by the Yarrow company! 27 Sokolovs were built in Russia, 12 of which were delivered to Port Arthur in disassembled form in 1901-1902 and assembled there. Formally, they continued to be listed as destroyers in the Russian Imperial Navy, but in reality they were more often called fighters, counter-destroyers or squadron destroyers. It was the latter name that became canonical: it was officially introduced in 1907.
Japanese try to capture "Steregushchiy" (Japanese version of events)
And what about the Japanese?
Their destroyers made a more than successful debut in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and, of course, they began to build on their successful experience! But as a model, they adopted British destroyers of a later model, classified by the British Admiralty as "class B" or 30-knot.
In 1896, Yarrow and Thornycroft received orders for 6 fighters each. These ships already had significantly more efficient boilers and slightly smaller tonnage. But the main thing is that the weight of the artillery salvo of a Japanese fighter was approximately twice as much as that of any of the Port Arthur Falcons, which was the reason for the sad fate of the Steregushchiy and the Strashny.
"Akatsuki" is the dawn, but preferred to act at night...
Subsequently, each company was ordered a pair of more "improved type" fighters, with the condition of increasing the speed to 31 knots. The 31-knot Yarrow fighters were named "Akatsuki" and "Kasumi" - "Dawn" and "Fog". They arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun very successfully: a year and a half before the war - enough for the crews to be well-acquainted, but not enough to become obsolete.
They, as the most advanced in the Japanese fleet, were included in the 1st torpedo boat detachment that attacked Russian ships in the Port Arthur roadstead. The normal displacement of the "31-knot" was 369 tons, the theoretical speed was 31 knots (the real speed was slightly less, English shipbuilders often cheated during testing), the crew was 60-62 people.
The main difference was the reinforced artillery armament: 1x76-mm cannon and 5x57-mm. According to the "Akatsuki" type, less modern destroyers were modernized at the very beginning of 1904.
Still, the first engraving is more truthful: the attack on the Port Arthur raid took place on a winter night...
The attack on the night of February 9 was successful for the Akatsuki: the torpedoes of the destroyers of this type damaged the battleship Tsesarevich and the cruiser Pallada. But further fate was not so kind to the ship.
It was this new British-built destroyer that had the dubious honor of being the first Japanese ship to perish in the Russo-Japanese War. On May 17 at 22:00, the ship struck a mine 8 miles southwest of the Liaote Peninsula and sank instantly.
And the name "Akatsuki" was given to the Russian "falcon" captured in Port Arthur – the destroyer "Reshitelny". It was under this name that it participated in the Battle of Tsushima. On the Japanese side...
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