Monitor "Zheleznyakov" - "River Cruiser" accepts battle...
The idea of building a river monitor with an army artillery was born before the revolution. When designing gunboats for the Amur at the beginning of the 20th century, there were wishes to arm them not with naval but with field artillery: so that it would be possible to replenish ammunition from the warehouses of army units with which the ships interacted. The idea was put on the back burner: at that time, the army simply did not have worthy analogues of naval guns (field artillery before the Russo-Japanese War was limited to a three-inch caliber).
Polish river monitors after surrendering to the Red Army
In 1930-32, the monitor Udarny was built at the Leninskaya Kuznitsa plant in Kyiv, and the question of arming it with field guns was raised again and... postponed again for the same reason - the lack of decent guns. The ship was equipped with 130-mm naval guns, but the idea was implemented. By the Poles. The Polish Pinsk River Flotilla had six monitors armed with 75-mm field guns and 100-mm howitzers. This forced the Soviet leadership to create a counterweight to the Polish "river battleships".
Monitor of the SB-37 project
From 1934 to 1937, in Kyiv, at the same Leninskaya Kuznitsa, 6 monitors of the SB-37 project were built for the formed Dnieper Flotilla: Zheleznyakov, Zhemchuzhin, Levachev, Martynov, Rostovtsev and Flyagin. All were named in honor of sailors - heroes of the Civil War. The project was developed by the ship-mechanical design bureau of the Leninskaya Kuznitsa by Alexander Baibakov and Mikhail Boyko.
The requirements for the new ships were put forward based on the theater of military operations in which they were to operate: the upper reaches of the Pripyat River. The main ones were a small draft and length. As a result, ships with a displacement of 232/263 tons, a length of 51,2 meters, a width of 8,2 meters, but most importantly - a maximum draft of only 82 centimeters were born! To call the design of the ships simply original would be a clear exaggeration.
On the bare deck of the ship, only gun and machine gun turrets and a high superstructure rose up - all the living quarters of the monitor were in the hull. The hull was solidly riveted, with straight sides and a flat bottom. The height of the side (both the above-water and underwater parts are considered) from 2,1 meters from the stern to the 10th frame, from the 10th frame to the bow - 1,6 meters. Inside, the hull was divided into 13 compartments.
Monitor add-on "Zheleznyakov"
The most original part of the ship is undoubtedly the main superstructure. It consisted of a main caliber turret and a conning tower, and both the turret and the conning tower were strung on a 75-cm pipe like the disks of a children's pyramid. A ladder bracket was welded inside the pipe and manholes were made through which one could get into the hold, turret and conning tower. The conning tower was fixed to the pipe immovably, and the MK-2-4 main caliber turret located underneath it rotated.
MK-2-4 tower in the workshop
A monitor is an armored ship by definition. However, the armor of the SB-37 project ships can hardly be called excessive. The armor belt, 1,85 m high in the middle, 1,6 m in the bow and 0,95 m in the stern, was 16 mm thick in the middle and 4 mm at the ends. The deck was 4 mm thick. The area of the main caliber magazines was reinforced with armor plates of 30 mm on the sides and 16 mm on the deck, the area of the engine room was reinforced with 16 mm plates on the sides and 8 mm on the deck. The main caliber turret and the conning tower had 30 mm thick walls, 16 mm roofs, the 40-K and 41-K turrets had 20-25 mm thick walls and 10 mm roofs. As practice has shown, the main caliber turret and the conning tower could withstand hits from 37 mm shells.
102mm gun of the Obukhov Steel Foundry
The monitor was initially planned to be armed with 107-mm field guns of the 1910/30 model, but after much deliberation, the proven and reliable 102-mm B-18 guns (designated B-1931 until 2) were installed, which were obtained by cutting down from 60 to 45 calibers of the 102/60 mm gun of the Obukhov Steel Plant, created with the consultation of the Vickers company back in 1909 and which had proven itself well on the Novik-class destroyers. In addition to the main caliber, a 40-K turret with a 45-mm gun was initially installed in the bow and stern (the turrets were similar to those on the tanks T-28), but then Soviet engineers managed to insert another 45 mm barrel into the bow turret, resulting in the 41-K turret. If the main caliber turret crew was 16 people, then the 40-K had 3, and the 41-K had four. Defense The monitor was provided with two Maxim machine guns in machine gun turrets and one openly located one (later it was replaced by an M-4 machine gun mount of four Maxims) and two 37-mm anti-aircraft guns.
The most difficult question is about the engines of the SB-37 project ships. The project specifies two Soviet 2-SD-19/32 diesel engines with a capacity of 140 hp, but the probability that two such weak engines will accelerate an armored ship with a displacement of 263 tons to the standard 8 knots is zero. And in the wartime documents, two 4-SD-19 diesel engines with a capacity of 280 hp are indicated as engines, and this is much closer to the truth. But it is unclear when more powerful engines were installed on the ship...
The most honored and, undoubtedly, the luckiest of the monitors of this project was "Zheleznyakov". At the beginning of the war, the ship was part of the Danube military flotilla and entered the battle at 04:15 in the morning of June 22, 1941. That day, the monitor destroyed its first battery and shot down its first aircraft. And then there were battles on the Danube, the destruction of tanks, fire on concentrations of infantry, the suppression of artillery batteries. "Zheleznyakov" was lucky: its small size often forced the enemy to confuse it with small Romanian monitors. And masterful camouflage took place: the ship was disguised as an unmarked island or cape, organizing natural greenery on the deck and superstructures. Of the six monitors that were part of the Danube flotilla, only the crew of the Zheleznyakov, under the command of Captain-Lieutenant O. S. Marinushkin, saved their ship; the other five were blown up by their crews.
When the enemy had consolidated its position on the left bank of the Danube, the monitor received orders to break through to Odessa. And it did, arriving at the Pearl of the Sea on July 20, despite the fact that the flat-bottomed and low-sided ship was not designed for sailing in the Black Sea. During the battles in the Dnieper-Bug Estuary, the monitor was nicknamed "elusive": its shallow draft and short length allowed the Zheleznyakov to pass through channels that the enemy considered unnavigable. The ship would suddenly appear where it was not expected, launch a fire raid, and disappear in an unknown direction. But the Red Army was retreating, and soon the Dnieper-Bug Estuary became too dangerous a place for the monitor. And the Zheleznyakov left the estuary again, making the crossing to the Sea of Azov, the Don, and the Kuban on October 25.
"Armored ship "Zheleznyakov"" (poster by Ivanov V.M.)
Included in the Azov Flotilla on November 21, it participated in the defense of Kerch, Rostov-on-Don, Azov, and the mouth of the Kuban. In the summer of 1942, it took part in battles to defend the Temryuk base and was the last to leave it, breaking through the German-controlled Kerch Strait to Poti. The monitor turned off the fairway and passed along the very coast of Crimea, through minefields, under fire from enemy batteries. The flat-bottomed "river cruiser" was poorly suited for sea passages, so a Black Sea storm threw the ship ashore. For three days, the crew patched up the holes and tried to get the monitor off the sandbank, and finally on October 3, Zheleznyakov arrived in Poti. Here, on October 14, it became part of the Black Sea fleetBut the ship, damaged in battle, had to be repaired until August 1943.
Monument to the sailors of the Danube Flotilla in Bratislava
And on August 30, 1944, the monitor, which had already become legendary, arrived in its native Izmail and again joined the Danube Flotilla. Ahead was the liberation of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia... According to official data, during the war, Zheleznyakov covered 40 thousand kilometers in battles, destroying 13 artillery and mortar batteries, 4 infantry battalions, 2 ammunition depots and much more. In total, the Germans dropped 827 aerial bombs on the ship. Not a single one hit, and indeed, it was "Elusive"!
After the war, Zheleznyakov was again included in the Black Sea Fleet. In 1958, it was decommissioned from the Navy, transferred to the Danube Shipping Company, and used as a floating pier. In 1967, on the initiative of veterans and with the assistance of Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov, the ship was installed in Kyiv on a concrete wave as a monument. There is no need to tell how monuments are maintained in the former Ukrainian SSR today. They say that you can even get inside the ship. But it is not worth it, homeless people have settled in it, so the smell inside is appropriate...
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