Almas (ship)
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|---|---|
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| Overview | |
| Type |
Unprotected cruiser , aircraft mothership |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | April 12, 1902 |
| Launch | June 2, 1903 |
| Commissioning | December 1903 |
| Whereabouts | Wrecked in 1934 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
3285 ts |
| length |
KWL : 99.1 m |
| width |
13.25 m |
| Draft |
maximum: 5.33 m |
| crew |
1903: 295 men. |
| drive |
|
| speed |
19.5 kn |
| Range |
3350 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament |
until 1905:
1905-1914:
from 1914: |
| stock |
800 tons of coal |
| Armor |
Deck: 75 mm |
The Almas ( Russian Алмаз = "diamond") was a small cruiser of the Imperial Russian Navy . She was originally built as an armed yacht for Yevgeny Ivanovich Alexejew (1843-1917), the governor of the Russian Far East region ( Manchuria and Kwantung ) who resided in Port Arthur , and was converted into an aircraft mother ship in 1914/15 . The ship had an eventful fate and sailed under a total of six different flags.
Construction and technical data
The ship was on March 30th jul. / April 12, 1902 greg. Keeled at the Baltic shipyard in Saint Petersburg , ran on May 20th July. / June 2, 1903 greg. from the pile , and was completed in December 1903. It was 111.5 m long (99.1 m in the waterline ) and 13.25 m wide, had a 5.3 m draft and displaced 3,338 tons. The machinery consisted of two triple expansion steam engines with a total of 7945 hp, and the maximum speed was 19.5 knots . The ship was 800 tons of coal bunkers and had thus at a cruising speed of 10 knots an operating range of 3,350 nautical miles . The armament initially consisted of four 75 mm and eight 47 mm guns. The cover armor was 75 mm thick. The crew numbered 295 officers and men.
career
The Almas , although only relatively lightly armed and therefore rather a large gunboat, was classified as a cruiser due to its size and speed and was initially put into service with the Baltic Fleet . With this she ran during the Russo-Japanese War 1904/05 from the Baltic Sea around Africa to the Korea Strait , where she took part in the sea battle at Tsushima in May 1905, which was catastrophic for Russia , and suffered 6 dead and 13 wounded. She managed to escape to Vladivostok relatively undamaged . There she was re-armed in the summer of 1905: she now had three 120 mm, ten 75 mm and two 47 mm guns, and the crew now numbered 336 men. After the end of the war, she returned to the Baltic Fleet in 1906, where she served as an imperial yacht from 1906–1908 and was reclassified to Aviso in 1907 .
In 1911, after a major overhaul , the Almas was sent to the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol . After Russia in November 1914 the Ottoman Empire the war declared, the ship took on 5 November 1914 at the naval battle off Cape Buzzard part and on 28 March 1915, the first shelling of the Bosphorus . Thereafter, the ship was converted to the mother ship for 3-4 seaplanes and served as such with the Black Sea Fleet until December 1917. The armament now consisted of seven 12-cm anti-sea cannons and four 11-pounder anti-aircraft guns.
In April 1918 the ship first came into the possession of the briefly independent Ukraine , but was then almost immediately confiscated by the German Navy in Sevastopol, but without being used before the end of the war. After the end of the First World War, the ship was handed over to Great Britain in November 1918 .
The British left the ship to the anti-Bolshevik White Guards operating in the Crimea in September 1919 . On 22./23. September it took part in the withdrawal of 2000 Cossacks of General Mikhail Arkipowitsch Fostikov from the Crimean peninsula. Then it went with the entire remaining White Guard fleet, the so-called Russian squadron , (also called "Wrangel's fleet") under Rear Admiral Mikhail Alexandrowitsch Kedrow (1878-1945) to Bizerta ( Tunisia ), where it came to internment . From January 1921, the squadron was there under the command of Rear Admiral Michail Andrejewitsch Berens (1879-1943). When France recognized the Soviet Union under international law in 1924 , it handed over the interned ships to the Soviet Union. Since the ships were consistently no longer fit for war, they were gradually scrapped. The Almas was sold to a French company for scrapping in 1928 and scrapped in 1934.
literature
- Konstantin Pleshakov: The Tsar's last armada. The epic journey to the Battle of Tsushima. Basic Books, New York NY 2002, ISBN 0-465-05791-8 , p. 64.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian 75 mm / 50 (2.9 ") Pattern 1892
- ↑ Russian 47 mm (1.85 ") 3-pdr
- ↑ Russian 120 mm / 45 (4.7 ") pattern 1892
- ↑ Russia / USSR 76.2 mm / 30 (3 ") Pattern 1914/15" Lender's Gun "(8-K)
- ^ Yevgeny I. Alexejew had already been removed from his position as governor in the Far East in October 1904 and had been ordered back to Saint Petersburg.