Bajan (ship, 1900)
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|---|---|
| Bajan- class | |
 Bayan |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Armored cruiser |
| units | 4th |
| Shipyard |
Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée , |
| Keel laying | July 8, 1899 (official) |
| Launch | May 20, 1900 |
| delivery | 1903 |
| Namesake | Russian for bard |
| period of service |
1902–1904 |
| Decommissioning | Decommissioned in 1931 |
| Whereabouts | Sunk as a target ship in 1932 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
7,326 t , |
| length |
137.0 m above sea level, |
| width |
17.5 m |
| Draft |
6.7 m |
| crew |
573 men |
| drive |
26 Belleville boiler |
| speed |
21 kn |
| Range |
3,900 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Bunker quantity | |
| Armor |
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| Sister ships |
Admiral Makarow , |
The Bajan ( Russian Баян , which means bard) was the type ship of the armored cruiser of the Bayan class of the Imperial Russian Navy . She was built in La Seyne-sur-Mer near Toulon , France by the Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée (FCM) shipyard. It was built to reinforce the Russian Pacific Squadron and sunk in Port Arthur by Japanese land artillery in December 1904 .
The Japanese lifted and repaired the ship and put it back into service in 1908 as Aso ( Japanese 阿蘇 ). In 1931 the Aso was canceled and sunk as a target ship in 1932.
Building history
The Bayan class was developed by the Russian MTK (Morskoj Technitscheskii Komitet) as part of the construction program to strengthen the Pacific squadron. It was the Russian answer to the Japanese Asama- class armored cruiser . In 1897, a council of admirers, including Vice Admiral Stepan Ossipowitsch Makarov , approved the cruiser project, which stipulated the following dates: a limitation of the displacement to 6,700 to 7,000 tons, 21 knots of speed, a range of 7,200 km at 10 knots, two Screws, the use of Belleville shells, an armament of 2 × 203 mm guns, supplemented by 8 × 152 mm and 20 × 75 mm guns.
The construction of the type ship was awarded to France together with the order for the Zessarewitsch liner . When it was launched in May 1900, construction work was delayed about five months because the parts were delivered late. The ship received armor made of Harvey steel, which was actually outdated at the time . The ship was christened by the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna . Extensive tests of the ship took place in October 1902. The required speed was barely reached in the 24-hour test with 20.97 knots. In the spring of 1903 the bayan was transferred to Kronstadt .
Use in the Russian fleet
The bayan was one of the most modern ships of the Pacific Squadron of the Imperial Russian Navy and was stationed in Port Arthur.
Transfer to the Far East
On August 7, 1903, the bayan left Kronstadt on the Osljabja ship of the line for East Asia after an inspection by Emperor Nicholas . The two ships parted after crossing the Baltic Sea. The Osljabja had an accident near Gibraltar and did not reach East Asia before the outbreak of war. The bayan was waiting in the Mediterranean for Zessarevich , who was marched a little later and with whom she continued her departure from September 25th. The association reached Port Said on September 27th and the port of Djibouti via Suez on September 30th . They reached Colombo on October 8th and Sabang on October 21st . On November 7th they started from Singapore for the last leg to Port Arthur. On November 19, 1903, the Zessarewitsch first came into radio contact with the flagship of the Pacific Squadron Petropavlovsk . On November 30, 1903, Bayan and Zessarevich reached their new home port. They carried out exercises with the other ships in the squadron and were given the squadron's new olive-green paint job.
War effort
When the Russo-Japanese War broke out , the bayan with the majority of the ships of the Pacific Squadron was in the naval port of Port Arthur, on which the Japanese carried out a surprise attack with torpedo boats on the night of February 8, 1904. then fired at with their ships of the line. Although the bayan had come in from a patrol trip with the cruiser Bojarin the night before and was lying in a remote anchorage, she received the most hits with nine, but only two really serious hits.
On March 10, the restored Bajan was the second ship involved in the rescue of two Sokol- class torpedo boats attacked by Japanese cruisers and destroyers , when the newly arrived squadron chief Makarow left the Nowik as the only immediately operational ship to carry the to help sinking Stereguschy , which the Japanese prevented from being towed, rescued the Resitelnyi and boosted the squadron's morale. With the Nowik and the Askold she was then often on duty in front of the base.
On April 13, 1904, the squadron chief Makarov advanced into the Yellow Sea with the ships of the line Petropavlovsk , Poltava , Sevastopol , Pobeda and Peresvet as well as the cruisers Bajan , Askold , Diana and Novik . In front of the waiting Japanese fleet, Makarov turned to lead the attackers in front of Port Arthur's coastal batteries. However, these areas had recently been mined by the Japanese. At 0943, the Petropavlovsk ran two kilometers from the port on three mines, exploded and sank within two minutes. In addition to the admiral, 635 officers and men died. The bayan saved survivors. At 10:15 a.m., the Pobeda was damaged by a mine.
The bayan took part in further naval advances on June 23 and July 24, 1904 as the flagship of the cruiser commander in chief , Rear Admiral Reitzenstein . When marching back from the latter, the bayan ran into a mine, but reached Port Arthur. It was still being repaired when the squadron under Rear Admiral Withöft tried to break the Japanese blockade towards Vladivostok on August 10, 1904 , which led to the defeat in the sea battle in the Yellow Sea , in which Withöft fell on the Zessarewitsch .
The commandant of the bayan , Robert Reinhold von Wirén (1856-1917), was in command of the ships that had returned to Port Arthur. He made no move to run out again with these. He wanted to keep it until the Second Pacific Squadron arrived . In order to withstand the siege, he gave many of the ships' guns to the land troops and allowed the seamen to be used as infantry .
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The Japanese army closed Port Arthur ever closer . In November 1904, the Japanese deployed eighteen 280 mm siege guns with a range of 11,200 meters to take out the Russian ships in the port. At the end of December, the ships of the First Pacific Squadron that had not yet been sunk were sunk by their crews so as not to fall into the hands of the enemy. Usually, the torpedo warheads were detonated near the hulls. The bayan , which had been aground since November 23, had received twelve hits, more than any ship in the squadron. Of the seven hits on deck, five had penetrated it, five more hits had hit the side of the hull.
After the war ended, the wreck of the bayan was lifted by the Japanese and towed to Maizuru , Japan. After the repair, the armored cruiser came under the name Aso (named after a volcano on Kyushu ) in the service of the Imperial Japanese Navy .
The Japanese cruiser Aso
On August 22, 1905, the former Bajan was added to the Japanese fleet as a second class cruiser Aso . However, it came into service only after the repairs had been completed on November 30, 1908, and it was used on the Chinese coast. In 1909 she made as a training ship with the 36th class of the Japanese Naval Academy together with the Soya (ex Varyag ) from March 14th to August 7th on a long-distance voyage via Hawaii to the USA. In 1910, from February 1 to July 3, a similar training trip followed via the Philippines to Australia. Another training trip with the 39th grade in the same area was carried out by the Aso and Soya from November 25, 1911 to March 28, 1912. The following anniversary trip with the 40th class began on December 5, 1912 and ended on April 21, 1913. The companion on this trip was the armored cruiser Azuma, also built in France .
From 1911 to 1915, the Aso was stationed in Yokosuka and monitored the home waters. Only occasionally did she go on patrols looking for German ships further south after the outbreak of war. From April 20 to August 23, 1915, she carried out a training trip with Soya for the last time for the 42nd grade and visited Rabaul and Fremantle on the Australian west coast , which have now been occupied by the Australians.
On April 1, 1920, the Aso was reclassified as a mine-layer. She was supposed to carry 512 mines on her decks. From August 28, 1922 to September 9, 1922, she was used as a guard ship and troop transport during the Siberian intervention . After the Great Kanto earthquake on September 1, 1923, the Aso was used as an auxiliary ship for the transport of relief supplies and refugees.
On April 1, 1931, the Aso was removed from the list of active warships and sunk on August 4, 1932 as a target ship off the island of Izu-Ōshima after being shot at by modern heavy cruisers, a torpedo target for submarines and a target for dive bombers deployed from Yokosuka.
The sister ships of the Bajan class
After the type ship was sunk in Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, the ship's design was only slightly modified. The sister ships built from 1905 onwards were armored with the more modern Krupp cement steel, which reduced the armor strength by around 20% due to the greater resistance. The construction contract for the first ship - Admiral Makarow - went back to the French shipyard Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée in La Seyne-sur-Mer near Toulon . The last two ships, Pallada and Bajan , were built at the New Admiralty Shipyard in Saint Petersburg.
- Admiral Makarow : Keel laid on March 22, 1905 at CFM, La Seyne, France; Launched on April 26, 1906, in service on March 29, 1908, flagship of the 1st Cruiser Brigade of the Baltic Fleet; Wrecked in Germany in 1922
- Pallada : Keel laid in August 1905 at the New Admiralty Shipyard St. Petersburg; Launched on November 10, 1906; in service on February 21, 1911; sunk on October 11, 1914 by German submarine U 26 in the Baltic Sea with entire crew
- Bayan : Keel laid on August 22, 1905 at the New Admiralty Shipyard St. Petersburg; Launched on August 2, 1907; in service November 30, 1911; Wrecked in Stettin in 1922
literature
- Roger Chesneau, Eugène Kolesnik: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905. Conway Maritime Press, 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .
- Hansgeorg Jentsura, Dieter Jung, Peter Mickel: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869–1945. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1977, ISBN 0-87021-893-X .
- Marie-Angès Domin, Anastasia Mikhailovna Romanova grande duchesse de Russie, Anglet: atlantica 2002.
Web links
- English page with many photos
- SW Molodzow: armored cruiser of the Bayan type (russ.)
- RM Melnikow: Armored cruiser Bajan (1897–1904) (Russian)
- Armored cruiser Bajan 1900 (russ.)
- Bajan on cityofart.net (Engl.)