Bronenossez

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Bronenossez
The Bronenossez (front) during a visit to the fleet in Denmark
The Bronenossez (front) during a visit to the fleet in Denmark
Ship data
flag Russian EmpireRussian Empire (naval war flag) Russian Empire
Ship type monitor
Shipyard Carr and MacPherson , Saint Petersburg
Keel laying November 19, 1863
Launch June 14, 1864
Commissioning October 9, 1864
Decommissioning 1900
Whereabouts as the Hulk sank in a storm in 1914
Ship dimensions and crew
length
61.3 m ( Lüa )
width 14.0 m
Draft Max. 3.5 m
displacement 1566  t
 
crew 110 men
Machine system
machine Steam engine
Machine
performance 		570 hp (419 kW)
Top
speed 		7.75 kn (14 km / h)
propeller 1 four-leaf ⌀ 3.6 m
Armament
  • 2 × smoothbore cannon 9 inches

from 1868:

  • 2 × smooth barrel cannon 38.1 cm

from 1876:

Armor
  • Tower: 203 mm

| Period of service: | 1864–1914


Bronenossez (Russian: Броненосец, transliteration Bronenosec) was the name of a gunboat of the Imperial Russian Navy . The boat belonged to a series of ten gunboats ( Bronenossez class (Броненосец), also Uragan class (Ураган) after the first boat built). The boats were the first monitors built in Russian shipyards. The construction of this class led to a surge in innovation in the Russian shipbuilding industry. The name of the boat Bronenossez was also used colloquially in Russia as a type designation for armored ships .

history

The Russian naval command closely followed developments in the construction of armored warships. After reports of the successful use of the monitor in the American Civil War , the construction of the wooden frigates Sevastopol (Севастополь), Petropavlovsk (Петропавловск) and the corvette Askold (Аскольд) was suspended for the time being. A special committee chaired by Vice-Admiral Rumyantsev (Румянцев) was formed to discuss the question of armoring these wooden warships, which are also already in use in the navy . More decisive, however, was that the Ministry of the Navy decided to convert the Admiralty Shipyards (also Galley Island, Russian: Галерный островок) for the construction of iron ships. In addition, manufacturing facilities for ironmaking and rolling mills were built in the Admiralty's Ischorski works.

Towards the end of 1862 a Russian naval formation under the leadership of Captain 1st Rank SS Lessowski (С. С. Лесовский) visited the United States . Naval engineer Colonel NA Arzeulov (Н. А. Арцеулов) also belonged to the staff of the association . Lessowski and Arzeulow found during the visit that the American monitors of the Passaic type appeared to be the most suitable for the defense of Kronstadt and the Gulf of Finland . On the basis of its report, the Russian government decided to set up a series of ten such monitors. The tower construction by John Ericsson was to be used. One of the reasons for choosing this construction was the fact that the turret was armored with 15 layers of armor plates with a thickness of 25.4 mm. In the construction of Cowper Phipps Coles , the armor consisted of a layer with a thickness of 114.3 mm. However, armor of this thickness could not be made in Russia at the time. In Europe, there was only one company in Sheffield , England , that could produce armor plates of this thickness in the required quality. Also, because of the Polish uprising, relations between the United Kingdom and Russia quickly deteriorated . The Russian government was therefore forced to take decisions quickly and implement them quickly.

On the basis of the drawings bought in the United States, Arzeulow created a new project and adapted it to the possibilities of the Russian shipbuilding industry. The biggest change was the reduction in the number of layers of armor in the tower to eleven. As early as April 1863, the plans for the project were submitted to the shipbuilding committee for confirmation. In 1863 the first ten Russian monitors were piled up. The boats were classified as "armored tower boat" (башенная броненосная лодка), from May 10, 1869 as a coastal armored ship . The Russian naval command was aware that such a large number of boats of a new type could not be built at the Admiralty shipyards in a reasonable time under the conditions at the time. Therefore, the production was divided between different manufacturing facilities. Two of the boats, the Bronenossez and the Latnik ("Латник") were built at the shipyard of Carr and MacPherson (Карра & Макфердсон), the later Baltic works. The turrets were also produced by this company. The armor plates, which are difficult to manufacture, were manufactured by other companies, as was the steering gear, with the armor coming from a British company. Arzeulow died during construction, he was replaced by Colonel A. Ja. Gesechus (А. Я. Гезехус) replaced. The first boats to be keeled were the Tifon (Тифон) and the Uragan (Ураган) on November 19, 1863, but the Bronenossez was launched as the second boat on May 12, 1864 and the first of the class on October 9, 1864 put into service, therefore the class is referred to in the literature as both the Uragan class (after the keel has been laid) and the Bronenossez class (after the commissioning). The price of a boat was about 600,000 rubles .

construction

The Passaic , the prototype for the Bronenossez- class boats
Bronenossez

The tower of the boat was practically on the upper deck. Compared to Coles' construction, this led to a higher center of gravity and poorer sea behavior. The weight of the tower was taken up by a support ring that was a few centimeters below the level of the upper deck. The recess around the tower was covered with iron plates, which offered a certain protection from splinters, but were permeable to water. In 1870 the commander of the sister boat Perun (Перун), captain 1st rank of Goldbach (фон Гольдбах) reported that the boat took over a lot of water when it was hurt by 7 to 8 °, which got on the hot parts of the directional drives. The tower developed "a lot of steam" according to the commandant.

The armor on the side walls of the tower consisted of eleven layers of iron that overlapped each other. The roof of the armored tower was formed by a number of iron girders, which were laid with a distance of 75 mm and covered with iron plate with a thickness of 12.7 mm. The tower had two larger observation openings and a number of smaller openings with a diameter of 25.4 mm, which were used for ventilation. A smaller turret was placed on the actual turret, in which the rudder was located. The top of this tower was covered by a tarpaulin that was attached with a bow construction. The energy for the tower slewing gear was provided by a two-cylinder auxiliary steam engine with an output of 15 hp. The tower had a diameter of 6.4 m and a height of 2.7 m, the control tower a diameter of 1.83 m.

In the case of American boats, the tower was initially arranged exactly amidships. This led to a slight but undesirable rear-heaviness. As a result, the position of the tower was moved forward. Russian naval officers who were in the United States to study American shipbuilding reported the problem. However, the construction of the boats had progressed so far that the position of the tower could not be changed in eight out of ten boats. As a result, the armor thickness of the turret was reduced to eight layers with a total thickness of 203 mm in order to eliminate the unwanted stern heaviness.

As early as the early 1860s, the Russian military leadership had recognized that guns with smooth barrel (so-called smooth barrel cannons) no longer had any development potential and that their performance was exceeded by guns with rifled barrel . Therefore, the "Committee for the accelerated introduction of guns with tubing and construction of armored ships" ( "Комитет для скорейшего введения нарезной артиллерии и строения броненосных судов ") was established in 1861 under the leadership of General adjutant Je. V. Putyatin (Е. В. Путятин) formed. A short time later, the testing of guns with rifled barrel began on the artillery firing range of the Volkov fleet. However, progress was slow. The biggest problem was the lack of a reliably working shutter. Therefore, similar to the UK at the time, muzzle-loading guns with rifled barrel were constructed. However, loading from the front limited the length of the pipe. In addition, the grenade in the barrel was not guided precisely by the pulls, which led to poor accuracy. While in Great Britain and France special constructions were developed to improve the guidance of the grenade in the barrel (see Armstrong cannon ), one concentrated in Russia on the improvement of the breech construction. However, ready-to-use closures were not available in 1863. A 381-mm Rodmann cannon and a 229-mm Krupp cannon were therefore provided for the monitors . Both weapons were smooth-barreled muzzle-loaders. Since the Obukhov works had only started production in 1863, neither of the two types was produced in Russia. The weapon that was first installed on the Bronenossez was therefore supplied by Krupp in Germany.

The Olonezki factory was selected for the production of the 381 mm Rodmann cannon. However, the preparation for production took a long time, so that testing of the first weapon could not begin until June 27, 1865. The testing dragged on until July 7th, 1865, only then did the construction of the second weapon begin. The delays meant that the Bronenossez, like its sister boats, was initially equipped with Krupp's 229 mm cannon. The production of the 381 mm cannon was very slow, so that by the beginning of 1868 only three of the ten boats could be equipped with the larger weapon. The Bronenossez received this weapon in the course of 1868. In the following year, these weapons were exchanged for a modified version of the same type. But even these guns only stayed on board the boat for two years; as early as 1871 they were replaced by Dahlgren cannons of the same caliber. In the 1870s, Krupp developed the prismatic wedge lock, a design that worked reliably. In 1878, two weapons of this type manufactured by Krupp were scaffolded on the Bronenossez , and in 1880 they were exchanged for the improved version manufactured in the Obuchow works. The maximum tube elevation changed from 7.5 ° to 9.5 °, with both versions the tube could be lowered to −3.5 °. The firing range changed from 1.8 to 2.2 km. 150 rounds of ammunition were carried for the cannon, initially in boxes and later in storage racks. During the renovation, the appearance of the boat also changed. A flat bridge was built behind the tower. The position of the dinghies and smaller superstructures was changed so that the side straightening range was now 310 °. Three small-caliber rapid - fire cannons were set up behind an armored railing on the tower, and another on the bridge. Armor with a thickness of 12.7 mm was applied to the deck.

The displacement of the Bronenossez was 1566 t. The boat was 61.3 m long, 14 m wide and had a draft of 3.5 m. The hull had large overhangs fore and aft. A large four-point anchor was placed under them in the front, and the overhang at the aft served to protect the propeller and rudder from shells. The hull was divided into six compartments by bulkheads , two of the bulkheads were watertight. The frames consisted of 100 × 12.7 mm thick iron girders and 300 × 300 mm thick oak beams, the flat keel made of 18.9 mm thick iron, and the stern and stern of 12.7 mm thick iron plates. A longitudinal bulkhead was drawn in from frame 53 to the stern, which supported the deck with two rows of pillars, in the front part of the boat the support consisted of three rows of pillars with a diameter of 50 mm. The deck itself was made of two layers of pine. The hull was armored with five layers of thin iron plates.

The horizontal two-cylinder steam engine with an output of approximately 570 hp worked on a four-bladed ship's propeller with a diameter of 3.6 m. The steam was generated in two cylinder boilers. The total heating area was 290.7 m² and the steam pressure 1.4 kg / cm². The maximum speed was 7.75 knots, the Latnik built at the same shipyard was significantly slower with a top speed of five knots. In addition to the auxiliary steam engine to drive the tower slewing gear, there was another two-cylinder auxiliary steam engine to drive the ventilator of the machinery. Their power was 20 hp. The coal supply of 190 t was sufficient for 10 days at a speed of 6 knots. The machinery also came from Carr and MacPherson.

The ships were assigned to the tank squadron of the Baltic fleet . Together with the artillery of the coastal fortifications , they had to protect the sea entrances to Saint Petersburg. In the fleet service, the boats proved to be reliable and durable. In 1900 the Bronenossez was withdrawn from active service and used as the Hulk . From 1903 on as Schute No. 34 (Баржа №34), later referred to as Schute No. 51 (Баржа №51), it was renamed in 1914 to Schute No. 324 (Баржа №324). The boat now served as a floating coal base. In this capacity, the boat was still used in the ports of Kronstadt and Sveaborg at the beginning of the First World War . The barge no. 324 sank in 1914 during a storm in the Gulf of Finland .

literature

  • Л. И. Амирханов: Артиллерия российских мониторов , Гангут, Санкт-Петербург 1998 (LI Amichranov: The Artillery of Russian Monitors , Gangut Publishing House, St. Petersburg, 1998)
  • Виктор Галыня: Первые русские мониторы (сборник статей и документов) , Санкт-Петербург, 2000 (Viktor Galynitore , 2000) (Collection of Russian Articles , St. Petersburg ) documents , St. Petersburg, 2000 (Viktor Galynitore and Petersburg ) documents , St.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ In the Imperial Russian Navy, members of technical careers led ranks of the Army.
  2. ↑ The crooked measurements are due to the fact that metric units of measurement were not in use in Russia and the United States at the time. 25.4 mm correspond to the Russian length measure Djuim (Дюйм) or 1 inch.