Imperatriza Marija
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 Imperatriza Marija |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Ship of the line |
| Shipyard |
Russud (Russian Shipbuilding Company), Nikolayev |
| Keel laying | November 30, 1911 |
| Launch | November 1, 1913 |
| delivery | July 6, 1915 |
| Namesake | Empress Maria |
| period of service |
1915/1916 |
| Decommissioning | 1916 |
| Removed from ship register | 1922 |
| home port | Sevastopol |
| Whereabouts | 1922 to 1926 demolished |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
22,600 t standard |
| length |
167.8 m |
| width |
27.3 m |
| Draft |
8.3 m |
| crew |
1,252 men |
| drive |
20 Yarrow boilers |
| speed |
21.2 kn |
| Range |
5,000 nm at 14 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Bunker quantity |
3,000 tons of coal, 720 tons of oil |
| Sister ships | |
| Armor protection | |
| Navigation bridge: |
305 mm |
| Armored deck: |
38 to 76 mm |
| Side armor: |
263 mm |
| Casemates: |
127 mm |
| Towers |
305 mm |
| Tower barbeds: |
203 mm |
The Imperatriza Marija ( Russian Императрица Мария ) was a battleship of the Imperial Russian Navy . The ship was laid down on November 30, 1911 at the shipyard of the Russian Shipbuilding Company (Russud) in Nikolajew and was launched on November 1, 1913. The Imperatriza Marija was the lead ship of the same class of Russian capital ships , which comprised a total of three ships. The outbreak of the First World War initially delayed completion, but the ship was finally put into service on July 6, 1915.
prehistory
In 1910, plans to build three new battleships in Russia had emerged. The ships should have about the same combat strength as the units of the previous Gangut class , but they should be more stable than these and architecturally better designed. The construction contracts were finally awarded in 1911, all of them to shipyards in Nikolayev , mainly to strengthen the Black Sea fleet . The ship was named after the Tsarina Marija , the Tsar's grandmother.
Structural features
The Imperatriza Marija carried twelve 305-mm guns in four triple towers, each weighing around 858 tons, which were erected along the central nave line ( Cuniberti system - named after the Italian shipbuilder Vittorio Cuniberti ). In contrast to the Gangut class, however, tower B pointed in the zero position in the direction of the bow. These guns fired shells weighing 471 kilograms over a maximum distance of around 25,000 meters.
There were also 20 pieces of 130 mm cannons on board, each housed in ten casemates on both sides of the hull. Although this type of ship is regarded as a largely successful construction, the two foremost 130 mm gun casemates later caused problems because the freeboard in the forecastle was too tight and water often penetrated through these casemates at high speeds. The two foremost guns of the middle artillery were therefore in 1916 on the sister ship Imperator Alexander III. expanded and the casemates sealed. This measure did not need to be carried out on the Imperatriza Marija , as the two cash mats were two meters further aft and were therefore significantly less exposed to the sea.
A loading crane protruding beyond the stem could be attached above the stem , which allowed goods to be taken over via a system of rollers. Although the stem ended almost vertically, it often looked sickle-shaped because of the crane. In addition, the ship received two simple pile masts instead of the originally planned lattice masts, as these - according to experience - tend to vibrate strongly, especially when iced over in winter.
The ship had four propellers and two oars, which were attached one behind the other and not - as is often the case - next to each other. The total mass of the armor was 7,036 ts, corresponding to about a third of the total standard water displacement.
War missions
Shortly after its commissioning, the Imperatriza Marija made forays against the Turkish coast. In October 1915 she took part in an attack against the Turkish coal port of Zonguldak , shelled it and then patrolled the Bulgarian coast until the end of October 1915, since that country had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in September 1915 . From the end of December, the ship then operated again against Turkey. On January 8, 1916, she met the German battle cruiser SMS Goeben and the cruiser Midilli (the former German cruiser SMS Breslau ), which was in Turkish service, on a new mission off the Turkish coast . At a distance of nearly 20 kilometers, the Russian battleship bifurcated the enemy ships with the third volley; the Goeben missed the last volley by only about 50 meters. The artillery fire of the Imperatriza Marija was, so the Germans later stated, so precise that one had to withdraw. The Goeben then eluded the superior but slower Russian dreadnought at high speed . The impacts followed the retreating ships up to a distance of about 24 kilometers.
In May and June 1916, the battleship, together with three cruisers and several aircraft mother ships, covered the landing of Russian troops near Trabzon in order to bypass the Turkish Anatolia front. The offensive got stuck after initial successes. The course of the front did not change until the end of the war.
In the summer of 1916, Admiral Alexander Wassiljewitsch Kolchak took over the command of the Black Sea Fleet and made the Imperatriza Marija his new flagship . Already at the beginning of July 1916 Kolchak set sail with the Imperatriza Marija and the sister ship Imperatriza Jekaterina Velikaja to provide the Goeben and other ships that supplied the Turkish Anatolia Front with supplies. However, the Turkish ships discovered the trap, were able to bypass the Russian fleet and successfully bombard the Russian supply port of Tuapse on July 4, 1916 .
loss
In the late afternoon of October 20th, 1916 broke on the port of Sevastopol lying Marija Imperatriza the central artillery fire from in front of the casemates. The first flames were noticed around 6:07 p.m. Although the fire fighting began immediately, the fire reached one of the ammunition chambers of the central artillery amidships at around 6:15 p.m., which shortly afterwards triggered two violent internal explosions. The explosions knocked down the forward mast and first chimney. In addition, the power supply collapsed. Nevertheless, the ship was still swimming and the crew was able to flood the ammunition chambers in the stern as a precaution.
In the meantime, tugs had come up and attempted a recovery around 6:30 p.m. The ship should be pulled into shallower waters in case of sinking. In the dark and completely smoky interior of the ship, fighting the fire was no longer possible and so the flames reached another ammunition chamber in the forecastle at around 7:00 p.m. At 7:01 p.m. - the tugs had just turned the bow of the Imperatriza Marija into the wind - a third explosion shook the battleship. It hurled debris up to a height of 200 meters, tore a large hole in the hull and blew up parts of the armor plates of the forecastle. The ship took in a lot of water and began to sink. After the tugs had cut the lines, the Imperatriza Marija capsized at 7.15 p.m. and sank.
Officially, a total of 151 crew members were killed in the disaster. An estimated 250 seafarers were injured, many of whom suffered serious burns. An unknown number of the wounded died from the serious injuries in the following days. According to various sources, the number of deaths is likely to have been up to 225 dead.
Speculation about the cause of the loss
According to what could later be determined, the fire broke out in the casemate of a 130 mm gun on the port side. Since there were barely ten minutes between the discovery of the fire and the first explosion, it was speculated that it could have been an act of sabotage, since the fire would not have been able to penetrate the security doors to the ammunition chamber in this short time. The fact that the Central Powers wanted to prevent this ship from being used more aggressively could also speak in favor of an attack. Admiral Kolchak, who had only recently taken command of the Black Sea Fleet, was in fact planning a more offensive approach against Turkey with his heavy ship units. Not least because of an alleged lack of aggressive spirit, Kolchak had replaced the previous commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral Andrej A. Eberhardt (1856-1919). Since the superiority of the Imperatriza Marija over the Turkish fleet had repeatedly shown in battles in the past , it should have been in the interests of the Central Powers to destroy the Russian dreadnought by an act of sabotage.
However, no evidence of an attack could be found. The rapid failure of the protective devices in the ammunition rooms can be explained by the fact that readiness ammunition was stored in the casemate of the 130 mm gun, although the ship was in port. It can be assumed that it exploded because of the fire (the first detonation), which could have destroyed the protective doors and the ammunition stored in the chamber quickly exploded (the second detonation). It also took almost 50 minutes until the final and ultimately fateful third explosion (around 7:01 p.m.). During this time the fire raged unhindered inside the ship. Because of the power failure, large parts of the hull were in the dark and the pumps could not be used, which is why the flames could spread unhindered inside to another ammunition chamber. It seems relatively unlikely that the third explosion was triggered by a targeted attack, since it would hardly have been possible to delay it for 50 minutes in the dark, smoke-filled and burning ship and then detonate it in a targeted manner. Rather, it is assumed that there will be a subsequent explosion as part of the fire and the previous destruction.
The fire itself that caused the disaster was probably caused by the spontaneous combustion of cellulose nitrate used in the propellant charges. In addition, the extremely reactive substance was often handled carelessly on board the Russian ships, which is why an accident is obvious. Since cellulose nitrate does not develop smoke when it burns and can react even without the supply of oxygen, it is possible that the fire may have developed over a longer period of time before it was noticed. Ship losses due to the self-ignition of cellulose nitrate were not uncommon at this time, and the British, French and Japanese fleets also suffered several losses from powder self-ignition.
Whereabouts of the ship
The wreck of the battleship, lying upside down, initially remained at the sinking site until 1918, as the Russian Revolution and the turmoil of the civil war prevented a rescue for a long time. It was not until June 18, 1918, that the wreck was lifted under German direction and - still keel up - docked in Sevastopol. Since the damage turned out to be irreparable, the Imperatriza Marija was scrapped from the summer of 1922. The last remains of the ship were scrapped in 1926. The main weapons were used in three TM-3-12 railway guns during World War II by the Soviet and Finnish sides.
Trivia
The Soviet author Anatoly Rybakov constructed in his youth book " The Navy Dagger ", which is set in Moscow in 1921/22, a detective story about the investigation of a bomb attack on the ship.
literature
Siegfried Breyer: Battleships and battle cruisers 1905–1970. Munich 1970.
Individual evidence
- ^ Siegfried Breyer: Battleships and battle cruisers 1905-1970. Munich 1970, p. 422.
- ↑ WN Russian 12-52 on navyweaps.com
- ^ Siegfried Breyer: Battleships and battle cruisers 1905-1970. Munich 1970, p. 421.
- ^ Explosions in Warships During the War on gwpda.org
- ↑ Russian Battleships on battleships-cruisers.co.uk