Nowik (ship, 1900)
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|---|---|
 Nowik |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Protected cruiser |
| Shipyard | |
| Order | Construction no. 656 |
| Keel laying | February 29, 1900 |
| Launch | 2nd August 1900 |
| delivery | May 3, 1901 |
| period of service |
1902–1904 Russian Navy. |
| Commissioning | June 1902 Russian Navy 11 July 1908 Japanese Navy |
| Whereabouts | Aug. 20, 1904, self- sunk, scrapped in Japan in 1913 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
3,080 t , |
| length |
110.0 m |
| width |
12.2 m |
| Draft |
5.0 m |
| crew |
340 men |
| drive |
12 Schulz Thornycroft boilers |
| speed |
25 kn |
| Range |
5,000 actually only 3,200 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Bunker quantity |
510 tons of coal |
| Armor | |
| Armored deck |
50 mm |
| Command tower |
28 mm |
| similar | |
The Nowík ( Russian Новик - newcomer - term for young aristocrats who begin to serve in the military) was a protected cruiser of the Imperial Russian Navy , which was designed and built in Germany by the Schichau shipyard in Danzig . She was stationed in the Far East at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War . To prevent a conquest by the Japanese, it was sunk by the Russian occupation in August 1904 off Sakhalin .
The Japanese managed to salvage the ship in July 1906 and in 1908 it entered service with the Japanese Navy as Suzuya ( Japanese 鈴 ) before it was finally canceled in 1913.
Building history
For the planned strong Russian East Asia Squadron, ships of the line , destroyers , armored cruisers , large protected cruisers were required. To this end, considerations were made about the construction of reconnaissance cruisers of 3000 t and 25 kn speed. The first supplier was the German Howaldtswerke . Other suppliers from different countries also offered designs, including the Germania shipyard in Kiel and the Schichau works. In 1898, the Schichau shipyard, known for its torpedo boats, received an order for a ship that was launched on August 2, 1900 as the Nowik . The severe winter delayed the completion of the ship. On May 2, 1901, the Nowik made its first test run from Danzig. The following day the official testing under the Russian flag began, during which some defects in the propulsion system came to light, which led to the screws being replaced twice in order to solve vibration problems. The Russian captain Peter F. Gawrilow was responsible for the inspection of the ship, who had also been employed as a construction supervisor since November 1898 and who also supervised the inspection of the four kit-class torpedo boats . The last tests took place on April 23, 1902, when the Nowik completed five runs over a test mile with an average of 25.08 knots and developed 17,789 horsepower. It was not until May 15, 1902 that the Nowik left Danzig in the direction of Kronstadt .
Another reconnaissance cruiser was ordered from the Danish shipyard Burmeister & Wain with the boyarin , which was inferior to the Nowik in terms of performance.
The two cruisers built abroad were stationed in East Asia in 1904 and were among the war losses.
The Nowik as the fastest cruisers of its time impressed the Russian Navy leadership before their adoption so strong that they two very similar cruiser Izumrud ordered class on Russian shipyards, which were copies of the ship located in Germany or in the completion. Both came into service in time to march with the Second Russian Pacific Squadron in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 . The Isumrud was lost in the course of the war. The sister ship Schemtschug was sunk in 1914 by the German small cruiser SMS Emden .
Mission history
Under the captain Peter F. Gawrilow, who had been employed as a construction supervisor since November 1898, the Nowik entered the fleet service in June 1902.
On September 14th the Novik left Kronstadt to move to the Far East. On the 17th she was in Kiel and then ran through the Kiel Canal to Brest , where she was visited by several French admirals. On October 8, she continued her journey via Cadiz , Algeria and Naples to Piraeus , where she met the ship of the line Tsar Nicholas I , the gunboat Chrabry and five torpedo boats, and from November 19 carried out exercises off Poros . Another reason for the long stay was that the new captain Nikolai von Essen did not arrive in Poros until December 1, 1902. On the 11th the ship left Greece for Port Said . A violent winter storm forced the march back to the bay of Salamis on the night of the 12th . Not until 20/21 December the cruiser passed the Suez Canal and marched via Jeddah , Djibouti , Aden , Colombo and Sabang until February 28, 1903 to Singapore . After traveling 13,279 nautical miles , the Nowik reached Port Arthur via Manila and Shanghai on April 2nd .
After a short break and overhaul, the Novik ran from May 26 to 29, 1903 as an escort to the cruiser Askold with the Russian Minister of War Kuropatkin on board to Kobe ; the minister was on 12./13. Resumed June in Nagasaki and brought back to Port Arthur. From July 23 to August 31, the Novik was then in Vladivostok , where it was overhauled and inspected in the dry dock. In autumn, like other ships in the Pacific Squadron, she was given a new coat of dark olive paint. In September she was back in Port Arthur.
The Russo-Japanese War
On February 9, 1904 , Japanese destroyers attacked the Russian squadron in Port Arthur. The Nowik was used to pursue the destroyers, but could not catch up with the faster boats and then broke off the unsuccessful pursuit. When the Japanese fleet bombarded Port Arthur on February 9, the Nowik was slightly damaged, but nevertheless carried out an unsuccessful torpedo attack on the Japanese ships of the line. The damage caused was repaired in the dock in nine days.
Their most important mission came on March 10th, when the newly arrived squadron chief Stepan Makarow boarded their ship as the only ready-to-use ship to help two Sokol-class torpedo boats attacked by Japanese cruisers and destroyers . The operation prevented the Japanese from towing the sinking Stereguschy , saved the Reschitelnyi and boosted the squadron's morale. This mission made the new chief popular, and it was the second case in which only the Nowik could react immediately, which strengthened its reputation in the squadron. With the Bajan and the Askold she was then often on duty in front of the base. At the end of March, moved from Essen to the Sevastopol as captain . The cruiser was taken over by Captain Maximilian Fedorowitsch von Schultz .
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 Askold , Diana and Nowik . 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 9:43 a.m., the Petropavlovsk ran into a mine, exploded and sank within two minutes. In addition to the admiral, 635 officers and men died. At 10:15 a.m., the Pobeda was damaged by a mine.
On June 23, the Nowik was involved in the first attempt to break out of the Pacific Squadron under the new chief Withöft with all six ships of the line, all five cruisers and ten torpedo boats. They fended off the Japanese destroyer attack. The squadron commander broke off a possible battle around 3 p.m. and returned to Port Arthur.
In the Battle of the Yellow Sea , the Russian fleet tried to break the Japanese blockade of Port Arthur in order to get to Vladivostok. The attempt failed in a battle with the Japanese fleet, in which the Nowik was slightly damaged by three hits and two men of the crew died. Most of the Russian ships turned back to Port Arthur after two hours of fighting and the death of the squadron chief. Five ships of the line, a cruiser and nine destroyers reached the base.
The damaged flagship Zessarewitsch , the three destroyers of the Besposchtschadni , Besschumni , Besstraschni and the Novik ran to the German base Kiautschou ; the Askold and later the destroyer Grozovoi to Shanghai and the Diana to Saigon.
All ships except the Nowik were interned. The Nowik left Tsingtau and tried to circumnavigate the Japanese islands in the east to reach Vladivostok.
The End
When the Japanese naval command heard of the sighting of the Nowik by a merchant ship south of the island of Yakushima , they dispatched the cruisers Tsushima and Chitose to monitor the Tsugaru Strait and the La Perouse Strait . On August 19, the Nowik was discovered from land in the fairway between the two islands of Iturup and Urup , whereupon the two Japanese cruisers concentrated their search on the La Perouse Strait. The Nowik , which urgently needed coal and water to get to Vladivostok despite an economical driving style, called at the port of Korsakow in the south of the island of Sakhalin on the morning of August 20 , where it was caught in the afternoon by the artillery superior Tsushima and in a sea battle before Korsakow was badly damaged. After the battle, the Russian crew sank the Novik in shallow waters because there was no longer any prospect of reaching Vladivostok. Some guns were still recovered and later used in the Japanese invasion of Sakhalin .
The Japanese cruiser Suzuya
The Japanese navy captured the wreck during the occupation of Sakhalin and had the ship lifted on July 16, 1906, despite the combat damage and the destruction deliberately caused by the Russian crew. During the repairs in the Yokosuka naval shipyard , the middle engine system and the front chimney were removed and a new boiler system with eight Miyabara boilers was installed, which reduced the engine output to 6,000 hp and only allowed a speed of 20 knots.
The initially intended reinforcement of the armament by replacing the bow and stern guns with 152 mm L / 50 guns was abandoned and, on the contrary, the armor was reduced. At the bow and stern were 120 mm L / 45 Armstrong guns and on the sides 76 mm L / 40 guns in place of the 120 mm guns. The number of light guns remained unchanged.
The cruiser was incorporated into the Imperial Japanese Navy on July 11, 1908 under the name Suzuya (River on Karafuto ) as a dispatch boat. In December 1908 all repairs and conversions were completed, but the ship was still in poor condition and was hardly in service.
The extensive radio equipment in the fleet made this type of ship superfluous. On August 28, 1912, the Suzuya was reclassified as a second class coastal defense ship. On April 1, 1913, the Suzuya was removed from the list of warships and then sold for demolition.
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
- Julian Corbett : Maritime Operations in The Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905. Two volumes, 1994, ISBN 1-55750-129-7 .
- Bernhard Gomm: The Russian Warships 1856–1917, Volume II: Frigates, Armored Cruisers, Corvettes, Protected Cruisers, Appendix: Sailing Frigates 1694–1856. Self-published, Wiesbaden 1991
Web links
- The Novik Class: Fast Protected Cruisers (1900/1901)
- A. Yu Emelin: 2nd class cruiser Novik (russ.)
- Rift of the Nowik
- Russian 120 mm / 45 (4.7 ") pattern 1892
Footnotes
- ^ Report on Novik July 21, 1901 NYT
- ↑ Battleship Imperator Nikolai I (1885/1891)
- ↑ Battle of Port Arthur February 29, 2004 NYT
- ↑ Askold and Grozovoi interned. In: NYT , August 26
- ↑ Diana in Saigon . (PDF) In: NYT , August 21
- ↑ Escape from Tsingtau . In: NYT , August 18
- ↑ Map to Aniwa Bay and Korsakow
- ^ Skirmish of the Novik . (PDF) In: NYT , August 22