Opyt

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RussiaRussia (naval war flag)
Builder: Carr and MacPherson , St. Petersburg
Keel laying: August 8, 1861
Launch: September 27, 1861
Commissioning: May 11, 1862
Period of service: 1861-1918
Displacement: 270 t
Length: 38.9 m
Width: 6.78 m
Draft: 1.83 m
Drive: Sails
1 steam engine
1 screw
Speed: 9.0 kn
Range:
Crew:
Armament: Guns:
  • 1 × 196mm bombard

Opyt (Russian: Опыт, transliteration: Opyt) was the name of a gunboat of the Imperial Russian Navy . It was the first armored ship in the Russian fleet. Built in 1861, it was scrapped in 1922 after an eventful history.

prehistory

The Crimean War had clearly shown the Russian naval leadership that wooden warships were no longer usable in armed conflicts. Due to the explosive grenades that were now in use , they suffered very serious damage very quickly in battle and were easy to fire on. The armoring of vital parts of the ships therefore seemed inevitable. In order to gain experience with the construction of armored ships, the Russian fleet commissioned the construction of the gunboat Opyt . The name - in German experience - indicates the purpose of the ship.

Construction and construction

On July 22, 1861, the ship was ordered from the Carr and MacPherson shipyard in St. Petersburg and laid down there on August 8 of that year. The boat was launched on September 27, 1861. After the equipment had been completed, the Opyt was put into service with the guard units of the Baltic Fleet on May 11, 1862 .

The 38.9 m long and 6.78 m wide boat had a displacement of 270 t and the draft was 1.83 m. The hull was divided into five compartments by transverse bulkheads. The steam engine with an output of 200 PSi gave the Opyt a speed of 9 knots.

In the front part of the boat a bombarde with a caliber of 196 mm was installed. The cannon fired over an armored parapet . The upper deck was spherically arched from the parapet to the bow . This construction was intended to deflect impacting shells and thus prevent the deck from penetrating. Above the deck, the armor was 115 mm thick, below 65 mm. The armor plates with the dimensions 1200 × 1000 mm lay on 305 mm thick teak and consisted of wrought iron , which was procured from Russia and England. The backing with wood should prevent the brittle armor from splintering and, thanks to its elasticity, prevent the fastening bolts of the armor plates from tearing out in the event of hits. The ammunition load lay behind the armor and was protected by drinking water tanks on the side.

commitment

On February 19, 1866, the boat was deleted from the fleet list, disarmed and given to a private owner for use as a launch. On January 1, 1870, however, the boat was re-armed and again added to the fleet list. The Opyt was renamed Mina (Мина) in 1883 and used to test different types of sea ​​mines . In 1891, the boat was part of the fleet's mine training units and was involved in Alexander Stepanovich Popov's attempts to transmit radio waves between ships.

On February 1, 1892, the boat was unclassified as a coastal defense gunboat. A main repair took place in 1900. In 1906 the boat was struck off the fleet list for the second time, disarmed and stored in the naval port of St. Petersburg.

From August 9, 1907, the boat was depreserved again and put into operation again. Initially used for port services, it was used as a hydrographic ship to survey the Finnish archipelago on July 16, 1915 .

During the First World War , the boat had to aid the navigation of military and civilian ships in the Gulf of Finland . On October 25, 1917, the boat was added to the Red Baltic Fleet and on March 11 of the following year to the Finnish Soviet Republic (see Finnish Civil War ), but fell into the hands of the White Finns in Helsingfors in April of that year . According to the provisions of the Finnish-Russian Peace and Border Treaty, the boat had to be returned to Russia, but the formal return did not take place until 1922. Since it is now completely out of date, the boat was sold to Finland for scrap extraction and demolished.

Web links

literature

  • R. Gardiner, R. Chesneau, EM Kolesnik: Conway's all the World Fighting Ships. 1860-1906 London 1979 ISBN 0-85177-133-5
  • А. П. Шершов: К истории военного кораблестроения. Военмориздат ВММ СССР, 1952. (AP Scherschow: On the history of military shipbuilding ) (Russian)