The topic of the Battle of Liss aroused great interest among readers of the Military Review, who wished that a number of other major naval battles were considered in the same vein. Well, the topic is really very interesting, so we fulfill their request.
Prologue
After the Battle of Liss, the development of naval weapons went literally by leaps and bounds, and everyone, from the classic of Marxism Friedrich Engels and ending with the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, expressed their opinion on this matter. Technically, the consequences of this battle resulted in the fact that all, absolutely all naval warships acquired powerful ram stems, and the artillery of the main caliber began to be placed on them so as to provide the maximum number of barrels that could be directed forward. That is, the gun turrets were installed not on the ends, but on the sides along the diagonal, which made it possible to shoot forward and backward from four guns at once, and fire from four at certain angles abeam.
Chinese flagship battleship at the Battle of Yalu Dingyuan. Model of the firm "Bronco" in a scale of 1: 350. Photo from the American magazine "Fine Scale Modeler"
Many such ships were built in different countries of the world, these are the famous Cayo Duilio, and Enrico Dandolo, and Italy, and Lepanto, and a number of British ships, including the ill-fated Captain, and the same the ill-fated American battleship Maine. And it had to happen that China acquired exactly the same battleships when it finally decided to turn into a naval power too!
Chinese style modernization
And it so happened that in the last quarter of the 19th century, China entered a backward in all respects typically Asian country with an ineffective system of government, extremely backward industry and primitive semi-feudal agriculture.
China was defeated in the Opium Wars in 1840-1842 and 1856-1860, and the whole thing was going towards its complete transformation into one of the many European colonies, however, fortunately for the Chinese, it still did not come to that. The government realized the need for reforms, and above all military reforms, which, nevertheless, were started in a typically Chinese manner. Its essence was that in China both army formations and even the navy were not controlled from a single center, but were subordinate … to the governors of those provinces in which they were located. That is, these same governors, like ancient feudal lords, disposed of them at their own discretion as if they were their own squads, although they received money for their maintenance from the state treasury. However, they also gave a lot there, both officially and unofficially. And those who were "generous" received both more rights and more opportunities.
One such figure was Li Hongzhang, who in 1870 became the governor of the capital province of Zhili, which could well be equated by our standards with the highest public office.
He actively advocated China's "self-empowerment policy" and the "overseas assimilation movement." In 1875, it was he who developed the first sea program in China, according to which it was supposed to order in Europe a whole fleet of 48 modern warships, while organizing the construction of a certain number of them at Chinese shipyards. It was planned to invite specialists from abroad, train their own national cadres, build factories, mines and shipyards. That is, "to open a window to Europe" according to the Russian (and Japanese versions), but only, of course, in our own, Chinese manner.
Fortunately, there are a lot of sources on this topic. There are Russians, and there are also English ones.
Initially, money for this program was allocated to all four Chinese fleets. However, Li Hongzhang managed to get from the emperor that they were completely transferred to him and launched to strengthen the northern fleet that was personally subordinate to him. Then he invited his fellow countryman (and in China it was customary) Ding Zhuchang to command this fleet. Moreover, he was a fairly well-known and active person, he participated in the Taiping uprising, and then he himself suppressed him, and thus earned the full confidence of the authorities.
Well, in order to compensate for the lack of experience of the Chinese officers, it was decided to invite about 200 British military specialists to China, including Commodore William Lang, as well as German and American naval officers. Thus, the chief of staff of the Northern (or as the Chinese called it) of the Beiyang Fleet became the German major Konstantin von Genneken, while the Englishman William Tyler and the American Philo McGiffin received the posts of second commanders on two battleships just built for China that arrived from Europe. … What kind of ships they were, we will consider in more detail a little later, but for now we just note that all the positive that was achieved by the Chinese on the way of modernizing the country, the army and the navy was largely leveled out by the frankly poor training of personnel, which consisted mostly of illiterate peasants, as well as the corruption and embezzlement, which flourished everywhere in China at that time. Actually, it was on them that the entire modernization in Chinese was based, and its scale was so significant that it led to the fact that many British officers were forced to leave their service in the Beiyang Fleet.
But reading the text with yat and fita is very unusual and tiring …
Nevertheless, by 1885 this fleet had become the eighth largest in the world in number and for some time the strongest in the Far East! The ships made "courtesy visits", actively "showed the flag", in a word, China has finally declared itself on the seas. True, there were some curiosities. For example, when the Chinese battleships arrived at the Japanese port of Kure, Heihachiro Togo, the future famous Japanese admiral, boarded one of them. With his keen gaze, he noticed that the Chinese sailors on the battleship Dingyuan were drying their underwear by hanging it on the barrels of their main guns. And this, they say, speaks of their low fighting spirit. And this "story with underpants on the barrels of the guns" immediately got into the newspapers and in a very negative way influenced the image of China as a "great sea power". Although, of course, all this was nothing more than rancor and "black PR", but in what the Chinese "application" for their "sea power" manifested itself specifically, we will just now consider …
Ships of the Beiyang Fleet: Shoot rarely, but accurately
With all the eastern specifics of the country's modernization (for example, debtors who did not pay taxes were punished with blows on the heels with sticks!), It should be admitted that the Chinese created their fleet very thoughtfully. So, for example, they decided that first they needed personnel, and only then large and complex ships, but it is best to prepare them by building many small and cheap ships, armed, nevertheless, with powerful guns. Therefore, the first modern ships of the Beiyang Fleet were gunboats. First, very simple, and then built in England, "Rendel" gunboats, armed with a 280-mm gun. They did not have armor, but they could act on rivers (which was very important for China) and at sea, but due to their small size it was not easy to get into them, while the shells of their main caliber guns had a strong destructive effect.
The main ships of the Beiyang Fleet: from left to right - the battleship Dingyuan, the armored cruiser Jiyuan, the mine cruiser Guangyi, the armored cruiser Pingyuan, one of the many German-built destroyers.
Ships in reverse order. All the design features and armament of the named ships are clearly visible.
Then they were supplemented by the "Rendel" III class cruisers "Chaoyun" and "Yanwei" built in England, the main feature of which again became their displacement and armament. Their creator, William Armstrong, touted these cruisers as examples of a small and cheap vessel that would be capable of handling a large mast battleship in battle. Its main defense was to be a high speed and small size, which, in principle, made it possible to dictate the conditions of the battle to the enemy. In 1882, Armstrong wrote that there is not a single ship in the British Navy capable of fighting these cruisers one-on-one, and that no British ship can overtake them or get away from them if the need arose.
Cruiser III class "Chaoyun".
A cannon casemate on the Chaoyun.
In addition, in those years, only a few ships could boast of armament from two 280-mm Armstrong guns, which easily penetrated armor equal to their caliber at that time. It is interesting that these guns were placed not in the towers, but in casemates on the bow and stern with folding armor shields, which is why they had dead angles of fire both in front and behind, although not too large. By the way, the British themselves were not inspired by these ships, considering their seaworthiness useless. Yes, in principle, it was so, although it suited the Chinese.
Deck gun of the Jiyuan armored cruiser.
In 1883 - 1887. the fleet continued to be replenished with new ships, although they all remained very specific compared to Western designs. These were low-tonnage class II cruisers "Jiyuan", "Zhiyuan" and "Jingyuan" and "Laiyuan", built in England and Germany on the type of Elsvik cruisers, but their armament for this type of ships was not typical. At the request of the Chinese side, they were equipped with three 210-mm main-caliber guns, but only two 152-mm Kane cannons.
Armored cruiser Pingyuan.
Perhaps the strangest ship in the Beiyang Fleet was the Pingyuan, of its own Chinese construction. It was a kind of hybrid of a gunboat and a coastal defense battleship, which for some reason the Chinese themselves considered an armored cruiser. Its main caliber was a 260-mm Krupp cannon in a bow barbette installation, protected by a dome-shaped armored cap, along the sides of the sponsons there were two 6-inch Krupp guns (150-mm) behind armor shields. Thanks to this, theoretically, the ship could shoot directly on the course from all the guns at once, which corresponded to the ramming tactics of combat that were fashionable at that time. However, his speed was only 10 knots, so ramming the enemy was simply an impossible task for him.
But, of course, the strongest ships of the Beiyang fleet were two battleships built in Germany at the Stettin shipyards of the Vulcan, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan firms, which entered service in 1885 and 1886, respectively. Although they were built by the Germans, they were not completely similar to the German battleships "Zakhsen", but both the location of the towers and the weapons were similar to the British battleships "Ajax". Although they had paired 305-mm breech-loading guns against the typical for German battleships 280-mm, and 317-mm muzzle-loading guns of British ships. However, these guns did not have any special advantages. They were not long-range enough and were slow to charge, firing only one shot every four minutes. As with the British Ajax-class battleships, the auxiliary artillery of the Chinese ships consisted of only two 152-mm guns, located in the bow and at the stern and covered with armored caps.
The vertical armor of the ships protected only the middle part of the hull. The compound armor belt was three meters high and 16 inches thick in its middle. The top was 10 inches thick, and the one below the waterline was 6 inches thick. In the center was an armored parapet in the shape of a dumbbell, inside which were two barbets of the main battery guns, and a conning tower made of 12-inch armor. The gun mounts were covered from above with armor caps made of 6-inch (in the frontal part) and 3-inch armor. There was no armored deck under the redoubt, but on the other hand, both the bow and the stern extremities were protected by a "carapace" armored deck, also made of 3-inch armor. Many compartments along the waterline were filled with cork, although, of course, the ends of both ships were more vulnerable to shells than their central part.
Schematic section of the ship "Dingyuan"
Again, theoretically, a similar installation of main-caliber guns made it possible to fire from four barrels both forward and backward, as well as abeam. This was in line with the ramming tactics. However, in reality, due to the destructive effect of powder gases on superstructures, many angles of firing could be important only in theory.
The speed of 14.5 knots, which these ships developed, was considered quite sufficient for battleships at that time!
"Dingyuan" and "Zhenyuan" in pre-war livery.
In general, we can say that the Chinese fleet consisted of very, very specific ships, mainly of small displacement, but with strong main caliber artillery, and it is quite obvious that this forced the Chinese sailors "to shoot rarely, but accurately", that is, it required good training and combat skill, and the same was required of their commanders! And this was all the more important because the voyages in order to demonstrate the flag for the Chinese imperial fleet were coming to an end and was already approaching on September 17, 1894, when it was to fight the imperial fleet of neighboring Japan.
