For several generations of Soviet (and not only Soviet) people, the name of this cruiser has become a kind of fetish. The legendary ship, which heralded the beginning of a new era in the history of mankind with its salvo, a symbol of the Great October Socialist Revolution, is the most replicated cliché. And what is the real history of the cruiser "Aurora"?
At the end of the 19th century, the Russian navy grew and was replenished with new ships. According to the classification of that time, there was such a subclass of cruisers - armored, that is, having an armored deck to protect the vital parts of the ship from the hinged fire of enemy artillery. The armored cruisers did not carry side armor and were not intended for a duel with battleships. It was to this type of warships that the cruiser "Aurora" laid down on May 23, 1897 in St. Petersburg (in the New Admiralty), of the same type as the "Pallada" and "Diana" laid down earlier, belonged.
In the Russian navy, there was (and still is) a tradition of the continuity of ship names, and the new cruisers inherited the names of sailing frigates. The construction of the ship took more than six years - "Aurora" was launched on May 11, 1900 at 11:15 am, and the cruiser entered the fleet (after completion of all outfitting work) only on July 16, 1903.
This ship was by no means unique in its combat qualities. The cruiser could not boast of either a particularly frisky speed (only 19 knots - the battleships of that time developed a speed of 18 knots), or armament (8 152-mm main battery guns - far from amazing firepower). Ships of another type of armored cruiser (Bogatyr), which was then adopted by the Russian fleet, were much faster and one and a half times stronger. And the attitude of officers and crews to these "goddesses of domestic production" was not too warm - cruisers of the "Diana" type had a lot of shortcomings and constantly arising technical problems.
Nevertheless, these cruisers were quite consistent with their direct purpose - reconnaissance, destruction of enemy merchant ships, cover of battleships from attacks of enemy destroyers, patrol service - they had a solid (about seven thousand tons) displacement and, as a result, good seaworthiness and autonomy … With a full supply of coal (1,430 tons), the Aurora could go from Port Arthur to Vladivostok and return without additional bunkering.
All three cruisers were intended for the Pacific Ocean, where a military conflict with Japan was brewing, and the first two of them were already in the Far East by the time the Aurora entered service with operational ships. The third sister, too, was in a hurry to visit her relatives, and on September 25, 1903 (just a week after completion, which ended on September 18), the Aurora with a crew of 559 under the command of Captain 1st Rank I. V. Sukhotin left Kronstadt.
In the Mediterranean Sea, "Aurora" joined the detachment of Rear Admiral A. A. Virenius, which consisted of the battleship "Oslyabya", the cruiser "Dmitry Donskoy" and several destroyers and auxiliary ships. However, the detachment was late for the Far East - in the African port of Djibouti on Russian ships they learned about the Japanese night attack on the Port Arthur squadron and the beginning of the war. It was considered too risky to proceed further, since the Japanese fleet blocked Port Arthur, and there was a high probability of meeting with superior enemy forces on the way to it. There was a proposal to send a detachment of Vladivostok cruisers to the Singapore region to meet Virenius and go with them to Vladivostok, and not to Port Arthur, but this quite reasonable proposal was not accepted.
On April 5, 1904, "Aurora" returned to Kronstadt, where she was included in the 2nd Pacific Squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Rozhdestvensky, which was preparing to march on the Far Eastern theater of military operations. Here on it, six of the eight main-caliber guns were covered with armor shields - the experience of the battles of the Arthurian squadron showed that fragments of high-explosive Japanese shells literally mow down unprotected personnel. In addition, the commander was replaced on the cruiser - captain of the 1st rank E. R. Yegoriev became him. On October 2, 1904, as part of the Aurora squadron, she set off for the second time - to Tsushima.
"Aurora" was in the detachment of cruisers of Rear Admiral Enquist and during the Tsushima battle conscientiously carried out Rozhestvensky's order - she covered transports. This task was clearly beyond the capacity of four Russian cruisers, against which eight, and then sixteen Japanese, acted against. They were saved from heroic death only by the fact that a column of Russian battleships accidentally approached them and drove away the advancing enemy.
The cruiser did not distinguish itself in something special - the author of the damage attributed to the Aurora by Soviet sources of damage that the Japanese cruiser Izumi received was in fact the cruiser Vladimir Monomakh. The very same "Aurora" received about a dozen hits, had a number of injuries and serious losses in people - up to a hundred people killed and wounded. The commander died - his photograph is now on display in the museum of the cruiser framed by a steel sheathing sheet pierced by a splinter from a Japanese shell and charred deck planks.
At night, instead of covering the wounded Russian ships from the furious mine attacks of the Japanese, the cruisers Oleg, Aurora and Zhemchug broke away from their main forces and headed for the Philippines, where they were interned in Manila. However, there is no reason to accuse the cruiser crew of cowardice - the responsibility for fleeing from the battlefield lay with the confused Admiral Enquist. Two of these three ships were subsequently lost: "Pearl" was sunk in 1914 by the German corsair "Emden" in Penang, and "Oleg" in 1919 was sunk by British torpedo boats in the Gulf of Finland.
The Aurora returned to the Baltic at the beginning of 1906 along with several other ships that had survived the Japanese defeat. In 1909-1910, "Aurora", together with "Diana" and "Bogatyr", was part of the overseas voyage detachment, specially designed for practical training by midshipmen of the Marine Corps and the Marine Engineering School, as well as students of the Training Team of combat non-commissioned officers.
The cruiser underwent the first modernization after the Russo-Japanese War, the second, after which it took on the appearance that is now preserved, in 1915. The ship's artillery armament was strengthened - the number of 152-mm main-caliber guns was first brought to ten, and then to fourteen. Numerous 75-mm artillery was dismantled - the size and survivability of the destroyers increased, and the three-inch shells no longer posed a serious threat to them.
The cruiser was able to take on board up to 150 mines - mine weapons were widely used in the Baltic and proved their effectiveness. And in the winter of 1915-1916, a novelty was installed on the Aurora - anti-aircraft guns. But the glorious cruiser might not have survived until the second modernization …
The Aurora met the First World War as part of the second brigade of the Baltic Fleet cruisers (together with Oleg, Bogatyr and Diana). The Russian command was expecting a breakthrough by the powerful German High Sea Fleet into the Gulf of Finland and an attack on Kronstadt and even on St. Petersburg. To counter this threat, mines were hastily placed, and the central mine and artillery position was equipped. The cruiser was assigned the task of carrying out patrol service at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland in order to promptly notify of the appearance of German dreadnoughts.
The cruisers went on patrol in pairs, and at the end of the patrol period, one pair replaced the other. The Russian ships achieved their first success on August 26, when the German light cruiser Magdeburg sat on the rocks near the island of Odensholm. The cruisers Pallada arrived in time (the elder sister of the Aurora died in Port Arthur, and this new Pallada was built after the Russo-Japanese war) and Bogatyr tried to capture the enemy's helpless ship. Although the Germans managed to blow up their cruiser, Russian divers found secret German codes at the scene of the accident, which during the war served both the Russians and the British in good faith.
But a new danger awaited the Russian ships - from October German submarines began to operate on the Baltic Sea. Anti-submarine defense in the fleets of the whole world was then in its infancy - no one knew how and with what it was possible to hit the invisible enemy hiding under water, and how to avoid his sudden attacks. There were no diving shells, let alone depth charges and sonars. Surface ships could rely only on the good old ram - after all, they should not take seriously the developed anecdotal instructions, in which it was prescribed to cover the periscopes seen with bags and roll them up with sledgehammers.
On October 11, 1914, at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, the German submarine U-26 under the command of Lieutenant-Commander von Berckheim discovered two Russian cruisers: the Pallada, which was completing its patrol service, and the Aurora, which came to replace it. The commander of the German submarine with German pedantry and scrupulousness assessed and classified the targets - in all respects, the new armored cruiser was a much more tempting prey than a veteran of the Russian-Japanese war.
Flag of the cruiser I rank "Aurora" after the Battle of Tsushima (from the collection of N. N. Afonin)
The torpedo hit caused the detonation of the ammunition magazines on the Pallada, and the cruiser sank along with the entire crew - only a few sailor caps remained on the waves …
The Aurora turned around and took refuge in the skerries. And again, you should not blame the Russian sailors for cowardice - as already mentioned, they did not know how to fight submarines yet, and the Russian command already knew about the tragedy that happened ten days earlier in the North Sea, where a German boat sank three English armored cruisers at once. "Aurora" escaped death for the second time - the cruiser was clearly preserved by fate.
Captain 1st rank E. G. Yegoriev - the commander of the "Aurora" who died in the battle of Tsushima (from the collection of N. N. Afonin)
It is not worth dwelling on the role of "Aurora" in the events of October 1917 in Petrograd - more than enough has been said about this. We only note that the threat to shoot the Winter Palace from the cruiser's guns was pure bluff. The cruiser was under repair, and therefore all the ammunition was unloaded from it in full accordance with the applicable instructions. And the stamp "volley" Aurora "is incorrect purely grammatically, since" volley "is a simultaneous shot from at least two barrels.
The Aurora did not take part in the civil war and in the battles with the British fleet. An acute shortage of fuel and other types of supplies led to the fact that the Baltic Fleet was reduced to the size of a bunker - an "active detachment" - consisting of only a few combat units. "Aurora" was taken to the reserve, and in the fall of 1918, some of the guns were removed from the cruiser for installation on improvised gunboats of river and lake flotillas.
At the end of 1922 "Aurora" - by the way, the only ship of the old imperial Russian fleet, which retained its name given to it at birth - it was decided to restore it as a training ship. The cruiser was repaired, ten 130-mm guns were installed on it instead of the previous 152-mm, two anti-aircraft guns and four machine guns, and on July 18, 1923, the ship entered sea trials.
Then, for ten years - from 1923 to 1933 - the cruiser was engaged in a business that was already familiar to him: cadets of naval schools were practicing on board. The ship made several foreign voyages, participated in the maneuvers of the newly revived Baltic Fleet. But the years took their toll, and due to the poor condition of the boilers and mechanisms "Aurora" after another repair in 1933-1935 became a non-self-propelled training base. In winter, it was used as a floating base for submarines.
During the Great Patriotic War, the old cruiser was stationed in the harbor of Oranienbaum.
The guns were once again removed from the ship, and nine hundred and thirty, installed on the coastal battery, defended the approaches to the city. The Germans did not pay much attention to the decrepit veteran, seeking to disable the best Soviet ships (such as the cruiser Kirov and battleships), but the ship still received its portion of enemy shells. On September 30, 1941, the half-sunken cruiser, damaged by artillery shelling, landed on the ground.
But the ship again - for the third time in its more than forty-year history - survived. After the blockade of Leningrad was lifted in July 1944, the cruiser was taken out of the state of clinical death - she was lifted from the ground and (for the umpteenth time!) Put into repair. The boilers and onboard vehicles, propellers, side shaft brackets and the shafts themselves, as well as part of the auxiliary mechanisms, were removed from the Aurora. They installed the weapons that were on the ship in 1915 - fourteen 152-mm Kane guns and four 45-mm salute cannons.
Now the cruiser was to become a monument ship and at the same time a training base for the Nakhimov school. In 1948, the renovation was completed, and the restored "Aurora" stood where it stands to this day - to the Petrogradskaya embankment opposite the building of the Nakhimov's school. And in 1956, the Ship Museum was opened on board the Aurora as a branch of the Central Naval Museum.
Aurora ceased to be a training ship for pupils of the Leningrad Nakhimov School in 1961, but the status of a museum ship was preserved. Long voyages and naval battles are a thing of the past - the time has come for a well-deserved and honorable pension. A ship rarely has such a fate - after all, ships usually either perish at sea, or end their journey at the wall of the plant, where they are cut for scrap …
In the Soviet years, of course, the main (and perhaps the only) attention was paid to the revolutionary past of the cruiser. Images of the "Aurora" were present wherever possible, and the silhouette of the three-pipe ship became the same symbol of the city on the Neva as the Peter and Paul Fortress or the Bronze Horseman. The role of the cruiser in the October Revolution was extolled in every possible way, and there was even a joke-anecdote: "Which ship in history had the most powerful weaponry?" - "Cruiser Aurora"! One shot - and the whole state collapsed!"
In 1967, the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution was widely celebrated in the Soviet Union. In Leningrad, bonfires were burning at Smolny, near which, leaning on rifles, stood people in soldier's greatcoats and pea jackets of revolutionary sailors of the seventeenth year with an indispensable attribute - with machine-gun belts crossed on the chest and on the back.
It is clear that the well-deserved ship simply could not be ignored. For the anniversary, the film "Aurora salvo" was made, where the cruiser played the main role - himself. For greater reliability of the depicted events, all filming was made on location. "Aurora" was towed to a historical place to the Nikolaevsky bridge, where the episode of the seizure of the aforementioned bridge was filmed. The sight was impressive, and thousands of Leningraders and guests of the city watched as the gray three-pipe beauty slowly and majestically floated along the Neva.
However, “Aurora” itself was not the first time to act as a movie star. Back in 1946, during the renovation, "Aurora" played the role of the cruiser "Varyag" in the movie of the same name. Then "Aurora", as a true actress, even had to make up for her character - the shields were removed from the guns (they were not on the "Varyag"), and a fourth fake pipe was installed for the veracity of the image of the heroic cruiser of the Russian-Japanese war.
The last repair of "Aurora" took place in the mid-80s of the last century, and rumors about a "fake" Aurora "are connected with this. The fact is that the bottom of the cruiser was completely replaced, and the old one was dragged to the Gulf of Finland and thrown there. It was these amputated remains that gave rise to rumors.
2004-05-26
In 2004, the cruiser Aurora became a member of the Association of Historic Naval Ships, which includes 90 museum ships from nine countries of the world. Russia entered this unusual organization for the first time: simultaneously with the cruiser Aurora, the icebreaker Krasin was admitted to the Association's flotilla.
Today the main occupation of the cruiser "Aurora", whose age has already passed a hundred years, is to serve as a museum. And this museum is very visited - on board the ship there are up to half a million guests a year. And honestly, this museum is worth visiting - and not only for those who are nostalgic for times gone by forever.
On December 1, 2010, the cruiser "Aurora" by order of the Minister of Defense of Russia (guess who!) Was withdrawn from the Navy and transferred to the balance of the Naval Museum. The military unit serving on the ship was disbanded. The crew of the cruiser "Aurora" was reorganized into a staff of three military personnel and 28 civilian personnel; the status of the ship remains the same.
On June 27, 2012, deputies of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly adopted an appeal to the Commander-in-Chief of the RF Armed Forces with a request to return the cruiser to the status of ship No. 1 as part of the Russian Navy, while retaining a military crew on the ship.
Alarming is the “withdrawal into the shadows”. Removing the fleet from the lists, removing the military crew, leaving the staff of cleaners, guides and usheters? What's next? A restaurant in the wardroom? It has already happened (Kudrin, it seems, noted himself after the summit). A hotel complex in the crew cabins? Apparently, it is possible. And then quiet grabbing … a familiar plot. I would not want to.
I am surprised by the very attitude to memory. We are surprised at the lack of proper patriotism, unwillingness to serve in the army or in the navy. And forgive me, how to back it up? From 1957 to 2010, 20 ship museums were opened in the country.
Cruiser - 2 ("Aurora" and "Admiral Nakhimov")
Nuclear icebreaker - 1 ("Lenin")
Patrol ship - 1
River steamer - 1
Diesel PL - 9
Schooner - 1
Icebreaker - 2
Research vessel - 2
Trawler - 1
Many? Few? In the USA, 8 battleships and 4 aircraft carriers serve as museums … Moreover, Iowa and Wisconsin MUST be kept in good condition, suitable for combat use. I am silent about destroyers and submarines.
It may seem that it was started for health, and finished for peace. A bit wrong. Disregard for symbols cannot but affect many aspects of thinking.
And it's not even the October firing by idle people. This is not the main thing in the fate of the ship. Much more important is the thousands of cadets who were trained aboard the cruiser and the thousands of shells of its guns that were fired at the enemy, even if on land. The symbol of a ship that has gone through three wars is important. And it is important that there should be many more such symbols. And they need to be presented in a slightly different way.
Take the United States. They have no problems with patriotism. Perhaps, by the way, due to the fact that they have no problems accessing such symbols. I have provided a website below, there is even a map where these symbols are located. And after all, you can not only watch, but climb aboard, climb the entire battleship or aircraft carrier, play with simulators, sit in the cockpit. And a submarine usually hangs out nearby. Here, young citizen, join … And we are surprised that we do not have the proper respect for the armed forces.
And where does it come from, even if it is unrealistic to dismantle a spattered AK-47 at school after the abolition of the CWP? And how many opportunities does a person under 18 have to be in the cockpit of an airplane or helicopter? Or in a tank? Somehow we have it crookedly. But there is the Internet, broadcasting around the clock about the nightmares of the army. There are all sorts of discoveries broadcasting about the heroic victories of the US Army. Mountains of Hollywood films on these topics (when I watched "K-19", there would be admission to the cherished button - hell would find America later). There are a bunch of computer toys, played in the same place, across the oceans. And here's the result … Where are the "Aurora" and "Nakhimov" against such a patriotic fleet, 8 battleships and 4 aircraft carriers?
All this is sad. We have kept a minuscule amount, and what we have kept is not appreciated. Well, to hell with him, with that bum … But besides him, there is something to show on the example of the same "Aurora". I, in fact, for this, the entire path of the ship and led. Show the main one is not that shot, but the path of the ship, three wars that served their country.
Why is that? Why do we want to see our country strong, the army and the navy mighty, but do almost nothing for this? I understand that it does not depend on us. Then what do we demand from those who should come to replace us, but do not want it? We spit on our past so easily that it becomes scary. And we don't appreciate what's left.
I was prompted to write all this by the dialogue of two young people overheard on the bus. They discussed the aircraft of the Second World War. And one gave the other the following argument: “Where are all our miraculous planes? They remained on the fields of war. There are dozens of Mustangs flying in the states, and Messers and Spitfires in England. Have you seen at least one of ours? The models on the monuments do not count! And the second did not find what to answer. And I remembered the Victory Parade in Samara. When the only IL-2 in the country was flying. The last of 33,000. And I also had nothing to argue, although I really wanted to. The guy was right in his own way: he was simply not given the opportunity to touch history.
For a long time this picture stood before my eyes: huge battleships and aircraft carriers, ready to demonstrate their power to everyone, and a small cruiser under the gloomy Baltic sky …
Vladimir Kontrovsky "The Destiny of a Cruiser"
