The name "Dmitry Donskoy" is significant for the history of the Russian fleet. In different eras, it was worn by sailing battleships, a propeller-driven steam frigate and an unfinished cruiser of Project 68-bis. Today in the lists of the Navy there is also a ship bearing the name of the Grand Duke on board - the Project 941 Akula heavy nuclear submarine cruiser. However, without a doubt, the most interesting and glorious history of the service has the semi-armored cruiser "Dmitry Donskoy", which will be discussed in this article.
Its project was developed by the famous Admiral A. A. Popov and was the development of his own ideas implemented in the previously built cruisers Minin and General-Admiral, the main functional purpose of which was the destruction of British merchant ships (of course, in the event of a war with this power).
Since at the end of the 1870s. England, to protect its trade, put into operation cruisers of the "Chenon" and "Nelson" classes, which had impressive reservations and strong weapons, but a rather low maximum speed (12-14 knots), then Russia was required to respond by creating a high-speed ship, which had there would be an opportunity to "terrorize" defenseless "merchants" and to dodge a battle with stronger enemy cruisers.
Based on these prerequisites, a project of a cruiser with a displacement of 5.75 thousand tons was born, carrying 4 eight-inch and 12 six-inch guns, with an incomplete armor belt, the thickness of which varied from 4.5 to 6 inches. The ship was supposed to have a maximum speed of 15-16 knots and an autonomy of at least 30 days, which was extremely important for the successful performance of raider functions.
After going through a difficult process of approval by various departments of the Maritime Technical Committee, the Naval Ministry and the Office of the Admiral General, the project was approved, and in September 1880 the new cruiser was laid down on the slipway of the New Admiralty.
The construction of the ship proceeded neither shaky nor shaky, despite the fact that its main builder, N. E. Kuteinikov, was a very energetic, educated and experienced craftsman. However, even he found it very difficult to cope with the various difficulties that arose during the construction: interruptions in the supply of critical components and materials from the Nevsky, Izhora and other factories, the extremely bureaucratic procurement procedure of the state shipyard, which required a long-term coordination of the acquisition of any little things that were not included in the original an estimate (even of such elementary ones as nails and ropes). But the main scourge, of course, was the endless stream of changes made to the project after the start of work.
The latter circumstance should probably be dwelt upon in a little more detail. The fact is that the practice of constantly making certain improvements and modifications, improvements and simplifications to the ship's design, thanks to which, for example, the most modest large landing craft "Ivan Gren", laid down in 2004, has not yet been accepted into the Navy, has in Russian shipbuilding long-standing traditions that were already quite relevant at the end of the 19th century.
Let us briefly list what was revised and altered during the construction of the cruiser, which was named Dmitry Donskoy on March 28, 1881:
• composition and location of artillery of main, medium and auxiliary calibers;
• material, configuration and thickness of armor plates;
• screw design;
• design of the steering drive;
• the structure of the aft hull.
Looking at this list, even to a person who is very far from shipbuilding, it is quite obvious that until the moment of final certainty with a particular design, it was completely impossible to continue construction, since they were fundamental for the entire ship as a whole.
The natural result of such an inconsistent approach to the creation of "Donskoy" was that a number of quite progressive technical solutions applied on it were adjacent to obvious anachronisms.
For example, the non-lifting propeller design made the presence of traditional masts with full spars meaningless, since sailing became almost impossible due to the resulting braking effect. And the installation of a modern steam steering gear was not complemented by the logical installation of a second steering wheel on the front bridge.
Be that as it may, by the summer of 1885, construction work on the cruiser was largely completed. Its displacement was 5, 806 tons with the following dimensions: length - 90.4 m, width - 15.8 m, draft - 7.0 m.
Armament included two eight-inch guns located on the side in the middle of the upper deck of the cruiser, fourteen six-inch cannons enclosed in a casemate, eighteen anti-mine guns of caliber 37-87 mm and four torpedo tubes.
The maximum speed demonstrated by the "Donskoy" during the tests was a little less than 17 knots. However, the cruiser was, unfortunately, unable to maintain it for a long time, since, due to an unsuccessful ventilation system, the air temperature in the stokers was so high that the sailors who supplied coal to the furnaces quickly overworked and could not work with the required performance …
The side of the ship was protected by steel plates with a height of 2.24 m, the thickness of which varied from 156 mm in the middle to 114 mm at the ends. There was also an armored deck with a thickness of 13 mm, which served as additional protection for the engine and boiler rooms of the cruiser.
The low and relatively thin armor belt of the Donskoy could hardly serve as an effective defense against the eight- and ten-inch shells of the British cruisers of the Shannon and Nelson types. However, as we remember, according to the plan of its creators, the Russian ship, due to the best speed qualities, had to evade combat with such opponents. At the same time, its armor probably had to withstand the impact of shells with a caliber of six inches or less, which would allow Dmitry Donskoy to feel confident enough in battles with lighter enemy ships, for example, armored cruisers of the Linder class, which entered service in the mid-1880s.
For twenty years after delivery, the cruiser regularly served Russia in various parts of the world. Three times (in 1885-1887, in 1891-1892 and in 1895), as part of the detachments of ships in the Mediterranean Sea, to the best of his strength, he contributed to the most successful resolution of conflict situations associated first with the determination of the Afghan border, and then - with the actions of the British in the Dardanelles.
From 1887 to 1889, in 1892 and from 1896 to 1901. "Dmitry Donskoy" was on watch at the Far Eastern borders of the country. During this time, the ship visited almost all significant ports in that part of the world, explored the still poorly studied coast of the Russian Primorye and even took part in suppressing the "boxer uprising" in China.
In addition, in 1893, the cruiser visited New York, where, together with the ships General-Admiral and Rynda, she took part in the naval parade dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus.
In between voyages, the Donskoy underwent modernization and repairs. So, for example, in 1889, the MTK agreed to dismantle its three heavy masts, followed by replacement with lighter structures that do not involve the use of sailing equipment. Thanks to this, the cruiser was able to unload more than 100 tons.
In 1894-1895. the ship underwent a major overhaul, during which its obsolete main artillery was replaced: instead of two eight-inch and fourteen six-inch guns, six six-inch and ten 120-mm Kane guns were installed. At the same time, the Donskoy boilers were replaced and its machines were rebuilt.
After returning from the Far East in 1902, the cruiser was actually decommissioned from the fleet and converted into an artillery training ship, for which, in particular, some of the 120-mm guns on it were replaced with 75-mm ones.
A year later, "Dmitry Donskoy" was included in the detachment of Admiral Virenius, sent to replenish the Pacific squadron, based in Port Arthur. Due to the frequent breakdowns of the destroyers following with the detachment, its advance was very unhurried. Therefore, by the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War in January 1904, the detachment managed to reach only the Red Sea, from where it was recalled back to Kronstadt. However, the cruiser stayed in the Baltic for a short time and in October left her along with the rest of the ships of the squadron of Vice Admiral Z. P. Rozhdestvensky.
So, by the will of fate, "Dmitry Donskoy" was forced to return to the Far East in a much more "disabled and weakened" state than the one in which he left it in 1901 (the definition in quotation marks belongs to the senior officer of the ship, captain of the second rank K. Blokhin).
Nevertheless, during the unprecedented campaign of the Second Squadron, which for eight months did not enter any equipped naval base, the old cruiser overcame difficulties with dignity and, leaving about thirty thousand kilometers astern, by the evening of May 13, 1905, reached the entrance to Korea Strait of the Sea of Japan.
The technical condition of the ship at that time could be considered satisfactory rather conditionally. Chief of watch, midshipman V. E. Zatursky, showed that "the 5th double boiler was leaking heavily and was taken out … other boilers were also not completely serviceable."
According to the report of Rear Admiral OA Enqvist, junior flagship - commander of cruisers, by a signal from the squadron commander "on the morning of the 14th …" Dmitry Donskoy "and" Vladimir Monomakh "were ordered to guard transports in battle, the first on the left, and the second on the right." Thus, Zinovy Petrovich Rozhdestvensky severely limited the ability to maneuver his cruisers, linking them with slow-moving transport ships.
At about 13:15, the main forces of the United Fleet, which were marching towards them, were opened from the lead armored ships of the Russian squadron. Half an hour later, the opponents approached at a distance of about 60 cables and opened fire on each other.
A detachment of transports acted in accordance with the only directive issued to him in case of a battle: "to keep on the side of our battleships opposite to the enemy," and went over to the right side of the column. The "Donskoy" and "Monomakh" who escorted them followed the same course.
Approximately forty minutes after the start of the battle, the transports and the ships guarding them (in addition to the two already mentioned above, they included "Oleg" and "Aurora") were attacked by a detachment of ten Japanese armored cruisers.
To repel their attack, Rear Admiral Enquist, who was on the Oleg, decided to form a column of his four cruisers, for which he gave a signal to the Monomakh and Donskoy to enter the wake of the Aurora. According to the captain of the second rank Blokhin: "… only" Monomakh "soon managed to enter the wake …" Donskoy "could not fulfill this signal for some time, thanks to the confused and interfering maneuvering transports …".
Almost at the very beginning of the battle on the "Donskoy" the steering gear was out of order, and therefore had to be ruled at the hand wheel located on the rear bridge of the ship. The car continued to be controlled from the front bridge. This circumstance further complicated the conditions for maneuvering, and so complicated by the proximity to them of transport ships, which, regardless of the risk of collision, in an effort to escape from enemy fire, repeatedly cut through the line of the cruisers protecting them in a discordant heap.
Because of this, "Donskoy" constantly had to shift the steering wheel, stop the car or even back up. In the opinion of the captain of the second rank Blokhin, in connection with these constant circulations and changes in moves, "our shooting is generally bad, it made it absolutely useless." Obviously, therefore, during the battle, which lasted almost four hours, not a single Japanese cruiser was sunk or even disabled. However, "Dmitry Donskoy" itself also did not receive critical damage.
After six o'clock in the evening, the Japanese cruisers departed. Instead, enemy destroyers appeared, having received orders to carry out torpedo attacks on our ships under cover of the coming night.
During this period of the battle, the column of Russian battleships, which had already lost four ships, was heading west. Cruisers and transports were located on its left abeam at a distance of about 8 miles.
When the mine attacks began, the battleships, dodging them, made a left turn and headed south. To make way for them, Rear Admiral Enquist ordered his cruisers to turn south as well, believing that in this way they would move on the same course with the main forces of the squadron. It is very curious that at the same time Oskar Adolfovich did not bother at all that the speeds of their movement also coincided: at least, in the testimony of the senior navigator officer of the cruiser Oleg, captain of the second rank Manturov, it is said that “… we went south at about 15 - 16 knots; they had such a course until four o'clock in the morning … ". Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that very soon far behind the "Oleg" and the "Aurora" that followed him into the wake remained not only the battleships, but also the old cruisers - "Monomakh" and "Donskoy", which, as Rear Admiral Enquist himself showed, was one of the two quietest ships in the squadron and "gave no more than 12 knots."
At about ten o'clock in the evening, the Donskoy finally ceased to distinguish the silhouette of the Aurora in front. To discuss the plan of further actions, the cruiser commander, Captain First Rank N. I. Lebedev, gathered a council on the bridge.
Surprisingly, none of the officers who took part in it offered to continue moving south in order to leave the zone of dominance of the Japanese fleet by morning. On the contrary, everyone unanimously spoke in favor of going to Vladivostok. It was decided by a majority of votes that the movement towards the exit from the Korean Strait should be along the coast of Japan, which was done.
“Donskoy” turned to the northeast, gradually taking more and more to the north, until it headed for NO 23⁰.
Despite the fact that the cruiser was moving with closed lights, after midnight two destroyers were seen from her, moving on the same course as the "Donskoy". A little later a third joined them. According to the testimony of K. P. Blokhin, the identification signaling system on the ships of the Second Squadron was poorly developed and poorly mastered, therefore “… on the Donskoy, they equally hesitated to recognize the destroyers following the stern, both for their own and for the enemy. It was decided to watch them closely and the night passed in terribly intense attention … ". Fortunately, after sunrise, it turned out that all the destroyers were Russian: "Exuberant", "Bedovy" and "Grozny".
At seven o'clock in the morning, all four ships made a long stop, during which Vice Admiral Rozhdestvensky and officers of his headquarters, rescued from the Suvorov, were transported from the badly damaged Buyny to the Bedovy. In addition, members of the battleship Oslyabya's crew, picked up the day before from the water after the death of their ship, were transported from Buynoye to Donskoy.
Two hours later "Donskoy" and "Buyny" continued their journey ("Bedovy" and "Grozny" went to Vladivostok separately at a higher speed). At about ten in the morning, the destroyer signaled to the cruiser that it was in distress and asked to stop. Commander of the Buynoye, captain of the second rank Kolomeytsev, who arrived aboard the Donskoy, reported that the torpedo boat had run out of coal reserves and had a number of damages that prevented it from maintaining its speed even at 10-11 knots. In this regard, it was decided to transport the command of the "Wild" to the cruiser, and flood the destroyer so that it would not fall to the enemy.
When only its commander, mine officer Wurm and conductor Tyulkin remained on the destroyer, they made an attempt to blow up the ship, but it was not crowned with success.
In order not to waste time, it was decided to shoot "Exuberant" from the guns of "Dmitry Donskoy".
This episode should be well known to everyone who is even slightly interested in the topic of the Battle of Tsushima, and not least thanks to the novel Tsushima by A. S. Novikov-Surf, who, without skimping on epithets, painted it as the clearest evidence of depressingly low combat training gunners of the cruiser, in particular, and the entire fleet in general.
“The gunners have loaded a six-inch gun. Both ships stood motionless, one and a half cables apart. The first shot rang out. Past! The cannon barked a second and third time. The "violent" continued to remain unharmed.
* * *
Commander Lebedev, who was watching the shooting from the bridge, felt uncomfortable, nervous, and finally, when they missed the fourth and fifth times, exclaimed angrily:
- Disgrace! A shame! Some kind of curse hangs over our fleet! All this is the result of the fact that we were doing the wrong thing.
Senior Officer Blokhin explained:
- I have repeatedly argued with our specialists, proved to them that they are training their team incorrectly …
The commander interrupted him:
- It's not about individual specialists. We need to look deeper. The whole organization of service in our fleet is not good at all.
The sixth and seventh shots hit the destroyer and only the eighth hit thoroughly in its bow.
* * *
An insignificant incident revealed the whole essence of our backward fleet, where people were engaged more in parades than in combat training. On a white day, we could not hit with one shot at an object located at such a close distance and standing motionless. Such were the gunners from the school created by Rozhdestvensky …"
Taking into account the fact that Aleksey Silych himself was not aboard the Donskoy, it is most likely that he wrote the above passage under the impression of the testimony of K. P. Blokhin, who asserted that thirty fathoms from an immobile cruiser, they hit only the sixth shot from a modern six-inch cannon …”.
Not limiting himself to a dry description of this fact, Konstantin Platonovich also gave rather lengthy arguments in his testimony, which raised the following problems:
• lack of a unified approved methodology for training naval artillerymen;
• confrontation between the squadron's flagship specialists, on the one hand, and the ship commanders, on the other;
• arbitrariness of the senior artillery officer of the "Donskoy", Lieutenant PN Durnovo, who, without the consent of the commander of the ship, gave the gunners an "obviously false" instruction on how to aim the gun.
The author of this article believes that, based on good intentions, to change the situation for the better, the captain of the second rank Blokhin somewhat distorted in his testimony the episode with the execution of "Buyny": probably, the sixth shot led not to the first hit in general, but to the first hit that inflicted significant damage to the destroyer.
The basis for this assumption is the testimony given by the Donskoy's chief of watch, warrant officer V. Ye. Zatursky, who, by the nature of his service, was not directly involved in the above problems and therefore could have been more objective.
Nine shots from a six-inch gun were fired at the Buyny, from a distance of 2 to 3 cables. One shell did not hit, the other eight, although they did, but most of them didn’t explode, so it took 20-30 minutes from the start of the firing before the destroyer sank …”.
Having lost at least four hours on stops connected with the transportation of people from the Buynoye and its execution, at 12:20 the cruiser Dmitry Donskoy continued to move towards Vladivostok, to which there were still about four hundred miles to go.
At 16:30 the observer noticed the smoke of the ships moving slightly to the right of the Donskoy course. An attempt to hide from the enemy by taking to the left failed. Enemy ships - "Naniwa", "Takachiho", "Akashi" and "Tsushima", accompanied by a battalion of destroyers - began to pursue the Russian cruiser.
Half an hour later, to the left of the Donskoy course, two more Japanese ships appeared - Otova and Niitaka, also accompanied by destroyers.
All the named enemy ships were armored cruisers with a displacement of no more than 4,000 tons, the main armament of which was 156 mm and 120 mm guns. Each of them individually was weaker than "Dmitry Donskoy", but put together they were certainly stronger.
In this situation, it was of great importance that the Japanese ships had a speed of at least 17-18 knots, while the Donskoy, despite the selfless work of stokers and machinists, could not go faster than 13-13.5 knots.
When it became obvious that the battle could not be avoided, the captain of the first rank Lebedev decided to head for the island of Dazhelet (Ullendo), which was still about 35 miles away, and smash the cruiser on its rocks if there was a threat of capture of the Donskoy by the enemy. …
The Japanese several times signaled at the Donskoy that the admirals Nebogatov and Rozhdestvensky had surrendered, and offered to follow their example. The Russian ship did not answer, did not change course and did not reduce speed.
At 18:30 the Japanese cruisers, sailing from the left side, reduced the distance to the "Donskoy" to 50 cables and opened fire on it. Fifteen minutes later, they were joined by four ships sailing to the right.
The Russian cruiser answered them with a little delay. According to the testimony of the captain of the second rank Blokhin, he “twice turned to the commander for permission to sound the combat alarm, but Ivan Nikolayevich became thoughtful and was silent; finally he turned to me, eyes full of tears but smiling, shook my hand and said, "If anything happens to me, take care of my two little girls." The commander's decision was obvious to me, and I ordered to sound the combat alarm."
The Russian cruiser raised top flags and opened fire on the approaching Japanese ships.
In the initial phase of the battle, "Donskoy" tried to maneuver, knocking down the enemy's sighting. When the distance was reduced, he went almost directly in order to improve the quality of his shooting.
At this time, more frequent hits and "Donskoy" itself. The shells of the Japanese, most likely, were not capable of inflicting critical damage to the ship's vehicles or piercing its side in the area of the waterline protected by an armored belt, but they caused fires in various rooms of the cruiser, caused serious destruction of superstructures, pierced chimneys, thereby reducing the speed of travel, and the main thing was incapacitating people. The crew members of the battleship Oslyabya brought significant difficulties to the Donskoy command, who almost caused a real panic on the ship.
About an hour after the start of the battle, the Japanese managed to get into the forward bridge of the cruiser, as a result of which the senior artillery officer P. N. Durnovo, the junior navigator officer N. M. Girs and several lower ranks were killed. Commander N. I. Lebedev was also fatally wounded. The command of the cruiser was taken over by senior officer K. P. Blokhin.
“Donskoy” continued to fire at enemy ships from both sides and was quite successful. Some crew members even believed that they had succeeded in sinking one of the Japanese cruisers, but, unfortunately, they passed on wishful thinking: the cruiser Naniwa, which received a serious list due to a hole in the underwater part, really pulled out of the battle, but did not sink was going to.
At nine o'clock in the evening, when it was already dark, the cruiser approached the island of Dazhelet so much that it became indistinguishable against its background, and this made it impossible to continue shelling it. Wanting at all costs to destroy the stubborn Russian ship, the Japanese sent destroyers against it, which managed to launch three or four torpedoes, but none of them hit the target.
“Donskoy” was lucky in repelling mine attacks and, if you believe, the testimony of our sailors, as well as the author of the book “The fleet that had to die”, Richard Howe, even sank one or two enemy destroyers.
Around midnight, the battered cruiser approached the eastern tip of Dazhelet Island. By that time, boilers that had significant leaks and heavily damaged chimneys did not allow the development of a course of more than five knots. The ammunition was almost completely used up. Water overflowed into holes close to the waterline and therefore, despite the continuous operation of the drainage pumps, it was not possible to eliminate the significant list of the ship on one side. 70 of the cruiser's crew were killed and about 130 were wounded.
Taking into account all of the above, Konstantin Platonovich Blokhin abandoned the idea of continuing to sail to Vladivostok. By his order, the crew of the cruiser, as well as the sailors of the Oslyabi and Buynoye, were taken to the shore, after which the Donskoy was taken from the shore for a mile and a half and sank at a depth of at least two hundred meters.
“Struck to death, straining its last strength, the old cruiser reached the salutary, albeit not its own shore, saving those who were still alive on board from death. Having withstood the battle, having exhausted its strength, not lowering the flag in front of the enemy and saving the life of its crew, the ship fulfilled its mission to the highest degree. The fate of such a ship can justly be called happy (R. M. Melnikov, "Cruiser I rank" Dmitry Donskoy ").
