Life is the highest value to which all other values are subordinated.
A. Einstein
Prologue
According to the European Commission, the average human life is estimated at 3 million euros. The life of a male child is of the greatest value - growing up, a small man will be able to produce a large amount of material goods necessary for the reproduction of future generations. Of course, the number 3 million is conditional. Human life is not a marketable commodity, and an idea of its value is only necessary when calculating the amount of insurance compensation and when assessing the need to take additional measures to ensure safety.
Unfortunately, life is not priceless: our entire history is a series of continuous wars. And yet, every soldier and sailor who goes to distant shores believes that he will be lucky and he will be able to return home alive.
Of greatest interest is the security of warships - places of mass gathering of people, where a large number of flammable and explosive substances are concentrated in a limited space, interspersed with critical equipment. Its failure can cause the death of the entire crew.
In unison with the demand for the preservation of human lives, the problem of the security of the ship itself sounds: after all, where a fragile human body could survive, all expensive devices and mechanisms will remain. As a result - a radical reduction in the cost of subsequent repairs and an increase in the combat stability of the ship. Even having received serious combat damage, he will be able to continue the task. Depending on the situation, this will save even more human lives and, possibly, ensure victory in the war.
Tsushima phenomenon
According to the ship's engineer V. P. Kostenko, the battleship Oryol received 150 hits during the battle with Japanese shells of various calibers. It is worth considering here that the engineer Kostenko (the author of the wonderful memoirs "On the" Eagle "in Tsushima") hardly had the opportunity one night before the delivery of the battleship to thoroughly inspect each compartment - his data, for the most part, was recorded in captivity from the words of other crew members … As a result, Kostenko's memoirs feature a number of gruesome scenes describing the results of hits on various parts of the ship, but there is no exact damage diagram showing the locations of each of the 150 shells mentioned.
Foreign sources provide more realistic estimates of damage. So a direct participant in the Tsushima battle, British officer William Packinham (was an observer on board the battleship "Asahi"), later counted 76 hits in the "Eagle", incl. five hits with 12-inch shells; eleven 8- and 10-inch rounds; thirty-nine hits with 6-inch shells and 21 hits with small-caliber shells. From this data and the photographs taken, an atlas of damage to the Eagle was later compiled for the British Navy.
The world was impressed by the results of the Battle of Tsushima - one of the largest naval battles of the era of armor and steam. In practice, the correctness (or erroneousness) of certain concepts and technical solutions was confirmed. Especially striking was the "Eagle" - the only one of the five newest EBRs of the 2nd Pacific Squadron, which managed to survive the defeat. Such "rarities" have never fallen into the hands of naval specialists."Eagle" became a unique exhibit that demonstrated live the colossal survivability of large armored ships, the harbingers of the dreadnought era.
Three hours under a hurricane of fire! There was no living space left on the ship.
Chaos erupted from steel debris, torn off light bulkheads, and shattered pieces of equipment on the spardeck and on the surface decks. Interdeck ladders were demolished almost everywhere, as they were swept away and twisted by explosions of high-explosive shells. For communication between the decks, it was necessary to use the holes formed in the decks, lowering cable ends and stepladders prepared in advance into them.
And here is the terrible evidence of "encounters" with 113-kg "blanks" flying at two speeds of sound:
An 8-inch projectile hit the armor above the gun port of the aft casemate. Its fragments broke the port cover, and the armor at the impact site instantly heated up and melted, forming steel icicles.
In the aft casemate on the port side, an explosion of an 8-inch projectile, which flew into the half-port and exploded on impact into the gun bollard, threw the front gun out of the frame. All with the servant of the gun was put out of action, and the commander of the casemate, ensign Kalmykov, disappeared without a trace. Apparently he was thrown overboard through the gun port.
Even more damage was caused by 12-inch Japanese "suitcases" with shimosa (projectile weight - 386 kg).
The 12-inch round hit the front corner of the port side casemate armor, tore apart the thin skin and made a huge gap in the wardroom, level with the battery deck. But the casemate's armor was 3 inches thick and the 2-inch deck survived the explosion without damage.
One more hit!
From the shock, all the objects fixed to the bulkheads flew off, and the tools flew out of the cabinets and scattered across the deck. The man in the workshop rolled over his head twice.
Two 12-inch shells hit the bow compartment on the battery deck, where the conductor's wardroom was located. The entire right front hawse was torn out, it fell overboard with all the fastenings.
Despite such fierce fire, the battleship continued to fight with full force. The destruction on the Spardek had no effect on the performance of the machines, boilers and steering devices. EBR fully retained its course and controllability. There was no serious damage in the underwater part: the risk of overturning due to loss of stability was minimized. The right gun of the main gun bow turret was still in operation, using manual supply of ammunition. One of the 6-inch towers operated on the starboard side, another 6-inch aft tower on the left side retained limited functionality.
Yet Eagle was not an immortal hero.
By the end of the day, he almost completely exhausted his ability to resist: the armor plates were loosened by numerous hits of shells. The entire feed was engulfed in flames: the bulkheads were deformed from strong heating, thick smoke obscured the battleship, forcing the servants of the guns to leave the main turret. By that time, the aft tower had completely fired up its ammunition, and the glass of the fire control devices were so smoked that the system was out of order. Strong smoke appeared in the lower rooms, which made it difficult for the machine crew to work. On the decks "walked" 300 tons of water that had accumulated there during the extinguishing of fires.
The EBR could no longer withstand the second such battle. But he was still heading for Vladivostok, confidently moving under its own power! Losses among his crew were 25 killed …
Only 25 people? But how? After all, the "Eagle" was literally riddled with enemy shells!
Bodies tremble in their death throes, The thunder of the cannons, and the noise, and the groans, And the ship is engulfed in a sea of fire
The minutes of goodbye came.
Such desperate pictures of naval combat are drawn by the imagination when the song "Varyag" sounds! How does this correspond to the story of the beaten Eagle?
Doesn't match."Eagle" - battleship, "Varyag" - armored cruiser, on which the deck crew and gunners worked on an open deck under enemy fire (by the way, in that battle at Chemulpo, the irrecoverable losses of the "Varyag" amounted to 37 people. much lower density of enemy fire).
25 PEOPLE … Unthinkable!
What was the size of the battleship's crew?
On board the "Eagle" there were about 900 sailors. Thus, irrecoverable losses were less than 3% of the crew size! And this is at the then level of development of medicine. Nowadays, many of those 25 unfortunate people could surely be saved.
What was the number of wounded? V. Kofman names in his monograph the number of 98 people who received injuries of varying severity.
Despite dozens of hits and brutal damage to the battleship, the main part of the EBR Eagle team escaped after the battle with a strong fright. The reason is clear: they were UNDER THE PROTECTION OF ARMOR.
… Thanks to the work of the hold-fire division commanded by Warrant Officer Karpov. He sheltered people under the armored deck, while he himself ran out on reconnaissance and called the division only in case of serious fires.
Warrant officer Karpov did everything right. There is no need for people to protrude from under the armor once again. Risk is a noble cause, but not in a naval battle, where there is an "exchange" of supersonic blanks weighing several centners.
Why, then, did the rest of the Eagle's sister ships die?
EBR "Prince Suvorov": not a single person survived from its crew (except for the headquarters of the squadron; senior officers had left the flaming battleship in advance and moved to the destroyer "Buyny").
EBR "Alexander III": died along with his crew.
EBR "Borodino": out of 866 people of its crew, only one sailor was raised from the water - the Mars Semyon Yushchin.
The answer is simple - these ships received even more hits from Japanese shells (estimated - more than 200). As a result, they completely lost their stability, capsized and sank. However, the "Prince Suvorov", tormented by explosives, stubbornly did not want to sink and fought back from the three-inch stern to the last. The Japanese had to plant four more torpedoes into it, causing critical damage to the underwater part of the battleship.
As the practice of naval battles in the first half of the twentieth century showed, at the moment when an armored monster lay down exhausted on board, and the premises on its upper decks turned into solid ruins, as a rule, 2/3 of the crews were still alive and well. Armor protection fulfilled its purpose to the end.
Most of the sailors from the crews of the sunk battleships did not die under the hail of Japanese shells. The heroes drowned in the cold waves of the Tsushima Strait when their ships went to the bottom.
Other Russian battleships that survived the Tsushima defeat were less exposed to enemy fire, but also showed amazing defenses:
Old EBR "Emperor Nicholas I" (1891): five dead, 35 wounded (from the crew of 600+ people!).
EBR "Sisoy the Great" (1896): 13 killed, 53 wounded.
Small battleship "General-Admiral Apraksin" (1899): 2 dead, 10 wounded.
Admiral Togo's flagship battleship Mikasa, Yokosuka.
Mikasa, battery deck with 3 '' guns
These conclusions are exactly confirmed by the data of the opposite side. The Japanese honestly admitted that their flagship battleship Mikasa was mercilessly beaten in the Tsushima battle - he was hit by 40 Russian shells, incl. ten 12-inch blanks. Of course, this turned out to be too little to sink such a powerful ship. Irrecoverable losses of the Mikasa crew made up 8 people. Another 105 sailors were injured.
The protection of these monsters is simply amazing.
Heroes of our time
A century has passed. What heights have shipbuilders achieved today? The latest technologies have made it possible to turn ships into unsinkable fortresses, whose protection the heroes of bygone eras can envy!
Guided missile destroyer Sheffield. Burned out and sank from an unexploded missile stuck in it. The victims of the fire were 20 people (with a crew of 287 people and the presence of modern fire extinguishing equipment and personal protection - heat-resistant suits made of Nomex material).
Frigate with guided missile weapons "Stark". Was attacked by two small anti-ship missiles, one of which did not explode. The missiles "pierced" the tin side of the frigate and flew triumphantly into the crew quarters. The result is 37 dead, 31 injured. The sailors of the battleship "Eagle" would be greatly surprised by this state of affairs.
If all of the above coffins were somehow justified by the imperfection of their design (synthetic decoration of the premises, superstructure made of aluminum-magnesium alloys), then our next hero bravely bravely with his best protection among all modern ships. The main structural material of the hull and superstructure is steel. Local booking using 130 tons of Kevlar. Aluminum "armor" plates with a thickness of 25 mm, covering the ammunition storage and combat information center of the destroyer. Automated damage control systems, protection against weapons of mass destruction … Not a ship, but a fairy tale!
The real protection of the Orly Burke-class destroyers was demonstrated by the incident with the destroyer Cole. A pair of Arab ragamuffins on a $ 300 felucca simply knocked out the latest $ 1.5 billion supership. A close Above-water explosion of 200 kg of explosives blew up the engine room, instantly turning the destroyer into a stationary target. The blast wave literally "burned" Cole on a diagonal, destroying all the mechanisms and premises of the personnel on its way. The destroyer completely lost its combat effectiveness, 17 American sailors became victims of the attack. Another 39 were urgently evacuated to a military hospital in Germany. A single explosion knocked out 1/6 of the team!
These are the "heights" achieved by modern shipbuilders, turning their masterpieces into mass graves. In the event of the first fire contact with the enemy, these terribly expensive, but flimsy ships are guaranteed to carry most of their crew to the bottom.
Epilogue
The discussion about the need for armor has already been repeatedly raised on the pages of the Military Review. Let me quote only three general theses:
1. Nowadays, it is not required to install too thick armor, which was used on battleships and dreadnoughts at the beginning of the twentieth century. The most common of modern anti-ship weapons (Exocet, Harpoon) have negligible armor penetration compared to large-caliber shells during the Russo-Japanese War.
2. By additional costs, it is possible to create an anti-ship weapon capable of penetrating any armor. But the size and cost of such weapons will have a negative impact on their mass production - the number of missiles and the number of their possible carriers will decrease, and their number in one salvo will decrease. That will make life much easier for the ship's anti-aircraft gunners, increasing their chances of fighting off using active self-defense means.
3. Penetration of armor does not guarantee success yet. The system of isolated compartments with armored bulkheads, duplication and dispersal of equipment, coupled with modern damage control systems, will help to avoid the simultaneous failure of all important systems. Thus, preserving the combat capability of the ship in full or in part.
And of course, the armor will save human lives. Which are priceless.
