Many ship modelers, or just those people who are interested in naval topics, probably know about the existence of destroyers such as "Mechanical Engineer Zverev". Built (who would have thought!) In Germany, ten ships of this type for a quarter of a century served first as part of the Russian Imperial and then the Red Baltic Fleet, participated in the First World War and the Civil War. From a technical point of view, the destroyers "Mechanical Engineer Zverev" did not differ in anything special - ordinary 400-ton vessels with a crew of 70 people, armed with torpedoes and 75 mm guns. The workhorses of the fleet. But what kind of person was the mechanical engineer Zverev, whose name was given to a whole series of ships?
A hundred years ago, the position of a ship mechanic was not at all held in high esteem - in the hot darkness of boiler rooms and engine rooms, only persons of "non-noble blood" worked. Even though the mechanics were awarded officer ranks * and a good education received within the walls of military engineering schools, for a long time they were not allowed to wear a dagger with a ceremonial uniform. Builders, navigators and artillerymen treated their colleagues with some contempt - after all, until recently, the most complex ship mechanism was the windlass for the anchor chain.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, with the advent of steam engines and electric drives, mechanics became indispensable - now the outcome of a naval battle depended on the serviceability of the mechanical part, and as a result, the safety of the ship and the life of the entire crew. One of the striking cases that forced the command of the fleet to reconsider its attitude to ship mechanics was the feat of Vasily Vasilyevich Zverev.
On the night of March 14, 1904, the Japanese fleet attempted to sabotage the inner roadstead of the Port Arthur fortress. Four interceptor steamships, under the cover of six destroyers, were to break through to the inner roadstead in a suicidal attack and flood, blocking the entrance to the base.
The enemy crouching in the darkness was discovered by the patrol destroyer "Strong" under the command of Lieutenant Krinitsky - the Russian sailors rushed into the attack without hesitation, turning the head of the Japanese ships into a flaming torch. At the same moment, the Japanese discovered "Strong", whose silhouette was brightly highlighted by the flames of a fire on a Japanese steamer.
And then the laws of drama came into effect: one against six. Miracles do not happen - a crazy Japanese shell pierced the skin in the area of the engine room, sliced through the steam pipe with shrapnel. The destroyer "Strong" has turned into a stationary target.
Senior mechanical engineer Zverev was the first to run up through the scalding steam to the place where the steam line was damaged. Grabbing a cork mattress that came under his arm, he tried to throw it over a torn pipe, from which a deadly jet of superheated steam gushed. In vain - the mattress was thrown aside. A moment to think about how you can securely fix the patch? - Mechanical engineer Zverev lifted the mattress and threw himself onto the hot steam pipe, pressing his body tightly against it.
The next day, all of Port Arthur went out to bury Vasily Zverev, the story of the sailor's feat received a response abroad, French newspapers called the mechanical engineer Zverev the pride of Russia.
The work of ship mechanics was dangerous and difficult. The hold crew under the control of mechanical engineers fought to the last for the survivability of the ship - often there was no time left to get to the upper deck and take a place in the boats. The battleship "Oslyabya", which capsized during the Tsushima battle, carried 200 men of the machine crew to the bottom in its belly.
It is scary to imagine what these people experienced in the last minutes of their lives - when the ship capsized, the engine room turned into an adorable crush filled with screams of horror. In the pitch darkness, a hail of loose objects fell on the stokers and machinists, and the mechanisms that continued to rotate tightened and tore the sailors to pieces. And at that moment water poured into the engine rooms …
The officers stayed with their subordinates to the end - there was not a single mechanical engineer among the surviving members of the Oslyabi team. Here are the names of those who remained at their posts until the end: senior ship engineer Colonel N. A. Tikhanov, pom. ship mechanic Lieutenant G. G. Danilenko, junior mechanical engineer Lieutenant L. A. Bykov, bilge mechanic Lieutenant P. F. Uspensky, junior mechanical engineers ensign S. A. Maystruk and V. I. Medvedchuk, machine conductors Evdokim Kurbashnev and Ivan Kobilov.
BCH-5 - the heart of the ship
Nowadays, the machine-boiler crew is called "Electromechanical warhead" or BCH-5 for short. ** It is difficult to describe the merits of these sailors, given the amount of power and auxiliary equipment on modern naval ships, tens of kilometers of cables and pipelines, hundreds of valves and electrical panels.
The service has become even more dangerous and responsible with the appearance of nuclear power plants on ships - how many times turbinists, mechanics, instrumentation specialists have risked their lives to eliminate serious accidents and emergencies. On July 3, 1961, the reactor on the K-19 nuclear submarine was depressurized. Volunteers from the crew of the boat assembled a pipeline for emergency cooling of the reactor from improvised means. After a few minutes spent next to the blazing heat of the reactor, people had swollen faces and froth from their mouths, but they continued to work as a welding machine. The accident was eliminated at the cost of the lives of 8 submariners, including the commander of the movement division Yu. N. Povst'eva.
Or the feat of the 20-year-old sailor of the special hold group Sergei Preminin from the K-219 submarine, who manually extinguished the hellish nuclear flame. Having lowered all four gratings, the sailor no longer had enough strength to open the hatch of the reactor compartment, which was deformed from the high temperature. He went with the boat to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at the point with coordinates 31 ° 28′01 ″ s. NS. 54 ° 41′03 ″ W etc.
In October 2010, an accident occurred on the fast destroyer of the Pacific Fleet - a fuel line broke through in the engine room. The hold flared hotly, there was a threat of detonation of fuel tanks - 300 people were on the verge of death. Aldar Tsydenzhapov, a 19-year-old driver of the boiler-house team, rushed headlong into the heat to cut off the fuel line. Burning alive, he managed to turn the valve. Later, doctors established: Aldar received 100% body burns. It is difficult to find words of consolation for the family of a brave sailor - they were expecting a son from the army, not a Hero's star.
