Foreword
Corruption in the department of Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich, brother of Alexander III, reached such astronomical proportions that the armor plates of the ships were fastened with wooden bushings. Non-exploding shells and the Tsushima pogrom - these are, in short, the results of the work of the Naval Department, headed by the Grand Duke. No one did more to defeat Russia in the Russo-Japanese War than this man.
The mention that the Russian cruiser "Varyag" was built in the United States has already set the teeth on edge. It would seem that there is nothing strange in this. The cruiser was ordered, paid for and built on time - where is the crime here?
However, it is rarely mentioned that the second participant of the legendary battle at Chemulpo - the gunboat "Koreets" - was built at the Bergsund Mekaniksa shipyard in Sweden.
Gentlemen, let me ask you one question: Was anything at all built in the Russian Empire at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries?
Armored cruiser "Svetlana", built in Le Havre, France;
Armored cruiser "Admiral Kornilov" - Saint-Nazaire, France;
Armored cruiser "Askold" - Kiel, Germany;
Armored cruiser Boyarin - Copenhagen, Denmark;
Armored cruiser Bayan - Toulon, France;
Armored cruiser "Admiral Makarov", built at the shipyard "Forge & Chantier", France;
Armored cruiser Rurik, built at the Vickers shipyard in Barrow Inn Furness, England;
Battleship Retvizan, built by William Cump & Sans, Philadelphia, USA;
The battleship "Tsesarevich" - built in La Seyne-sur-Mer in France …
It could be funny if it were not for our Motherland. The situation in which half of the domestic fleet was built at foreign shipyards clearly indicated the dramatic problems in the Russian Empire in the late 19th - early 20th centuries: the domestic industry was in deep decline and stagnation. Sometimes even the simplest destroyers and torpedo boats were beyond her power - almost all of them were built abroad.
A series of destroyers "Kit" ("Vigilant"), built at the shipyard of Friedrich Schichau, Elbing, Germany;
Series "Trout" ("Attentive"), built at the plant A. Norman in France;
Series "Lieutenant Burakov" - "Forge & Chantier" and the Norman plant, France;
Series of destroyers "Mechanical Engineer Zverev" - Shihau shipyard, Germany.
The lead destroyers of the Rider and Falcon series were built in Germany and, accordingly, in Great Britain; destroyer "Pernov" - plant A. Norman, France; Batum - Yarrow shipyard in Glasgow, UK; "Adler" - Schihau shipyard, Germany …
Dear comrades, what is written here is just a cry from the heart. When the liberal community once again sings a song about how well and right the development of Russia was at the beginning of the century, and then the damned "commies" came and "screwed up" everything - do not believe a single word of these scoundrels.
The armored cruiser "Varyag" from America, and the armored cruiser "Admiral Makarov", built in France - this is the true picture of those events. Before the First World War, the Russian Empire bought everything abroad - from ships and airplanes to small arms. With such a pace of development, we had every chance to blow through the next, second in a row, world war, forever disappearing from the political map of the world. Fortunately, fate decreed otherwise.
A country called the Soviet Union learned to do everything on its own.
The Saga of Unbuilt Battleships
An amusing poster-demotivator with the following content is walking across the vast expanses of the Internet:
The gulag and battleships are powerful. However, the author of the poster is right in some ways: the Soviet Union really did not launch or commission a single battleship (despite the fact that it was twice undertook to build them).
What a contrast against this background are the achievements of pre-revolutionary domestic shipbuilding!
In the period from 1909 to 1917. The composition of the Russian Navy was replenished with 7 dreadnought battleships of the Sevastopol and Empress Maria types.
This is not counting the unfinished battleship "Emperor Nicholas I" and four superdreadnoughts of the "Izmail" class, which had already been launched and were in a high degree of readiness - only the First World War and the Revolution did not allow the Russian shipbuilders to complete what they started.
The battleship "Gangut" - the first Russian dreadnought of the "Sevastopol" type
The harsh truth is that Sevastopol and Empress Maria are simply ashamed to be compared with their peers - the British superdreadnoughts Orion, King George V or Japanese battlecruisers of the Congo class. "Sevastopol" and "Empress Maria" were built according to deliberately outdated projects, and delays in their construction caused by unprecedented corruption in the Naval Department, the weakness of the industry and the general unfavorable situation in the country, led to the fact that by the time of entry into service domestic "dreadnoughts" were almost the weakest in the world.
The main caliber of Sevastopol (305 mm) looks curious against the background of 343 mm Orion barrels or 356 mm artillery of the Japanese Congo. As for the armor, it was just shame: "Tsushima syndrome" and fear of high-explosive shells took over common sense. The already thin armor was "smeared" all over the ship - this was at a time when the "probable enemy" was already building battleships with 13, 5 and 14-inch guns - one of their shells could pierce the "Sevastopol" through and through and blow up the ammunition cellars.
The unfinished Izmail was a little better - despite its solid firepower (12 x 356 mm - in this parameter, Izmail could be compared with the best foreign counterparts) and high speed (calculated value - more than 27 knots), the newest Russian super-dreadnought could hardly become a serious argument in a dispute with his British peer "Queen Elizabeth" or the Japanese "Fuso". The armor was too weak - the protection of the Izmailov was below any criticism.
Speaking about domestic shipbuilding at the beginning of the 20th century, one cannot fail to mention the legendary Noviks - the world's best destroyers at the beginning of the First World War. Four excellent 102 mm cannons from the Obukhov plant, liquid fuel boilers, a course of 36 knots, the ability to take on board up to 50 mines - "Noviks" have become the world standard in the design of destroyers.
Well, Novik is the very exception that proves the general rule. The glory of "Novikov" was like a shooting star - the brightest, but quickly extinguished flash in the impenetrable blackness of the everyday life of the Imperial Navy.
It remains to state the obvious fact: the attempt of pre-revolutionary Russia to become a sea power failed miserably - the underdeveloped industry of the Russian Empire lost the "arms race" to the leading world powers.
By the way, the USSR twice took up the construction of battleships. Unlike the "pre-revolutionary" battleships, which became obsolete even at the stage of laying, the Soviet project 23 ("Soviet Union") and project 82 ("Stalingrad") were quite modern ships - powerful, balanced and in no way inferior in terms of the aggregate characteristics to foreign counterparts …
For the first time, the war prevented the completion of the battleships. The pre-revolutionary backwardness of domestic industry had a lot to do with it. Industrialization was only gaining momentum, and such an ambitious project turned out to be a "tough nut to crack" for Soviet shipbuilders - battleships gradually turned into long-term construction.
The second attempt was made in the early 1950s - alas, the era of dreadnoughts and hot artillery duels was relentlessly receding into the past. The completion of the "Stalingrad" was canceled a couple of years after their laying.
Did the USSR buy ships abroad?
Yes, I did. Before the war, the Union acquired the unfinished German cruiser Lyuttsov (Petropavlovsk) and the leader of the destroyers Tashkent, built in Italy according to an original project.
Something else? Yes.
For example, twenty G7Z52 / 70 type marine diesels with a capacity of 2200 hp were ordered from MAN. and type G7V74 with a capacity of 1500 hp. Also for the fleet were purchased samples of propeller shafts, steering gears, ship paints against fouling, drawings of 406-mm and 280-mm ship towers, bomb throwers, sonar equipment …
You don't need to have a "seven spans in your forehead" to understand the obvious thing - in the pre-war years, the Soviet Union bought TECHNOLOGIES
He did the rest himself.
With the beginning of the Cold War, the situation took an even harsher turn - in a direct confrontation with the Euro-Atlantic civilization, the Union could rely only on itself. It's just ridiculous to imagine a nuclear submarine missile carrier for the Soviet Navy, being built somewhere in British Glasgow or in American Philadelphia.
And the Union did it! Having restored the economy and industry after a terrible war, the USSR in the 1960s rolled out into the vastness of the World Ocean SUCH FLEET, from which both halves of the Earth trembled - in time with submarine missile carriers swaying at the piers in Gremikha and Krasheninnikov Bay.
It would be nice to steal ready-made technologies in the West, but bad luck, there was nothing to steal - what the USSR was doing often had no analogues in the world.
The world's first naval ballistic missile and its underwater carrier; "Singing frigates" of the 61st project - the world's first ships with a fully gas turbine power plant; naval space reconnaissance and target designation system "Legenda-M" …
Anti-ship missile weapons - here the USSR Navy had no equal at all.
The reproachful phrase "the USSR did not build a single battleship" can only cause Homeric laughter. The Soviet Union knew how to build titanium submarines, aircraft-carrying cruisers and giant nuclear-powered ships "Orlan" - any dreadnought pales against the background of these masterpieces of design thought.
There is simply no need to talk about any borrowing from the West - Soviet ships had their own well-recognizable authentic appearance, layout, size and specific weapons complex. Moreover, the USSR Navy itself represented a single alternative to the fleets of Western countries (by default, the US Navy). The leadership of the USSR Navy developed a completely original (and completely correct!) Concept of countering the US Navy and bravely adhered to the chosen direction, creating specific, previously unseen, samples of naval equipment:
- large anti-submarine ships - missile cruisers with hypertrophied PLO weapons;
- heavy aircraft carrying cruisers;
- submarines with cruise missiles, the so-called. Aircraft carrier killers;
- strike missile cruisers, known as the "grin of socialism" …
Soviet naval power
Unique ships of the measuring complex, project 1914 "Marshal Nedelin", nodes of ultra-long-range ocean communications (a low-frequency pulse of enormous power directed into the earth's crust can be received even on board a submarine), small rocket ships and a "mosquito fleet" armed with considerable missiles (enough remember what a sensation in the world was made by the sinking of the Israeli "Eilat").
All these are our own technologies and our own production. Made in USSR.
Someone will probably ask a question about the large landing ships of Project 775 - large landing ships of this type were built in the period from 1974 to 1991 in Poland. The answer is simple: it was a purely political decision, dictated by the desire to support its ally in the Warsaw Bloc.
I will say more - the shipyards of Finland regularly received orders from the Soviet Navy - mainly it concerned the construction of tugs and floating vessels. Purely economic motives - it was not profitable for the Soviet shipyards to tinker with this "trifle", because on the stocks of Severodvinsk and Nikolaev there were nuclear submarines and TAVKRs.
The well-known story with the purchase of TOSHIBA machines for precision machining of propellers of Soviet submarines is nothing more than a curiosity. In the end, they bought a machine, not a finished destroyer or submarine.
Finally, the USSR Navy never hesitated to use foreign equipment when it came to captured ships.
Epilogue
- The admiral spares no money for his new beloved, they say that the last gift - a luxurious collection of diamonds - was purchased at the expense of funds intended for the "Chilean contract" (note Russia is planning to buy battleships built for the Chilean Navy in England).
- What do you want, sir? Eliza Balletta is now one of the richest women in Russia.
- Yes, sir, the Grand Duke knows a lot about kickbacks - after all, it is no coincidence that the contract for the supply of ship armor was transferred from the state Izhora plant to the private Mariupol plant, which drives hack at a price twice as expensive (9, 9 instead of 4, 4 rubles per pood).
In approximately this vein, the high-society Petersburg public was gossiping among themselves at the beginning of the twentieth century - the Most Gracious Sovereign, Admiral, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich notably rested on the Cote d'Azur and generously presented gifts to his young lover, the French ballerina Eliza Balletta, until Russo burst out. -Japanese War.
"Get out, Prince Tsushima!" - shouted the enraged audience, at the sight of Alexei Alexandrovich entering the stalls of the Mikhailovsky Theater, which almost brought the admiral to a heart attack.
Got that day and his passion - the ballerina shining with "pebbles" was showered with all sorts of litter with shouts: "This is where our Pacific Fleet is! The blood of Russian sailors is on your diamonds!
On May 30, 1905, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich resigned from the post of chief chief of the fleet and the Naval Department and, together with Balletta, drove off to Paris.
Gentlemen, do you have a feeling of déjà vu?
