This material is dedicated to the anti-aircraft artillery of the battleships "Marat", "October Revolution" and "Paris Commune".
Anti-aircraft armament of battleships during the First World War
Oddly enough, but in a number of the most common sources on battleships of the "Sevastopol" type, such as, for example, books by A. M. Vasiliev, the issue of small-caliber artillery installed on battleships of this type is far from being fully disclosed.
Most likely, in addition to 12 * 305-mm and 16 * 120-mm cannons of the main and anti-mine caliber, they were also going to install 8 * 75-mm and 4 * 47 * mm guns on Sevastopoli, and none of them were anti-aircraft. Eight 75-mm guns were planned to be placed in pairs on the 4 towers of the battleship, and they were intended exclusively for training artillery crews, and the 47-mm guns were salute and decorated the bow superstructure.
Already during the completion of the Sevastopol, the 75-mm "overhead" guns were abandoned, if they were installed on one or two of the first ships of the series, they were almost immediately dismantled. At the same time, taking into account the development of aviation, the need arose for means of protecting ships from it, so it was decided to equip the latest battleships with four anti-aircraft guns. Unfortunately, it is not known what caliber, since respected authors contradict each other.
For example, A. M. Vasiliev points out that the guns were supposed to have a caliber of 47 mm, but A. V. Skvortsov writes that 63.5 mm. Apparently, they were going to be installed in pairs on the bow and stern turrets of the main caliber, so it is likely that their installation was foreseen after the decision was made to remove the training 75-mm artillery systems. Nevertheless, due to the lack of guns, the anti-aircraft armament of the dreadnoughts in the First World War became somewhat different: all battleships of the "Sevastopol" type received three anti-aircraft artillery systems. At the same time, on the "Sevastopol" and "Poltava" they placed, as is usually indicated in the sources, 2 * 75-mm and one 47-mm guns, and on "Petropavlovsk" and "Gangut" - 2 63, 5-mm and one 47 mm.
What kind of cannons were they?
Regarding the "three-inch", unfortunately, it remains unclear. Most likely, the battleships received an anti-aircraft modification of the 75-mm / 50 Kanet cannon, which we acquired from France back in 1891 - this is the same 75-mm artist with which our ships were armed for the most part in the Russo-Japanese war.
Over the years of its service, the gun was installed on a number of different machines: Kane machines on the central pin, Meller machines, arr. 1906 and 1908, the latter being a modernization of "arr. 1906 ", which, nevertheless, received an independent name. But, of course, there was no specialized anti-aircraft gun among them. When, at the beginning of the war, it became clear that the ships definitely needed anti-aircraft guns, it was decided to use the 75-mm / 50 Kane. For this, only Möller's machine was suitable, since the others had a spring knurler that was completely inconvenient for an anti-aircraft gun - they took it as a basis. In fact, the 75 mm / 50 gun was turned 180 degrees. around its axis, so that the recoil devices located under the barrel are now above it.
The resulting artillery system could seem quite successful, since it gave its projectiles a very high muzzle velocity and had suitable ammunition. In 1915-16 g.a specialized anti-aircraft projectile weighing 5, 32 kg was created, which is a land mine equipped with 680 g of explosives (tola) with a 22-second tube, the initial speed of which was 747 m / s. In addition, there was also a shrapnel projectile, equipped with bullets as a striking element, and having the same 22-second deceleration, but a speed of 823 m / s - apparently, it could also be used as an anti-aircraft one.
However, in reality, the weapon was very stupid. To begin with, its first modifications had an elevation angle of only 50 degrees, which was categorically insufficient for firing at air targets. Subsequently, the maximum elevation angle was increased to 70 degrees, but the Baltic Fleet received 4 such guns only in July 1916, and it is extremely doubtful that just such guns were installed on the battleships. On the other hand, given the fact that there is little information about the placement of anti-aircraft guns on battleships of the "Sevastopol" type, who can know for sure about this?
But a small elevation angle is only one of the troubles. As mentioned above, later it was brought first to 70, and then to 75 degrees. In this form, Kane's 75-mm / 50 guns of the "1928 model" served in the Soviet fleet even in the early 30s.
But as anti-aircraft guns, they turned out to be bulky, clumsy and inconvenient to maintain, and in all respects they lost to the specialized 76, 2-mm anti-aircraft guns of the Lender system, to which we will return a little later. Here we note that, although the Lender artillery system was considered arr. 1914/1915, but in fact began to enter the fleet only starting from the second half of 1916 and 1917. At the same time, again, during the years of the Civil War, such guns were massively withdrawn from the fleet to equip them with ships of river flotillas, armored trains, etc. etc. Thus, in principle, these guns could well have hit the Sevastopol-class battleships, but how many, when and how much is extremely difficult to say.
The second anti-aircraft artillery system of the Sevastopol-class battleships that entered service was the 63.5-mm cannon - and this artillery system is still a mystery. The fact is that before the First World War, the fleet, of course, took care of creating an anti-aircraft artillery system for large warships: it was the 2.5-inch cannon of the Obukhov plant.
Its barrel length was 38 calibers, the elevation angle was up to 75 degrees. The ammunition consisted of a high-explosive grenade weighing 4, 04 kg and shrapnel weighing 3, 73 kg. with a fuse tube for 34 sec., which the gun fired with an initial speed of 686 m / sec. In total, 20 such guns had been manufactured by November 1916, and production continued further. Moreover, on April 1, 1917, eight of them were installed on the battleships of the Black Sea Fleet, two guns per ship. Thus, it is very possible, and even more than likely, that the "Petropavlovsk" and "Gangut" were armed with this particular artillery system. I must say that as an anti-aircraft gun, the product of the Obukhov plant turned out to be unsuccessful, but it was, rather, an error in the concept of the gun, and not in its design. The very idea of constructing a small-caliber, but non-automatic gun turned out to be vicious: the rate of fire of the 2.5-inch was low and was much inferior to the British 40-mm "pom-pom", and this lag was not compensated by the power of the projectile, which was not enough.
Most likely, these were the weapons that two of our battleships received, but … since this is not known for sure, it is worth considering other options. I must say that, in addition to the above-mentioned anti-aircraft 63.5-mm / 38 artillery system, the Russian Imperial Navy had only one gun of a similar caliber. Of course, we are talking about the famous 63, 5-mm airborne gun of Baranovsky.
Oddly enough, the author of this article came across mentions that some of them could be installed on carriages capable of firing at aircraft. But the appearance of the "anti-aircraft modification" of this artillery system, even if they really existed, looks extremely doubtful on our battleships.
Baranovsky's gun, caliber 63, 5-mm, was a specialized weapon also designed to arm amphibious assault parties. Then there was a period when the marines were abolished, and its tasks, as the leadership of the Russian imperial fleet then thought, could be solved by sailors of warships. Given the complexity of the landing, the gun required a compromise in combat qualities and compactness, inherent in mountain guns - by the way, on the basis of the landing gun, Baranovsky subsequently made a mountain gun. The landing gun turned out to be light, the mass together with the carriage was only 272 kg, and it was even possible to shoot from it from a boat.
In general, the compactness of Baranovsky's creation was not to occupy: the problem, however, was that the combat capability of the 63.5-mm gun was categorically not enough. The length of its barrel was only 19.8 caliber, the mass of the projectile was 2.55 for high-explosive and 2.4 kg for shrapnel shells, although the mountain guns were armed with heavier ammunition, the weight of which reached 4 kg. The short barrel limited the muzzle velocity to only 372 m / sec., The maximum firing range - up to 2, 8 km. Already the Russian-Japanese war showed the complete unsuitability of the weapon for modern combat. Of course, the Baranovsky cannon, in its design, was in many ways ahead of its time, and it can with a certain reason be considered the first rapid-fire cannon in the world - after all, as much as 5 rds / min. But still, its combat capabilities were too modest, and by the beginning of the 20th century, the gun was completely outdated, so it was removed from the fleet in 1908. Moreover, according to Shirokorad's data, the guns of this type were scrapped after being removed from service. and not for long-term storage, so the chances that guns of this type could return to the fleet as anti-aircraft guns are minimal.
Strictly speaking, if we compare the photographs of the guns on the aft turret of the battleships "Petropavlovsk"
With a photo of 63.5-mm / 38 guns of the Obukhov plant, placed on the battleship "Efstafiy",
Then we will see that their silhouettes are quite similar.
But with 47-mm guns, there are no ambiguities: only classic 47-mm single-barreled Hotchkiss cannons could be installed on battleships, the machine of which was converted for firing at air targets, while the maximum elevation angle of the gun was 85 degrees.
As for the placement of anti-aircraft artillery, the guns were located on different battleships in different ways. Usually, two anti-aircraft guns were placed on the aft turret of the main caliber, the third in different ways, for example, it could be mounted on the bow turret, as was the case on the battleship Petropavlovsk, but not necessarily
Air defense modernization of the battleship "Marat"
From the books of A. M. Vasiliev, the phrase has migrated to many publications:
“Due to the lack of new material, the anti-aircraft artillery remained the same (three 76-mm guns of the Lender system on the 1st and 4th turrets. … the 3 "guns of the 1915 model in service, of course, are unsatisfactory, but at the moment, neither we, nor the army have anything better …".
From this phrase, and even from many photographs of our battleships in the 1920s, it should be understood that the first air defense reinforcement was received by domestic battleships even before the start of large-scale upgrades. Apparently, Kane's 75-mm guns, 63, 5-mm Obukhov plant and 47-mm Hotchkiss were removed from them when they returned to service, and were replaced by six 76, 2-mm Lender anti-aircraft guns, grouped by three guns on the bow and aft towers.
The Lender gun was the first Russian artillery system designed specifically for firing at air targets: at the time of its creation, it was quite successful and fully met its tasks. This is a 76, 2-mm gun with a barrel length of 30, 5 calibers and a maximum elevation angle of the last 75 degrees.used unitary ammunition, which made it possible to bring the rate of fire to 15-20 rds / min. The ammunition consisted of a high-explosive grenade and a shrapnel shell weighing 6 and 6.5 kg, which were fired at an initial speed of 609, 6 and 588, 2 kg. respectively. But Lender's gun could use any ammunition of the famous 76, 2-mm "three-inch" mod. 1902, and in addition, later other types of shells were created for it.
The Russian armed forces received the first batch of a dozen such guns in 1915, the next year 26 more such guns were produced, and in 1917 - 110. They were also produced after the revolution, the last artillery system of this type was produced already in 1934. …
For its time, this was a good decision, and we can say that in the 20s the air defense of ships more or less corresponded to the challenges of the time, but, of course, by the beginning of the 30s, completely different weapons were required. Unfortunately, the "Marat" never received it and went with six Lender barrels right up to 1940 - only here its air defense was finally strengthened.
The old artillery systems were dismantled, and instead of them 10 more modern 76, 2-mm guns were installed. Six of them, placed in 34-K single-gun mounts, took places on the bow and stern turrets, and 4 more absolutely the same guns, but in 81-K double-barreled mounts, were placed on the sections, instead of a pair of 120-mm aft guns. And I must say that it is very difficult to give these artillery systems an unambiguous assessment.
On the one hand, 76, 2-mm domestic anti-aircraft guns were quite good artillery systems, created on the basis of the German 75-mm Flak L / 59 anti-aircraft gun. More precisely, on the basis of the German cannon, the 3-K land gun was created, and only then it was "chilled" in the 34-K. But on the other hand, the documentation and technical processes for this weapon were acquired in the USSR in 1930, and since then, of course, the weapon is "a little" outdated.
It had good (for a three-inch) ballistic data - with a barrel length of 55 caliber, it reported projectiles weighing 6, 5-6, 95 kg an initial velocity of 801-813 m / s, that is, let the author forgive such an inappropriate comparison, in fact, even slightly surpassed the famous 75-mm anti-tank gun Pak 40. Accordingly, the maximum firing range of the 34-K reached 13 km, and the maximum reach in height was 9.3 km. The maximum elevation angle of 34-K reached 85 degrees. And if we look at perhaps the most effective naval anti-aircraft gun of the Second World War, the 127-mm / 38 artillery system of the United States, we will see that its similar parameters are not so superior to the 34-K. The American anti-aircraft gun had a maximum firing range of about 16, and an altitude reach of about 12 km. At the same time, 34-K, with a well-prepared calculation and timely supply of ammunition, could develop a rate of fire of up to 15-20 rds / min, which was quite at the level of the excellent German 88-mm anti-aircraft gun. In general, the 34-K was quite convenient for calculations and a reliable weapon.
However, this is where its pluses, in general, ended, and quite numerous minuses began. The first of them was the viciousness of the very idea of choosing a 76.2 mm caliber anti-aircraft gun. Good ballistics, of course, made it possible to throw the projectile far enough, but the problem was that the parameters of an air target at a long distance can only be determined very approximately, moreover, the projectile flies for some time, and the plane can also maneuver. All this leads to a large error in aiming and the extreme importance of such a parameter of an anti-aircraft gun as the projectile's impact zone, but the 76.2 mm gun had too little projectile power. The heaviest ammunition 34-K - 6, 95 kg high-explosive fragmentation grenade, contained only 483 grams of explosive. For comparison, the German anti-aircraft gun, which seemed to be not so superior in caliber 88-mm, fired 9 kg of shells with an explosive content of 850 g. That is, the German anti-aircraft gun exceeded the Soviet artillery system by 1.5 times in terms of projectile mass, and almost 2 times in charge. …What can we say about the American 127-mm ammunition? A shell of the American 127-mm / 38 cannon weighed 25 kg and carried from 2, 8 to 3, 8 kg of explosives! But even this, in general, was not enough to reliably defeat aircraft of the Second World War, so the Americans increased the chances by developing and massively introducing radar fuses.
But sooner or later the plane will overcome the distance separating it from the ship and will be in close proximity to it. And here the ability of an anti-aircraft gun to accompany a flying aircraft acquires great importance, that is, in other words, the anti-aircraft gun must have sufficient horizontal and vertical guidance in order to "twist the barrel" after the aircraft. Here, alas, the 34-K is also not very good: the speed of its vertical and horizontal guidance was 8 and 12 deg / s. Is it a lot or a little? For the Italian 100-mm anti-aircraft guns "Minisini" these speeds were 7 and 13 degrees / sec. respectively. However, almost all sources point out that it was no longer enough to fight the planes of the Second World War. Accordingly, this is also true for 34-K. And again - if we remember that the prototype of the 34-K, the German "Rheinmetall", was designed in the late 1920s, when combat aircraft flew much slower, the vertical and horizontal guidance speeds were quite sufficient. However, in 1940 - no longer.
And so it turned out that for long-range shooting, the domestic 34-K lacked the power of projectiles, and for fighting aircraft at short distances - the speed of vertical and horizontal guidance. This did not, of course, make 34-K useless, but as a medium-caliber anti-aircraft artillery, it was frankly weak. And the same applies to 81-K, which was practically the same tool, only "spark" and on a different machine.
The weakness of the medium caliber of the Marat air defense system, alas, was supplemented by its small number; nevertheless, 10 barrels for a battleship-class ship (even a relatively small one) should be considered categorically insufficient.
As for the fire control devices, the 76, 2-mm anti-aircraft guns were divided into 2 batteries, bow and stern, and to control each of them there was one rangefinder with a three-meter base, and a set of MPUAZO "Tablet". Unfortunately, the author could not find a detailed description of the capabilities of this MPUAZO, but this gap is very easy to fill by logical reasoning.
The fact is that the entire control system for anti-aircraft (and not only anti-aircraft) fire of any ship can be conditionally divided into 3 parts. The first is target observation devices, that is, sighting devices, rangefinders, artillery radars, and so on. The second part is calculating devices, which, taking into account the mass of parameters of the target, atmosphere, ship, guns and ammunition, form a solution - aiming angles, lead. And, finally, the third part is the devices that transmit the obtained solution directly to the anti-aircraft guns and give the firing manager feedback from them.
So, the observation device for the anti-aircraft fire control system "Marat" were "3-meter" rangefinders, but there were apparently no calculating devices. The fact is that such devices in the domestic fleet first appeared on the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna, light cruisers of Project 26 and destroyers of Project 7, and there they all had different names. And MPUAZO "Tablet" were installed on the "Marat" in 1932, that is, at first they controlled 6 Lender guns. That is, in those years, domestic calculating devices for anti-aircraft fire in the USSR did not yet exist, and there is no information that the "Tablet" was purchased abroad.
Accordingly, it would not be a mistake to assume that MPUAZO "Tablet" were only fire control devices, allowing the fire controller to transmit data for firing to calculations with guns. But he obviously had to manually calculate the necessary parameters. So it is quite possible that the "Tablet" was generally used only to bring the distance to the target to calculations, and they already determined the rest of the shooting parameters on their own.
Subsequently, small-caliber anti-aircraft artillery was also installed on the Marat, but we will talk about it in the next article.
