As we said earlier, the international competition ended on May 12, 1912, with the victory of the project No. 6 of the Admiralty Plant, which to the greatest extent satisfied the delivered TTZ. And, I must say, he almost completely corresponded to them, so that the Naval Ministry only had to start building the ship (having previously “knocked out” funding from the State Duma, of course). However, the MGSH was greatly influenced by several initiative projects, in which the number of 356-mm guns was increased to ten (in four turrets) and, most importantly, to twelve, in four three-gun turrets.
In principle, our admirals can be understood here. And the point is not that the fourth tower noticeably, by a factor of 33, increased the weight of the side salvo (albeit in this too), but that it was precisely this number and location of the main caliber artillery for battleships that was then considered the best in Russia. … Actually, the way it really was - as further practice showed, at least a four-gun salvo was optimal for long-range shooting. Accordingly, the German and English dreadnoughts usually had 4-5 towers capable of participating in an onboard salvo: they fired half-salvoes from 4-5 guns (from one gun from each tower), the rest were reloading at that time. This approach was good for sighting with a "fork", that is, according to the signs of falling, when the senior artilleryman was required to fire one volley in flight, the second - undershot to the target, and then "half" the distance, achieving coverage. Due to the fact that in these conditions before the next salvo it was necessary to wait for the fall of the previous one, there was quite enough time to recharge.
However, the presence of 12 guns in 4 towers made it possible to target with a "ledge" or "double ledge" - when a volley of the second (and third) four guns was fired without waiting for the fall of the previous one: for example, an artilleryman, having received data from rangefinder stations, that the enemy was from him in 65 cables, he could fire a salvo of the first four guns at a distance of 70 kbt, the second - 65 kbt, the third - 60 kbt and observe which volleys the target would be between. Or give the first volley, wait for it to fall, adjust the sight and quickly fire the next two volleys, trying to take the target into the fork. Thus, the zeroing process was significantly accelerated.
For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that the author of this article cannot indicate the exact date from which the "double ledge" sighting was adopted in the Russian fleet. But in any case, the advantage of placing 12 guns in comparison with 9 is obvious - in the latter case, it would be necessary to alternate four- and five-gun salvoes, which was not convenient from the point of view of fire control, but the more advanced methods of shooting adopted (even later) fully justified such a decision. Here, however, the question may arise - if 12 guns are so profitable and convenient, then why later, after the First World War, 8-9 guns became the standard of weapons?
But the fact is that with an equal total weight of cannons, barbets and towers, three three-gun towers made it possible to place heavier and more powerful guns than four three-gun ones. In addition, the presence of three towers instead of four reduced the length of the citadel and, in general, made it possible to more efficiently assemble the ship. As a result, these considerations outweighed the usefulness of 12 guns for quick zeroing. However, it should be noted that both the USA and the USSR were working on the creation of the battleships "Montana" and the 23-bis project with 12 * 406-mm guns - however, this is a completely different story …
Be that as it may, but MGSh, no doubt, leaned towards 12 guns, especially since the difference between 9-, 10- and 12-gun variants in size and displacement did not look too significant - while the leader of the competition, project No. 6 of the Admiralty Plant, as it was developed, came closer and closer to the mark of 30,000 tons of normal displacement, 12-gun battle cruisers of the Baltic Plant and Blom und Foss projects had 32,240 - 34,100 tons. And as a result of the addition of the fourth towers, ships should have turned out to be the strongest in the world (at least at the time of laying).
In general, on the one hand, it was as if the game was very worth the candle - but on the other, there were known problems. First, it was politically wrong to cancel and reject the results of the just successfully held competition, because in this case the Maritime Ministry demonstrated that it did not know what it wanted, and this would have caused attacks in the State Duma. Secondly, preliminary calculations showed that with the addition of the 4th tower, the cost of building four ships will increase by 28 million rubles (from 168 to 196 million rubles) - a very significant amount, and comparable to the cost of a battleship of the "Sevastopol" type … However, in percentage terms, she did not frighten - battle cruisers became more expensive by only 16, 7%, however, this money had to be found somewhere - after all, nine-gun ships were included in the budgets.
It is interesting that already at the final meeting dedicated to the selection of the winning project (which was the nine-gun battle cruiser of the Admiralty Plant), MGSH quite unexpectedly began to insist on the adoption of "Option XVII, Project 707" - that is, one of the projects of the Blom und Foss company and Putilovsky plant. In fact, the Putilovsky plant did not participate in its development, but this was how it was: it was brought to the attention of all foreign competitors that, regardless of the nationality of the winning company, battle cruisers would be built in Russia. If this is the case, then in order to participate in the competition, foreign firms should "enter into cooperation" with some domestic enterprise: for Blom und Foss, such an enterprise has become the Putilovsky plant.
The project itself was very interesting, although it did not fully meet the design tasks. It had a linearly elevated arrangement of towers, however, with a weakened armor of 275 mm (according to TTZ, barbets should have been protected with such armor, and the forehead of the towers reached 356 mm). Other parameters of the armor, as far as can be understood, were maintained. Its displacement was 32,500 tons, the rated power of the turbines was 64,000 hp, the boosted power was 26.5, and when boosted - 28.5 knots.
However, the technical council of the GUK rejected the German project, arguing that … the project is too German, and does not meet the requirements of the Russian shipbuilding industry either in terms of the mass of the power plant per unit of power, or in terms of the hull. All this is extremely strange, because it was the German power plants of battleships and battle cruisers that were, perhaps, the best in the world in terms of mass and power ratio. As for the hull, for example, watertight bulkheads were located more often than in the project of the Admiralty Plant (the distance between them at Blom und Foss was 7.01 m versus 12.04 m), that is, the number of watertight compartments was greater. The absence of a forecastle "played" against the German project, but, as can be seen in the sketch, it was planned to raise the deck to the stem, which to some extent neutralized this drawback.
Thus, it would be rather difficult to understand the motives of the GUK - the only reasonable argument against the German project was that if it was adopted, the construction of the newest battle cruisers (albeit partially) should have been carried out at the Putilovsky plant, the production facilities of which were obviously not ready to the implementation of such a large-scale project. But really this question could not have been solved by organizing construction at the Baltic and Admiralty plants?
Nevertheless, the project was rejected: however, in parallel with the further study of the three-tower and 9-gun project of the Admiralty Plant, it was decided to design a four-tower one. As a result, the Baltic and Admiralty plants simultaneously developed three- and four-tower projects each, and this time, on July 6, 1912, the 12-gun project of the Baltic plant won, although it, due to the presence of many comments, could not yet be considered final. And so, the next day, July 7, on the basis of the report of the head of the GUK, Admiral and Marine Minister I. K. Grigorovich made the final choice in favor of a four-turret ship.
All would be fine, but where was the money to be found for such an innovation? The problem was that I. K. It was extremely difficult for Grigorovich to "push" through the State Duma the "Program of Reinforced Shipbuilding of the Baltic Fleet in 1912-1916", according to which battle cruisers were to be built, but nevertheless he succeeded. However, during the debate on May 6, 1912, the Naval Minister promised that if this program is approved: "… within 5 years no additional requirements will be presented from the Naval Ministry." And, of course, I. K. Grigorovich could not come out in any way only 2 months after this statement of his demanding new funds! And how would he motivate it? “We held an international competition for three-turret ships, but then we thought and decided that four-turret ships are still better”? Such approaches would testify to the indiscriminate nature of the Naval Ministry, and no money for I. K. Grigorovich, of course, did not receive it, but the reputational costs would be much higher.
In other words, in the current situation it was impossible to knock out additional funding, which means that all that remained was to act within the approved budgets - but they included the construction of three-turret cruisers! Something was obtained by redistributing funds from light cruisers to battle cruisers, but this was not enough and it became clear that one could not do without saving money on the battle cruisers themselves. And it was possible to save only on speed, or on booking, while speed, whatever one may say, was considered the most important parameter of a battle cruiser. In fact, she also experienced some savings - the requirement to provide 26.5 knots within 12 hours was replaced by six hours, and the full speed (when forcing mechanisms) was reduced from 28.5 to 27.5 knots, but, of course, the main “economic effect »Should have given a relaxation of the reservation.
The Admiralteyskiy and Baltiyskiy Zavody were instructed to revise the projects in accordance with the previously expressed comments, as well as the need to reduce costs. Already on July 27, the projects were reviewed again, they were constructively close enough, but none of them was considered satisfactory, so it was decided to entrust the factories with further refinement jointly. The result of this creativity was the project of a battle cruiser with a displacement of 32,400 tons, which was approved by the Minister of the Navy and which was to become a battle cruiser of the "Izmail" class in the future.
Armament
So, the main caliber of the battle cruiser "Izmail" had to be 12 long-barreled 356-mm / 52 guns with truly royal characteristics: a projectile weighing 747, 8 kg was to be sent flying with an initial speed of 823 m / s. A gun with such characteristics obviously outstripped any competitors: the muzzle energy of this gun exceeded the Japanese 356-mm artillery system by 25%, and the American 356-mm / 50, installed on battleships such as New Mexico and Tennessee, by almost 10%. Moreover, even the 356-mm guns of the British battleships of the Second World War of the "King George V" type fired only 721 kg with a projectile with an initial speed of 757 m / s!
Without a doubt, the armament of the Ishmael-class battlecruisers with such powerful cannons, and even in the amount of 12 units, should have brought it to the first place among all 343-356-mm dreadnoughts in the world. But the creation of such a weapon and the organization of its serial production was a complex technical and technological task: below we will consider how the Russian Empire managed to cope with it.
It must be said that the need for larger guns than the 305-mm was realized in Russia quite early - in June 1909, the chief inspector of naval artillery A. F. Brink reported to I. K. Grigorovich, shortly before, in January of the same year, who took office as Deputy Minister of the Navy (as the deputies were then called) on the need to arm the next series of dreadnoughts with 356-mm guns. Taking into account the fact that the first-born British superdreadnoughts "Orion" was laid down in November 1909, and the fact of its arming with 343-mm cannons was hidden for some time, perhaps we can safely say that A. F. Brink did not “monkey”, but came to the point of arming the main forces of the fleet with more powerful cannons than the 305-mm itself.
I must say that I. K. Grigorovich again proved to be a far-sighted and energetic leader, as he immediately supported A. F. Brink, allowing the latter to design and build a prototype 356-mm gun and providing the necessary funding for the work. Nevertheless, the matter dragged on: the reason was that just at that time in the domestic naval artillery there was a departure from the concept of "light projectile - high muzzle velocity" in favor of much heavier ammunition. The case for our artillerymen was quite new, because the transition to light shells took place quite a long time ago, and even the newest 305-mm / 52 cannon of the Obukhov plant was originally designed for 331.7 kg shells. As you know, as a result of a fundamental change in the concept for this gun, ammunition weighing 470.9 kg was created; the price for this was a significant reduction in the initial speed, from the originally assumed more than 900 m / s to 762 m / s. In this form, the domestic twelve-inch gun has become one of the best weapons of its caliber, in terms of the aggregate fighting qualities in no way inferior to the most advanced artillery systems in the world.
However, the transition to heavy ammunition took time - it was not for nothing that the 470, 9 kg "suitcases" were called "shells of the 1911 g model." In general, of course, the 305-mm / 52 gun and the range of its ammunition became a real masterpiece of artillery, but their creation greatly impeded work on a larger-caliber cannon: an order for the production of a prototype of a 356-mm gun was issued only in January 1911. And besides, as you know, it is not enough to invent and produce a weapon in a single copy - it is necessary to establish mass production, but this also caused problems.
Therefore, when in 1911 the question arose about equipping the Black Sea dreadnoughts with 356-mm artillery systems, it quickly became clear that the capabilities of the Obukhov plant simply do not allow this - the acquisition of domestic guns of this caliber would delay the delivery of dreadnoughts to the fleet by at least 1.5 years. Then, for the first time, an international competition was announced for a 356-mm gun for the domestic fleet, but still the choice was made in favor of the domestic 305-mm artillery system.
Nevertheless, for battle cruisers, the 356-mm gun was considered as the only option from the beginning, so there could be no question of any replacements, at the same time, the need for such artillery systems turned out to be quite large. In total, it was planned to make 82 such guns, including 48 for the four battle cruisers and 12 spare guns for them, 4 guns for the Naval Range and 18 for arming the Revel Naval Fortress. The Obukhovsky plant was allocated quite serious subsidies to expand production, but even so, it could not meet the specified need within a reasonable time frame. As a result, the Obukhovites received an order for 40 356-mm guns, and another 36 were to be supplied by the Russian Joint Stock Company of Artillery Plants (RAOAZ), which started in 1913.to the construction of the largest artillery production near Tsaritsyn (apparently, the outfit for the remaining 6 guns was never issued). It is interesting that one of the largest shareholders of RAOAZ was the well-known company Vickers in some circles.
It seems that everything should have ended well, but two factors had a detrimental effect on the creation of the domestic 356-mm artillery system: the beginning of the First World War, and the absence of any noticeable machine-tool base in the Russian Empire. In other words, as long as the British or French were ready to supply us with machine tools for the production of artillery guns, everything went well, but as soon as the latter were forced to switch to the "everything for the front, everything for victory" thirty-third place - the Russian Empire had colossal problems. Equipment deliveries to the Obukhov and Tsaritsyn factories were delayed and disrupted, and without this it was impossible to dream of providing not only 82, but even 48 guns for the battle cruisers under construction.
Thus, the Maritime Ministry had no choice left, and it had to order 356-mm guns abroad - it was arranged in such a way that the Obukhov plant had to continue the production of such guns at its existing production facilities, but RAOAZ it was allowed to supply 36 guns not of their own, but of foreign production. With Vickers as its shareholder, it was easy to guess who would get the order. However, in military conditions it was not bad: firstly, the Vickers specialists had an excellent idea of the project of the Russian cannon, and secondly, the professionalism of the British made it possible to hope for a timely delivery - as you know, a spoon is good for dinner, and in war the truth of this expressions are especially pronounced.
Nevertheless, the Russian Empire never received the required number of guns to equip the Izmail-class battle cruisers - as of May 1917, the country received 10 356-mm British-made guns, the eleventh sank on the road along with the Komba transport transporting it.”, And five more such guns were produced, but they remained in England. The Obukhov plant, with the exception of the prototype, never handed over a single gun of this caliber, although it had 10 such guns in a very high degree of readiness. I must say that some sources provide other data on the total number of 356-mm guns, but the ones given above are perhaps the most common.
Thus, we can state the first and very sad fact - the main caliber artillery on the Izmail-class battle cruisers did not mature in any reasonable time. As for the quality of artillery systems, alas, there are also many questions left.
The fact is that the full cycle of testing the guns did not go through, and then the Russian Empire collapsed, giving way to Soviet power. The armed forces of the Land of Soviets, no doubt, needed heavy weapons. The completion of the battle cruisers turned out to be beyond the strength of the USSR (we will return to this issue in the future), but not using ready-made (and almost ready-made) 356-mm guns of English and domestic production would be a waste of money. Therefore, in 1930 in the USSR, work began on the creation of the TM-1-14 railway artillery installation, using British and Obukhov 356-mm guns as weapons.
However, the tests of these artillery systems led to extreme disappointment - as it turned out, the guns were not strong enough. When firing a charge providing a "contract" initial speed of 823 m / s, six guns simply inflated, and the insufficient longitudinal strength of the artillery systems was also revealed. All this led to the fact that for railway installations the powder charge and the muzzle velocity of 747, 8 kg of shells were seriously reduced, which was now only 731, 5 m / s.
Alas, with such an initial muzzle energy projectile speed, the domestic 356-mm / 52 cannon from the recognized leaders turned into outsiders - now it was losing not only to the American 356-mm / 45 and 50-caliber guns, which left it far behind, but also to the weaker one. Japanese 356-mm artillery system, although very little. True, one very important question arises here - the fact is that it is not entirely clear for what reasons the initial speed of the domestic 14-inch projectile in the TM-1-14 railway installations was "reduced" to such low values.
Without a doubt, it is likely that this was the only way to ensure acceptable barrel survivability, and thus 731.5 m / s - the maximum permissible muzzle velocity for a 356 mm / 52 gun. But … it can also be assumed that the platform itself played a role here - the creation of railway artillery was a fairly new and difficult task, despite the fact that the recoil when firing a fourteen-inch gun was colossal. It is possible that the reduced speed is to some extent related to the fear of damage to the railway platform or tracks. However, this is nothing more than guesswork, and in the sources known to the author of this article, the decrease in the initial speed of 356 mm / 52 guns is motivated only by the weakness of the guns themselves. Accordingly, in the future we will proceed from this very statement.
As we have already said, with an initial speed of 731.5 m / s, the 356-mm / 52 gun was inferior in muzzle energy even to the Japanese cannon (by about 2, 8%). However, the situation was largely straightened out by extremely powerful armor-piercing and high-explosive shells. It is clear that more explosives can be put into 747, 8 kg of "pig" than in 578-680, 4 shells of other states, but here our superiority turned out to be colossal. Thus, 673.5 kg Japanese and 680.4 kg American armor-piercing 356 mm shells contained 11.1 kg and 10.4 kg of explosives, respectively - the American shell, despite its greater weight, contained less explosives. The Russian projectile had 20, 38 kg of explosives, that is, almost twice as much as the Japanese and American. According to this indicator, only the 635-kg projectile of the British 343-mm gun, which had 20.2 kg of liddite, could compete with the domestic armor-piercing ammunition, but you need to understand that this projectile was inherently semi-armor-piercing. A full-fledged British 343-mm "armor-piercing", created by the end of the First World War, was equipped with 15 kg of shellite. In fact, the Russian 356-mm armor-piercing projectile carried almost the same amount of explosives as the British 381-mm Greenboy (the latter had 20.5 kg of shellite).
Among the landmines, the Russian 356-mm projectile also turned out to be ahead of the rest of the planet - the weight of the explosive in the 1913 sample projectile reached 81.9 kg. At the same time, Japanese ammunition of this type (projectile weight - 625 kg) had only 29.5 kg of explosives, the Americans used lightweight high-explosive projectiles weighing only 578 kg, which were equipped with 47.3 kg of explosives. But the British land mine, despite its lower weight (635 kg), was equipped with almost the same amount of liddite - 80, 1 kg.
But alas, here it was not without a fly in the ointment. As you know, after the famous shelling of the battleship "Chesma", on which the elements of armor protection of dreadnoughts of the "Sevastopol" type were reproduced, there were another planned tests designed to determine the best armor protection scheme for the newest Russian battleships. For this purpose, two differently armored compartments were built, at which it was supposed to shoot 305-mm and 356-mm shells, both armor-piercing and high-explosive, but the Russian Empire did not have time to carry out these tests. They were installed already under Soviet rule, in 1920, and their results were very disappointing for 356-mm armor-piercing shells. Thus, Professor L. G. Goncharov in his work “Course of naval tactics. Artillery and Armor”writes about these tests (spelling preserved):
1. The high quality of the 305 mm (12”) armor-piercing shells of the 1911 model was confirmed.
2. The great importance of the manufacture of shells has been confirmed. So the effect of armor-piercing 305 mm (12 ") shells was higher than the same 356 mm (14") shells. This is due to the fact that the production of the first projectiles was delivered extremely carefully and satisfactorily, and 356 mm (14 ") projectiles were the first experimental batch of which the plant had not yet been able to cope with the production."
There is no doubt that a 356 mm projectile weighing 747, 8 kg with 20, 38 kg of explosives of excellent armor-piercing qualities was quite possible. The explosive content in it was 2.73%, which is even less than that of the 305-mm domestic projectiles, in which this indicator reached 2.75% (12.96 kg of the mass of explosives and 470.9 kg of the mass of the projectile). But we are forced to admit that the Obukhov plant was not able to immediately cope with the manufacture of 356-mm shells, and could the plant be able to do this if it had to master their production during the war years? This question remains open, and if so, there was a danger that even if the battle cruisers of the "Izmail" class had time to finish building, they could have received armor-piercing shells of far from the best quality.
All this taken together testifies that 356-mm / 52 cannons did not come out of the 356-mm / 52 cannons "unparalleled in the world." were better than the Japanese guns of the same caliber that were on the battlecruisers Congo and battleships of the Fuso and Ise types, but the American 356 mm / 50 cannon, capable of sending 680, 4 kg of armor-piercing projectile with an initial velocity of 823 m / s and having about 15% more muzzle energy, perhaps, looks preferable, even despite the lower power of the projectile. On the other hand, with the American guns, too, not everything is simple - their performance characteristics look too good, which, together with some indirect data (including, for example, the fact that the armor-penetration tables known to the author, given in the Russian-language literature, for American 356-mm shells are built from a speed of 792 m / s and 800 m / s) may indicate some overshooting of the American 356 mm / 50 guns. However, this is again just guesswork.
But what there is no doubt about is that firing 747, 8 kg with a 356-mm projectile with an initial speed of 823 m / s. was completely impossible, here our gunners, unfortunately, encroached on a level of technical excellence unattainable at that time. Alas, this also implies something else - all modeling of battles between Ishmaels and battleships and battlecruisers of other powers (and it was carried out, and we will see it later) was built on a non-existent basis, that is, on the presence of record-breaking characteristics of cannons in domestic ships. in fact, they couldn't have.
