Few people know that the Soviet torpedo boats of World War II were giant floats from seaplanes.
On August 18, 1919, at 3:45 am, unidentified aircraft appeared over Kronstadt. An air raid warning was sounded on the ships. Actually, there was nothing new for our sailors - British and Finnish aircraft were based 20-40 km from Kronstadt on the Karelian Isthmus and almost all summer of 1919 carried out raids on ships and the city, although without much success.
But at 4:20 a.m. two speed boats were spotted from the destroyer Gabriel, and almost immediately there was an explosion near the harbor wall. This is a torpedo from a British boat that passed the Gabriel and exploded, hitting the dock.
In response, the sailors from the destroyer smashed the nearest boat to smithereens with the first shot from a 100-mm gun. Meanwhile, two more boats, having entered Srednyaya Gavan, headed: one - to the training ship "Pamyat Azov", the other - to the Rogatka Ust-Canal (entrance to the dock of Peter I). The first boat was blown up by the fired torpedoes "Memory of Azov", the second was blown up by the battleship "Andrey Pervozvanny". At the same time, the boats were firing machine guns at the ships near the harbor wall. When leaving the harbor, both boats were sunk by the fire of the destroyer Gabriel at 4:25 am. Thus ended the raid of British torpedo boats, which went down in the history of the Civil War under the name of the Kronstadt wake-up call.
Floating torpedo tube
Note that this was not the first use of British torpedo boats in the Gulf of Finland. On June 17, 1919, the cruiser Oleg was anchored at the Tolbukhin lighthouse, guarded by two destroyers and two patrol ships. The boat approached almost point-blank to the cruiser and fired a torpedo. The cruiser sank. It is easy to understand how the service was carried out by the Red Warlords, if neither on the cruiser, nor on the ships guarding it, no one noticed a suitable boat during the day and with excellent visibility. After the explosion, indiscriminate fire was opened on the "English submarine", which the military men had dreamed of.
Where did the British get the boats moving at an incredible speed of 37 knots (68.5 km / h)? British engineers managed to combine two inventions in the boat: a special ledge in the bottom - a redan and a powerful gasoline engine of 250 hp. Thanks to the redan, the area of contact of the bottom with water decreased, and hence the resistance to the movement of the ship. Redanny boat no longer floated - it seemed to get out of the water and glide along it at great speed, leaning on the water surface only with a steep ledge and a flat stern end.
Thus, in 1915, the British designed a small high-speed torpedo boat, sometimes referred to as a "floating torpedo tube."
Shooting back
From the very beginning, the British command considered torpedo boats exclusively as sabotage weapons. British admirals intended to use light cruisers as carriers of torpedo boats. The torpedo boats themselves were supposed to be used to attack enemy ships in their bases. Accordingly, the boats were very small: 12.2 m in length and 4.25 tons in displacement.
Putting a normal (tubular) torpedo tube on such a boat was unrealistic. Therefore, the planing boats fired torpedoes … backwards. Moreover, the torpedo was thrown from the stern chute not by the nose, but by the tail. At the moment of the ejection, the torpedo engine was turned on, and it began to catch up with the boat. The boat, which at the time of the salvo was supposed to go at a speed of about 20 knots (37 km / h), but not less than 17 knots (31.5 km / h), sharply turned to the side, and the torpedo kept its original direction, while taking the given depth and increasing the stroke to full. Needless to say, the accuracy of firing a torpedo from such a device is significantly lower than from a tubular one.
Revolutionary boats
On September 17, 1919, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Baltic Fleet, on the basis of an inspection report of an English torpedo boat raised from the bottom in Kronstadt, turned to the Revolutionary Military Council with a request to issue an order for urgent construction of high-speed boats of the British type at our factories.
The issue was considered very quickly, and already on September 25, 1919, the GUK reported to the Revolutionary Military Council that "due to the lack of mechanisms of a special type, still not manufactured in Russia, the construction of a series of such boats at the present time is certainly not feasible." That was the end of the matter.
But in 1922 "Ostekhbyuro" Bekauri became interested in planing boats. At his insistence, on February 7, 1923, the Main Naval Technical and Economic Directorate of the People's Commissariat for Maritime Affairs sent a letter to TsAGI “in connection with the emerging need for the fleet in speedboats, the tactical tasks of which: an area of action 150 km, a speed of 100 km / h, one armament machine gun and two 45-cm Whitehead mines, length 5553 mm, weight 802 kg."
By the way, V. I. Bekauri, not really relying on TsAGI and Tupolev, insured himself and in 1924 ordered a planing torpedo boat from the French company Pikker. However, for a number of reasons, the construction of torpedo boats abroad did not take place.
Planing float
But Tupolev zealously got down to business. The small radius of the new torpedo boat and its poor seaworthiness did not bother anyone at that time. It was assumed that the new gliders will be placed on cruisers. On the "Profintern" and on the "Chervona Ukraine" it was planned to make additional davits for this purpose.
The ANT-3 planing boat was based on a seaplane float. The top of this float, which actively affects the strength of the structure, was transferred to Tupolev's boats. Instead of an upper deck, they had a steeply curved convex surface on which it is difficult for a person to hold onto even when the boat is stationary. When the boat was on the move, it was deadly to get out of its conning tower - the wet slippery surface threw off absolutely everything that fell on it (unfortunately, with the exception of ice, in winter conditions the boats were frozen on the surface). When, during the war, troops of the G-5 type had to be transported on torpedo boats, people were planted in single file in the grooves of the torpedo tubes, they had nowhere else to be. Possessing relatively large reserves of buoyancy, these boats could carry practically nothing, since there was no room for placing cargo in them.
The design of the torpedo tube, borrowed from British torpedo boats, was also unsuccessful. The minimum speed of the boat at which he could fire his torpedoes was 17 knots. At a lower speed and at the stop, the boat could not fire a torpedo salvo, as this would mean suicide for him - an inevitable torpedo hit.
On March 6, 1927, the boat ANT-3, later named "Pervenets", was sent by rail from Moscow to Sevastopol, where it was safely launched. From April 30 to July 16 of the same year, the ANT-3 was tested.
On the basis of ANT-3, the boat ANT-4 was created, which developed a speed of 47.3 knots (87.6 km / h) during tests. Serial production of torpedo boats, named Sh-4, was started according to the ANT-4 type. They were built in Leningrad at the plant to them. Marty (formerly the Admiralty Shipyard). The cost of the boat was 200 thousand rubles. Boats Ш-4 were equipped with two Wright-Typhoon gasoline engines supplied from the USA. The boat's armament consisted of two flute-type torpedo tubes for 450-mm torpedoes of the 1912 model, one 7.62-mm machine gun and smoke-generating equipment. In total at the plant. Marty, 84 SH-4 boats were built in Leningrad.
The fastest in the world
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1929, Tupolev at TsAGI began construction of a new ANT-5 duralumin planing boat, armed with two 533-mm torpedoes. From April to November 1933, the boat passed factory tests in Sevastopol, and from November 22 to December - state tests. The tests of the ANT-5 delighted the authorities - the boat with torpedoes developed a speed of 58 knots (107.3 km / h), and without torpedoes - 65.3 knots (120.3 km / h). Boats from other countries could not even dream of such speeds.
Plant them. Marty, starting with the V series (the first four series are the SH-4 boats), switched to the production of the G-5 (this was the name of the ANT-5 serial boats). Later, the G-5 began to be built at the plant number 532 in Kerch, and with the beginning of the war, the plant number 532 was evacuated to Tyumen, and there, at the plant number 639, they also started building boats of the G-5 type. In total, 321 serial boats G-5 of nine series (from VI to XII, including XI-bis) were built.
Torpedo armament for all series was the same: two 533-mm torpedoes in flute tubes. But the machine-gun armament was constantly changing. So, the boats of the VI-IX series had two 7, 62-mm aircraft machine guns DA. The next series had two 7, 62-mm ShKAS aircraft machine guns, distinguished by a higher rate of fire. Since 1941, the boats began to be equipped with one or two 12.7 mm DShK machine guns.
Torpedo leader
Tupolev and Nekrasov (the immediate leader of the development team for gliders) # did not calm down on the G-5 and in 1933 they proposed a project for the "leader of the G-6 torpedo boats." According to the project, the displacement of the boat was supposed to be 70 tons. Eight GAM-34 engines of 830 hp each. were supposed to provide a speed of up to 42 knots (77, 7 km / h). The boat could fire a salvo of six 533-mm torpedoes, three of which were launched from aft flute-type torpedo tubes, and three more from a rotary three-tube torpedo tube located on the deck of the boat. Artillery armament consisted of a 45-mm 21K semi-automatic cannon, a 20-mm "aircraft type" cannon and several 7.62-mm machine guns. It should be noted that by the beginning of the construction of the boat (1934), both rotary torpedo tubes and 20-mm cannons of the "aircraft type" existed only in the imagination of the designers.
Bombs
Tupolev boats could act with torpedoes in waves of up to 2 points, and stay at sea - up to 3 points. Poor seaworthiness manifested itself primarily in the flooding of the boat's bridge even with the smallest waves and, in particular, strong splashing of the very low wheelhouse open from above, which impedes the work of the boat crew. The autonomy of Tupolev boats was also a derivative of seaworthiness - their design range could never be guaranteed, since it depended not so much on the fuel supply as on the weather. Stormy conditions at sea are relatively rare, but a fresh wind, accompanied by waves of 3-4 points, a phenomenon, one might say, is normal. Therefore, each exit of the Tupolev torpedo boats into the sea bordered on a mortal risk, regardless of any connection with the combat activities of the boats.
A rhetorical question: why then were hundreds of planing torpedo boats built in the USSR? It's all about the Soviet admirals, for whom the British Grand Fleet was a constant headache. They seriously thought that the British Admiralty would operate in the 1920s and 1930s in the same way as in Sevastopol in 1854 or in Alexandria in 1882. That is, the British battleships in calm and clear weather will approach Kronstadt or Sevastopol, and the Japanese battleships - to Vladivostok, will anchor and start a battle according to the "Gost regulations".
And then dozens of the world's fastest torpedo boats of the Sh-4 and G-5 types will fly into the enemy armada. Moreover, some of them will be radio-controlled. The equipment for such boats was created at Ostekhbyuro under the leadership of Bekauri.
In October 1937, a large exercise was conducted using radio-controlled boats. When a unit depicting an enemy squadron appeared in the western part of the Gulf of Finland, more than 50 radio-controlled boats, breaking through the smoke screens, rushed from three sides to the enemy ships and attacked them with torpedoes. After the exercise, the radio-controlled boat division was highly praised by the command.
We'll go our own way
Meanwhile, the USSR was the only leading naval power to build red-type torpedo boats. England, Germany, the USA and other countries started building seaworthy keel torpedo boats. Such boats were inferior to the speed boats in calm weather, but significantly exceeded them in waves of 3-4 points. The keel boats carried more powerful artillery and torpedo weapons.
The superiority of keel boats over redan boats became apparent during the 1921-1933 war off the east coast of the United States, which was led by the Yankee government with … Mr. Bacchus. Bacchus, naturally, won, and the government was forced to shamefully repeal the dry law. Elko's high-speed boats, which delivered whiskey from Cuba and the Bahamas, played a significant role in the outcome of the war. Another question is that the same company built boats for the coast guard.
The capabilities of keel boats can be judged at least by the fact that a Scott Payne boat 70 feet long (21.3 m), armed with four 53 cm torpedo tubes and four 12.7 mm machine guns, sailed from England in the United States under its own power and on September 5, 1939 was solemnly greeted in New York. In his image, the Elko firm began the massive construction of torpedo boats.
By the way, 60 boats of the "Elko" type were delivered under Lend-Lease to the USSR, where they received the A-3 index. On the basis of A-3 in the 1950s, we created the most common torpedo boat of the Soviet Navy - Project 183.
Keel Teutons
It is worth noting that in Germany, literally bound hand and foot by the Treaty of Versailles and gripped by the economic crisis, in the 1920s, they were able to test redanny and keel boats. According to the test results, an unambiguous conclusion was made - to make only keel boats. The Lursen firm became a monopoly in the production of torpedo boats.
During the war, German boats operated freely in fresh weather throughout the North Sea. Based in Sevastopol and in Dvuyakornaya Bay (near Feodosia), German torpedo boats operated throughout the Black Sea. At first, our admirals did not even believe the reports that German torpedo boats were operating in the Poti area. The meetings between our and German torpedo boats invariably ended in favor of the latter. During the hostilities of the Black Sea Fleet in 1942-1944, not a single German torpedo boat was sunk at sea.
Flying over the water
Let's dot the "i". Tupolev is a talented aircraft designer, but why did he have to take on something other than his own business ?! In some ways it can be understood - huge funds were allocated for torpedo boats, and in the 1930s there was a tough competition among aircraft designers. Let's pay attention to one more fact. The construction of boats was not classified in our country. Gliders flying over the water were used with might and main by Soviet propaganda. The population constantly saw Tupolev's torpedo boats in illustrated magazines, on numerous posters, in newsreels. The pioneers were taught voluntarily and compulsorily to make models of reddened torpedo boats.
As a result, our admirals fell victim to their own propaganda. Officially, it was believed that Soviet boats are the best in the world and there is no point in paying attention to foreign experience. Meanwhile, agents of the German company Lursen, starting from the 1920s, "sticking out their tongues" were looking for clients. Their keel boats were ordered by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Spain and even China.
In the 1920s – 1930s, the Germans easily shared secrets with their Soviet colleagues in the field of tank building, aviation, artillery, poisonous substances, etc. But we didn’t lift a finger to buy at least one Lursen.
