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TRY TO REMOVE "MARY" (one of the versions of the death of the battleship "Empress Maria" in 1916) Until now, the minds of historians and specialists are disturbed by the tragic death in 1916 of one of the strongest Russian warships - the Black Sea battleship "Empress Maria".

Southern maritime boundaries For hundreds of years, Russia coexisted with the Ottoman Empire. Permanent wars forced the Russian tsars to keep modern warships. In 1907 bought from European countries two battleships and eight destroyers. New ships with existing old ones created a real threat to the Crimean coast of Russia. After 4 years, the southern neighbor ordered the construction of three newest dreadnoughts. Nicholas II had to respond to the buildup of naval forces from a potential enemy.

At the first stage, the Admiralty planned the production of three new battleships of the Empress Maria type. In 1911, the construction of 3 ships began at the Nikolaevsky Shipyards:

• "Empress Maria";

A few years later, after the launch of the first samples, the fourth similar ship "" was laid down.

Design and main parameters

Battleships of the "" project were built at shipbuilding yards in the northern regions of the country. Their design was taken as a basis for the development of dreadnoughts for the Black Sea Fleet. However, there were some differences:

• The maximum speed was reduced to 21 knots;
• Strengthened the protection of the outer part of the ship and vital installations;
• Increased the elevation angle of the 305 mm guns;
• The appearance of 8 destroyers in Turkey forced to strengthen anti-mine artillery - 16 120-mm guns were replaced by 20 units of 130-mm equipment.

The hull of the Black Sea dreadnoughts consisted of 3 types of steel. The deck had a slight rise in front. The length of the vessel was 168 m, the total carrying capacity was 24,500 tons. Viability was provided by 4 Parsons steam turbines and 20 Yarrow boilers. In the first tests, a maximum acceleration of 21.5 knots was achieved. To manage the ship required a staff of 1,200 people.

The main armor belt was sheathed with steel plates 262.5 mm thick. Turrets for 305 mm guns were covered with 250 mm sheet steel, the command cabin was armored with a 300 mm panel. These indicators exceeded the protection of the building under construction for Ottoman Empire dreadnought "Sultan Osman I".

Construction of the ship "Emperor Alexander III"

The armament of battleships of the type "Empress Maria"

• Main caliber - 12 guns 305 mm. The equipment was located on 4 three-gun towers. The placement of the installations was similar to the arrangement at Sevastopol - in a linear manner. This ensured the operation of all gun equipment in cases where the enemy was on one side of the side. When the enemy appeared in front of or behind the vessel, only one three-gun installation could fire.
• Anti-mine artillery - 20 130-mm guns with a barrel length of 55 calibers, located in casemates.
• Anti-aircraft artillery - 8 75-mm guns;
• Torpedo launchers - 4 onboard 450-mm systems.

If we compare the Russian dreadnought with the battleship under construction for Turkey, we can see that the number of weapons in the Ottoman Empire exceeded the number of guns in the Empress Maria. However, the Russian ship was superior to the enemy ship in terms of firing range.

Model “Empress Maria”

Model “Empress Catherine the Great”

The beginning of the service - the first losses

In the context of the outbreak of World War I, it was necessary to ensure the presence of a Russian dreadnought in the Black Sea as soon as possible. All forces were directed to the completion of the construction of at least one vessel. Dates moved due to delivery delays additional equipment. Despite the lag and minor problems, the battleship "Empress Maria" was placed at the disposal of the command of the Black Sea Fleet.

On June 26, 1916, the first combat unit of the dreadnought type arrived in Odessa. After 3 days, she went to the open sea, where the enemy battleship Goeben and the cruiser Breslau were already located - both German-built with a German crew on board. The ships were acquired in the ownership of Turkey, but continued to lead them from Prussia. The appearance of the "Empress Maria" suspended the plans of the enemy. Now they rarely left the Bosphorus.

On July 9 of the same year, information was received that the Breslau went to sea. The commander of the fleet, Vice Admiral Kolchak, who was on the Empress Maria, personally supervised the operation. Together with a squadron of destroyers, he went to intercept. Aviation carried out air support for the fleet - it stopped the attack from the enemy submarine. It seemed that the German-Turkish ship had no chance. However, a sudden bad weather allowed the Breslau to evade pursuit and return to the Bosphorus.

On an October morning in 1916, a tragic event occurred. The crew of the ship witnessed a fire in the hangar area with shells for the main caliber guns. A few minutes later, an explosion thundered, killing a large number of people and mutilating part of the ship. After the second explosion, the battleship rolled over and sank.

Service of other dreadnoughts

The dreadnought "Empress Catherine the Great" entered service in the fall of 1916. He took part in several military operations. However, in the spring of 1918, it was decided to scuttle the battleship in order to evade its capture by German troops.

"Emperor Alexander III", later named "Will", first went to sea in 1917. After the signing of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, all warships based in Sevastopol were obliged to return to their native harbor, which at that moment was controlled by Germany. It was a period when great changes took place inside Russia - each ship independently made a decision about its future fate. Lenin gave the order to sink all the ships so as not to fall into the subordination of the enemy. The Volya crew voted to return to the Crimea. After some time, the city was occupied by the Volunteer Army. The ship once again changed its flag and name. This time it was named "General Alekseev" and was the flagship of the White Fleet. After numerous skirmishes with the Reds, the dreadnought began to be evacuated - first to Turkey, then to Tunisia, where it stood for several years. Only in the 30s the ship was transported to Brest, where the French designers carefully studied it and handed it over for disassembly.

The fourth Black Sea battleship was launched in the second half of 1916. The revolution that began later and the internal disagreements of the new political system did not make it possible to complete the construction of the ship. At the same time, they also did not forget to rename it - in the spring of 1917 it became "Democracy". A few years later, the unfinished ship was sent for scrapping.

All 4 Russian dreadnoughts intended for patrolling in the Black Sea had a difficult tragic fate. Completed combat units managed to show their qualities in World War I. By a fatal coincidence, a strong explosion occurred on the lead battleship. The commission of inquiry could not determine for certain the cause of the fire. It was assumed that this was not an accidental fire, but an intentional arson. A series of difficult events in the country and a frequent change of leadership did not allow the ships to adequately continue their service.

An interesting fact is that the Turkish battleships, rumors about which became the reason for the construction of Russian dreadnoughts of the Empress Maria type, were never delivered to Constantinople. In view of the outbreak of World War I, Great Britain terminated the contract and refused to supply powerful ships ally of his main enemy - Germany.

After the Russo-Japanese War, the Black Sea Fleet retained all of its warships. It included 8 battleships built in 1889-1904, 3 cruisers, 13 destroyers. Two more battleships were under construction - "Evstafiy" and "John Chrysostom".

However, reports that Turkey is going to significantly strengthen its fleet (including dreadnoughts) demanded adequate measures from Russia. In May 1911, Emperor Nicholas II approved a program for the renewal of the Black Sea Fleet, which provided for the construction of three battleships of the Empress Maria type.

The Gangut was chosen as a prototype, however, taking into account the features of the theater of operations, the project was thoroughly reworked: the proportions of the hull were made more complete, the power of the mechanisms was reduced, but the armor was significantly strengthened, the weight of which now reached 7045 tons (31% of the design displacement against 26% by " Gangute).

Reducing the length of the hull by 13 meters made it possible to reduce the length of the armor belt and thereby increase its thickness. Moreover, the size of the armor plates was adjusted to the pitch of the frames - so that they served as an additional support that prevents the plate from being pressed into the hull. The armor of the main turrets became much more powerful: walls - 250 mm (instead of 203 mm), roof - 125 mm (instead of 75 mm), barbet - 250 mm (instead of 150 mm). An increase in width at the same draft as that of the Baltic battleships should have led to an increase in stability, but this did not happen due to overloading of the ships.

These battleships received new 130-mm guns 55 calibers (7.15 m) long with excellent ballistic characteristics, the production of which was mastered by the Obukhov plant. The artillery of the Civil Code did not differ from the "ganguts". However, the towers had a slightly larger capacity due to a more convenient arrangement of mechanisms and were equipped with optical rangefinders in armored tubes, which ensured autonomous firing of each tower.

Due to a decrease in the power of the mechanisms (and speed), the power plant has undergone some changes. It consisted of high and low pressure Parsons turbines located in five compartments between the third and fourth towers. The boiler plant consisted of 20 Yarrow-type triangular water-tube boilers installed in five boiler rooms. The boilers could be fired with both coal and oil.

Slightly increased the normal supply of fuel. But the Black Sea dreadnoughts suffered more from overload than their Baltic counterparts. The matter was aggravated by the fact that, due to an error in the calculations, the Empress Maria received a noticeable trim on the bow, which further worsened the already unimportant seaworthiness. In order to somehow rectify the situation, it was necessary to reduce the ammunition capacity of two main caliber bow turrets (up to 70 shots instead of 100 according to the state), the mine artillery bow group (100 shots instead of 245), and shorten the starboard anchor chain. On the "Emperor Alexander III" for the same purpose, they removed two bow 130-mm guns and eliminated their ammunition cellars.

During the war, the Black Sea dreadnoughts were used quite actively (mainly to cover the actions of maneuverable tactical groups), but only one of them, Empress Catherine the Great, met in December 1915 in a real battle, the German-Turkish battlecruiser Goeben. The latter used his advantage in speed and went into the Bosphorus from under the volleys of the Russian battleship.

The fate of all the Black Sea dreadnoughts was unhappy. The most famous and at the same time the most mysterious tragedy occurred on the morning of October 7, 1916 on the inner roads of Sevastopol. The fire in the artillery cellars and the series of powerful explosions caused by it turned the Empress Maria into a pile of twisted iron. At 7:16 a.m., the battleship capsized and sank. The victims of the disaster were 228 crew members.

In 1918 the ship was raised. The 130-mm artillery, part of the auxiliary mechanisms and other equipment were removed from it, and the hull stood in the dock with the keel up for 8 years. In 1927, the "Empress Maria" was finally dismantled. The towers of the Civil Code, which fell off during a rollover, were raised by the Epronovites in the 30s. In 19Z9, the battleship's guns were installed on the 30th battery near Sevastopol.

The battleship Catherine II outlived her brother (or sister?) by less than two years. Renamed "Free Russia", it sank in Novorossiysk, having received four torpedoes from the destroyer "Kerch" on board during the flooding (on the orders of V.I. Lenin) of part of the ships of the squadron by its own crews.

"Emperor Alexander III" entered service in the summer of 1917 already under the name "Will" and soon "went from hand to hand": the Andreevsky flag on the hafel of its mast was replaced by Ukrainian, then German, English and again Andreevsky, when Sevastopol was in the hands of the Volunteer Army . Renamed again, this time to General Alekseev, the battleship remained the flagship of the White Fleet on the Black Sea until the end of 1920, and then went to Bizerte with Wrangel's squadron. There, in 1936, it was dismantled for metal.

The French kept the 12-inch cannons of the Russian dreadnought, and in 1939 presented them to Finland. The first 8 guns reached their destination, but the last 4 arrived in Bergen almost simultaneously with the start of the Nazi invasion of Norway. So they got to the Germans, and they used them to create the Atlantic Wall, equipping them with the Mirus battery on the island of Guernsey. In the summer of 1944, these 4 guns opened fire on Allied ships for the first time, and in September they achieved a direct hit on an American cruiser. The remaining 8 guns in 1944 went to the Red Army in Finland and were "repatriated" to their homeland. One of them has been preserved as a museum exhibit at the Krasnaya Gorka fort.

Master Gambs starts a new batch of furniture with this semi-armchair. 1865.
Greetings dear Colleagues!
Let me invite you to a solemn event dedicated to the release of the first model from the Black Sea series of battleships - a model of a battleship "Empress Maria".

Brief historical background

The decision to strengthen the Black Sea Fleet with new battleships was caused by Turkey's intention to acquire three modern dreadnought battleships abroad, which would immediately provide her with overwhelming superiority in the Black Sea.
To maintain the balance of power, the Russian Naval Ministry insisted on the urgent strengthening of the Black Sea Fleet, which was reported on September 23, 1910 in the Council of Ministers. Developed on the basis of the report and supported by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers P.A. Stolypin, the bill was adopted by the State Duma in March 1911 and approved by Emperor Nicholas II in May. Of the 150.8 million rubles intended for "updating the Black Sea Fleet". for the construction of three battleships, nine destroyers and six submarines allocated 102.2 million rubles. (the rest of the money was intended to strengthen the means of repair and basing of the fleet). Each battleship, as was soon clarified, cost about 27.7 million rubles.
And already on October 17, 1911, simultaneously with the official laying ceremony, new ships were added to the lists of the fleet under the names "Empress Maria", "Emperor Alexander III" and "Catherine II" (since June 14, 1915 - "Empress Catherine the Great") .
In connection with the decision to equip the lead ship as a flagship, all ships of the series were ordered by the Minister of the Navy I.K. Grigorovich was ordered to be called ships type "Empress Maria".

To speed up the construction, their architectural type and the most important design decisions were made mainly on the basis of the experience and model of four Sevastopol-class battleships laid down in St. Petersburg in 1909.
The construction of dreadnoughts was entrusted to two private factories in Nikolaev.
One, built in 1897 and having some shipbuilding experience (two series of destroyers, turrets and machines of the battleship "Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky", a number of civil and port ships), belonged to the diversified Society of Nikolaev Plants and Shipyards (ONZiV), the other, under the brand of Russian shipbuilding joint-stock company(“Russud”), was just being created on the territory of the former Nikolaev State Admiralty leased to him.
Preference was given to the Russuda project, which "with the permission" of the Naval Ministry was led by a group of prominent naval engineers who were in active service. They also continued further work at the plant: Colonel L.L. Coromaldi - in the position of chief ship engineer of Russud, captain M.I. Sasinovsky - head of the Technical (design and technology) bureau, lieutenant colonel R.A. Matrosov - one of supervising engineers assigned to the ship. As a result, "Russud" received an order for two ships, the third (according to its drawings) was instructed to build ONZiV (in everyday life - "Naval").
The design of the hull and the reservation system of the Chernomorets basically corresponded to the design of the Baltic dreadnoughts, but were partially modified with an increase in the thickness of the plates: the main armor belt from 225 to 262.5 mm, the walls of the conning towers from 250 to 300 mm, their roofs from 125 to 200 mm, bevel of the armored deck from 25 to 50 mm.

To protect against air targets on the Empress Maria, on each of their main caliber towers, one KANE anti-aircraft gun (75 mm / 50) was installed on Meller machines.
The impending war forced, despite the sad experience of the past, to develop working drawings simultaneously with the construction of ships. The obligation to copy the drawings of the internal layout from the Sevastopol-class battleships did not make the work much easier: due to the difference in size (Empress Maria was shorter by 13 m and wider by 0.4 m), almost all the drawings had to be redone.
The progress of work was also affected by the fact that the factories built such large ships for the first time, and the “improvements” so characteristic of domestic shipbuilding were already carried out during construction. They led to an over-design overload that exceeded 860 tons. As a result, in addition to an increase in draft by 0.3 m, an unfortunate trim on the bow was formed (obviously, from the thickening of the deck in the bow), in other words, the ships “sat down like a pig”. Fortunately, the rise of the deck in the bow (by 0.6m) concealed this.
In this fever, when design and completion work converged in an inseparable tangle of contradictions, decisions had to be made far from optimal, and it was no longer possible to even think about improvements. A rare exception, probably in this period, was the alteration of the navigation bridges of the Maria, which her commander, Captain 1st Rank K.A. Porembsky, persistently petitioned for. The persistence of K.A. The bridges of the "Empress Maria", more fully developed than on other ships, have acquired the necessary functional purpose.
According to the contract dated March 31, 1912, signed by the Naval Ministry with the Russud plant (the preliminary order was issued on August 20, 1911), the Empress Maria should have been launched no later than July, and the Emperor Alexander III - in October 1913 . Their full readiness (presentation for acceptance tests) was planned by August 20, 1915, another four months were allotted for the tests themselves. Such a high pace, not inferior to the pace of advanced European enterprises, was almost sustained: the plant, which itself continued to be built, launched the Empress Maria on October 19, 1913. It was the day of the great triumph of the Black Sea Fleet, the beginning of its new era.
The descent of the dreadnought was the centerpiece of two extremely eventful days on 17 and 18 October. Celebrations in the presence of the Minister of Marine I.K. Grigorovich, who arrived from the capital, and the ships that came from Sevastopol - the cruiser "Kagul", the yacht-cruiser "Almaz" and the gunboat "Terets" - were held according to a special ceremony.
June 30, 1915 "Empress Maria" first appeared on the Sevastopol raid. And the jubilation that engulfed the city and the fleet that day was probably akin to the general joy of those happy days of November 1853, when the 84-gun "Empress Maria" returned to the same raid after a brilliant victory at Sinop under the flag of P.S. Nakhimov . And as an echo of those glorious events, the words of a welcoming telegram sounded, in which the Supreme Commander Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich admonished new ship wish to continue "the traditions of his glorious ancestor in Sinop battle". The entire fleet was looking forward to the moment when the "Empress Maria", going out to sea, would sweep out of it the pretty tired "Goeben" (who received the name "Sultan Selim Yavuz" after a fictitious sale to Turkey, this, in naval jargon, "uncle" with his no less annoying "nephew" - the cruiser "Breslau" ("Midili").
Almost immediately, their own ship tradition was born - an officer who served on the ship for a considerable time was awarded a special saber with an enamel image of the icon of St. Nicholas the Pleasant (it was made by midshipman G.R. Viren) and engraved with the name of the ship on the blade. The charter on the saber, developed by the ship's wardroom, was approved by the fleet commander and approved by the naval minister.
From July 9 to July 23, 1915, the Empress Maria was in the dry dock of Emperor Nicholas II in Panaiotova Balka (now the Northern Dock). The propellers, deadwoods, kingstones were examined on the ship, the sides and bottom plating were cleaned and painted with the Moravia patented anti-fouling composition (this composition had a dark green tint, which gave the ships of the Black Sea Fleet a characteristic color scheme).
The dreadnoughts were still left without the obviously necessary structural protection. Fortrals were tested against minefields, and nets against torpedoes. The device for their setting and automatic cleaning was installed in accordance with the patent of the English inventor Kemp: ONZiV acquired a license for its production with the right to use it on all ships built in Russia. As a last resort, to force minefields ahead of the dreadnoughts, it was supposed to launch Sinop and Rostislav, for which protective caissons were already being prepared.

But…..
At dawn on October 7 (20), 1916, Sevastopol was awakened by a series of explosions in the inner roadstead. The battleship "Empress Maria" - the first of the three Black Sea dreadnoughts, which entered service during the ongoing World War - suffered a catastrophe.

There were (and even now) versions of the explosion on the ship - plenty.

When the battleship capsized during the catastrophe, the multi-ton turrets of the ship's 305-mm guns fell off the battle pins and sank. Shortly before the Great Patriotic War these towers were raised by the Epronians,

When creating the railway transporters TM-3-12, 305-mm machine tools and some other mechanisms taken from the Empress Maria's three-gun turrets, as well as electric motors that were dismantled during the modernization of the cellars of the battleship Paris Commune, went into action.

The famous 30th coastal battery (BB No. 30) was armed with four 305-mm guns, 52 calibers long. Of these, three (No. 142, 145 and 158) had an elongated chamber of the Military Department (gun brand "SA"). Fourth gun (№149) , had a chamber shortened by 220 mm, like the guns of the Naval Department (make "MA"). This was revealed only during test firing in 1934. It was this gun No. 149 and was removed from the "Empress Maria". Filmed first, back in 1928 or 1929.
And in view of the fact that the diversity of guns did not have a special effect on dispersion during salvo firing, the commission for accepting the battery decided to leave the gun in place, but use charges specially selected for its weight.

The fate of the commanders

In August 1916, there was a change of battleship commanders. Prince Trubetskoy was appointed head of the mine brigade, and Captain 1st Rank Ivan Semyonovich Kuznetsov took command of the Empress Maria. After the death of the battleship, he was put on trial.
The verdict on his punishment was to take effect after the end of the war. But the revolution broke out, and the sailors delivered their verdict: the former commander of the Empress Maria, without trial or investigation, along with other officers of the Black Sea Fleet, was shot on December 15, 1917 on Malakhov Hill. It is also buried there, no one knows where.

Model

The model was built from scratch.
Patterns for the manufacture of the case frame for the model were kindly provided to me by Alexei Kolomiytsev.
And in the manufacture of all other structures, he used literature and the Internet.

During the construction of the model, the following literature was used:
- AJ-Press - Encyklopedia Okretow Wojennych 30 - Pancerniki typu Impieratrica Maria
- Ships of the Fatherland, issue 02. "Linear ships of the Empress Maria type" (Gangut-SPb library, 1993)
- Aizenberg B.A., Kostrichenko V.V. "Dreadnoughts of the Black Sea" (Novorossiysk, 1998)
- Vinogradov S.E. "The Last Giants" (St. Petersburg, 1999)
- Vinogradov S.E. "The battleship "Empress Maria"" (St. Petersburg, 2000)
- Vinogradov S.E. "Empress Maria" - return from the depths (St. Petersburg, 2002)
- Melnikov R.M. "Battleships of the "Empress Maria" type" (midship frame No. 81, 2003)
- Aizenberg B.A., Kostrichenko V.V. Battleship "Empress Maria". Main secret Russian fleet" (M: Eksmo, 2010)

Also, during the construction of the model, information was used from open sources on the Internet, in particular from the resources:
- http://flot.sevastopol.info/ship/linkor/impmariya.htm
- http://www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/12061/
- http://kreiser.unoforum.pro/?0-25-0
- http://www.dogswar.ru/forum/viewforum.php?f=8
- http://tsushima.su/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5346

Partially, this information was used by me as a reference material, and some quotes from the listed literature and from the above sites were used by me when compiling this explanatory note.
And, of course, photographs of both the ship itself and its models built in different time And different people.

As with the construction of previous models, all sorts of different materials came to hand, but mostly Evergreen plastic. Sheets of various thicknesses, curly bars, tubes and tubules…. Well, any improvised materials from the apartment, even straws for a cocktail, went into action. Acupuncture needles helped a lot (there are such procedures).
The GK towers were taken from the remains of my models of the "Sevastopol" series.
All turning products for the model were made for me by Vladimir Dudarev, for which many thanks to him!
Hull - standard: DP, a set of frames, stuffing with foam and putty with ordinary construction putty.
Deck - small-radial veneer with a thickness of only 0.4mm, Plastic base 0.75mm,
And then, obviously, the most interesting part of all this construction went on: the application of strips of Munz metal to the deck, which prevented the detachment of the deck flooring when firing from the main caliber guns.
I applied strips of münz metal to the deck as before -