Dekabrist-class submarine
D-3 Krasnogvardyeyets on a Soviet stamp
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Class overview | |
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Name | Dekabrist |
Builders |
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Operators | Soviet Navy |
Preceded by | Bars class (Imperial Russian Navy) |
Succeeded by | Leninets class |
Built | 1927-1929 |
In service | 1928-1958 |
Planned | 6 |
Completed | 6 |
Lost | 4 |
Retired | 1 |
Preserved | 1 |
General characteristics | |
Type | diesel/electric-powered attack submarine |
Displacement |
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Length | 76.00 m (249 ft 4 in) |
Beam | 6.5 m (21 ft) |
Draught | 3.80 m (12.5 ft) |
Propulsion |
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Speed |
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Range |
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Test depth | 295 ft (90 m) |
Complement | 53 officers and crew |
Armament |
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The Dekabrist class, also known as Series I, were the first class of
Of the six vessels built, two survived World War II, and one submarine of the class is now a museum ship.
Design and construction
A set of performance and design criteria for the new submarine type, known as an "operational-tactical requirement", was formulated in 1923,[
Although
Regardless of exactly what information the Soviet delegation obtained, they acquired some insights into Italian submarine technology: most obviously, while the Soviet fleet consisted of boats of "single-hull" construction in which equipment such as ballast tanks was largely contained inside the
Many parallels to the Italian design tradition can be identified in the new Dekabrist design, particularly in the hull structure and ballast arrangements: the heavy gauge of the pressure hull, designed to withstand depths of 90 meters (and constructed using high-quality armour plate from scrapped battle cruisers),[11] the double-hull design, which enclosed the pressure hull in a separate "light hull" and housed the main ballast tanks in the space in between,[12] the division of the interior of the submarine into multiple watertight compartments (though as the design evolved, the original Italian-style spherical bulkheads, designed to maxmise the integrity of key compartments, were replaced with flat circular ones),[12] the use of Italian-style ballast tanks, which was expected to speed up diving time,[13] and the addition of a crash dive tank amidships, which as Bazilevsky recounts was misinterpreted as being designed to dive quickly from periscope depth rather than directly from the surface, and reduced in relative size compared with the one in the Italian blueprints, though it proved possible to scale it up again when its intended purpose was discovered.[14][12] At 76 meters in length, and with a surfaced displacement of around 1,000 tons, they were significantly larger than any earlier submarines in the Soviet fleet (or any built in Imperial Russia), though not as large as the new Italian Balilla class. Their quoted range of over 7,000 nautical miles was also a dramatic improvement, although not quite as impressive as that of the larger Balilla.
That said, it is clear that the Dekabrist was not simply a copy of an Italian design, but a synthesis of Italian concepts and existing Soviet knowledge, although the most easily recognizable native features are ones that were not strictly necessary in the new design. The
Armament consisted of a heavy forward salvo of six torpedo launchers in the bow, and two more at the stern,[11] designed for the 21-inch torpedoes which had become the standard international calibre, though until a suitable weapon entered production, older 18-inch torpedoes had to be carried, using special inserts to hold them in place.[16] As originally designed, each submarine was to have two 4-inch guns in streamlined gun shields which formed fairings at the front and back of the conning tower, but the configuration was subsequently modified in imitation of the British L-class submarine, with a single forward-facing gun on a raised platform protected by a high bulwark, designed to make it easier to fight the gun in heavy seas.[17] A new anti-aircraft version of the gun was also adopted.[18]
An unusual design feature inherited from pre-revolutionary designs was an anchor designed to allow the submarine to secure itself against the seabed while submerged, though on the Dekabrist class this caused alarming incidents in early trials, and may never have been used subsequently.[19]
An order of six boats was divided equally between the
The initial dockyard trials of the type were not entirely successful. Early diving trials on the Revolutsioner in March 1930 revealed that the boat listed sharply to one side during diving, a problem which the designers knew had also been encountered by double-hulled German designs like U-139.[21] Similar problems were encountered on Dekabrist two months later, with the boat listing to port and then sharply overcorrecting to starboard. Although no agreement could be reached on the precise scientific reasons, an acceptable solution was found by separating the ballast tanks more strictly into port and starboard units which flooded separately and thus more symmetrically.[16][21] Bazilevsky later insisted that the only real problem was an asymmetrical weight distribution, which could be corrected by a small quantity of ballast, but which had not been detected at the start of the trial due to a miscalibrated inclinometer.[22] Information on diving speed is hard to come by.[citation needed] However they were reported to be good sea-boats, and reached speeds of 15.3 kn (surface) and 8.7 kn (submerged) on trials.[23]
Service history
In May 1933 the three Baltic boats were transferred to the Northern Fleet, in the Arctic Ocean, via the White Sea–Baltic Canal, and are said to have showed high seaworthiness in polar circumstances,[citation needed] although D-1 was lost with her entire crew in a diving accident on November 13, 1940, in Motovsky Gulf.
The other five were in service at the start of the
The Spartakovets served throughout with the
Ships
Number | Ship | English translation | Builder | Launched | Notes&Fate |
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D-1 | Dekabrist (ru) Декабрист |
A member of the Decembrist revolt | Leningrad
|
3 November 1928 | Lost in accident 13 November 1940 in Motovsky Gulf near Murmansk during training mission. |
D-2 | Narodovolets (ru) Народоволец |
A member of Narodnaya Volya | Leningrad
|
19 May 1929[25] | Sank German merchant ship Jacobus Fritzen.[24] Decommissioned 1958 but from 1956 to 1987 was based in Kronstadt and served as a training ship. Finally, in 1989 on completion of the reconstruction was installed on shore as a memorial museum in St Petersburg.[26] |
D-3 | Krasnogvardyeyets(ru) Красногвардеец |
Red Guardsman | Leningrad
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12 July 1929 | Lost after 10 June 1942 off Norway, possibly due to mines. |
D-4 | Revolutsioner (ru) Революционер |
Revolutionary | Marti Yard, Nikolayev
|
12 March 1929 | Sunk German merchant ships Boy Federson, Santa Fé and Bulgarian merchant Varna.[27] Lost off western Crimea after 1 December 1943, possibly due to mines. |
D-5 | Spartakovets (ru) Спартаковец |
Follower of Spartacus | Marti Yard, Nikolayev
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12 October 1929 | Sank Turkish sailing vessel Koiboglu on 8 December 1942. Broken up at Sevastopol after 18 January 1956. |
D-6 | Yakobinets (ru) Якобинец |
Jacobin | Marti Yard, Nikolayev
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15 November 1930 | While under repairs, destroyed and scuttled 12 November 1941 at the Sevastopol dockyard by her own crew to prevent capture by the advancing Germans. Raised after the war and broken up. |
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Budzbona and Radziemski, p. 84.
- ^ a b Westwood, p. 155
- ^ Rohwer and Monakov, pp. 32-33
- ^ Budzbona and Radziemski, pp. 84-85.
- ^ Rohwer and Monakov, p. 36, and n. 48, citing Westwood pp. 153-159, plus V.I. Dmitriev Sovetskoe podvodnoe korable-stroenie (Moscow 1990), pp. 32-66, and Istoriya Otechstvennogo Suostroeniya, vol. IV, ed. I.D. Spasskii (St Petersburg 1996), pp. 102-11 (it is not clear whether either of these references furnishes additional information relating this identification, or if the citations pertain to other adjacent information in the text).
- ^ Breyer, p. 185.
- ^ Rohwer and Monakov, p. 34, and n. 41, citing V.I. Dmitriev, Sovetskoe podvodnoe korable-stroenie (Moscow 1990) pp. 32-63 and V.N Burov, Otechstvennoe voennoe korabl'stroenie v tret'em stoleti svoei istorii (St Petersburg 1995) pp. 73-79.
- ^ Rohwer and Monakov, p. 36 and n. 48, specifically refer to the Giovanni Bausan of this class; presumably this is based on one of the cited sources, V.I. Dmitriev Sovetskoe podvodnoe korable-stroenie (Moscow 1990), pp. 32-66, and Istoriya Otechstvennogo Suostroeniya, vol. IV, ed. I.D. Spasskii (St Petersburg 1996), pp. 102-11.
- ^ a b c Brescia, p. 159.
- ^ Fontenoy, p. 123
- ^ a b c Budzbona and Radziemski, p. 86.
- ^ a b c d e Budzbona and Radziemski, p. 85
- ^ a b c Westwood, p. 156
- ^ Westwood, pp. 156-7.
- ^ Budzbona and Radziemski, p. 88.
- ^ a b Westwood, p. 157.
- ^ Budzbona and Radziemski, pp. 87, 91.
- ^ Westwood, p. 158
- ^ [1] Archived April 9, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Budzbona and Radziemski, p. 94.
- ^ Budzbona and Radziemski, p. 95.
- ^ a b Conway p.332
- ^ a b "D-2 / Narodovolyets". uboat.net. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
- ^ Yeoman. "Your most complete source for Museum Ships Worldwide!". museumships.us. Retrieved 2021-07-24.
- ^ "Narodovolets D-2, submarine memorial complex". Saint Petersburg Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
- ^ "D-4 / Revolutsyoner". uboat.net. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
References
- Maurizio Brescia Mussolini s Navy: A Reference Guide to the Regia Marina 1930-1945 (2021) Seaforth, ISBN 978-1-84832-115-1
- Siegfried Breyer, Soviet Warship Development: 1917-1937 (1992) Conway ISBN 0 85177 604 3
- Prezmysław Budzbona and Jan Radziemski, "The Beginnings of Solviet Naval Power", Warship 2020, ed. John Jordan (2020), Osprey, pp. 82–101 ISBN 978-1-4728-4071-4
- Paul E. Fontenoy Submarines: An Illustrated History of Their Impact (2007) ABC-CLIO Santa Barbara CA ISBN 978-1-85109-563-6
- Gardiner, Robert; Chesneau, Roger, eds. (1980). Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-146-7.
- Jurgen Rohwer ad Mikhail S. Monakov, Stalin's Ocean-going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding (2001) Frank Cass, London and New York ISBN 0-7146-4895-7
- J.N. Westwood, Russian Naval Construction, 1905-45 (1994) Macmillan, Basingstoke and London ISBN 978-1-349-12460-2
- Vladimir Yakubov and Richard Worth, Raising the Red Banner (2008) Spellmount ISBN 978-1-86227-450-1
External links
- (in English) Steel Navy Archived 2007-08-16 at the Wayback Machine
- (in English) Info from Russian Museums
- (in English) Narodovolets D-2, submarine memorial complex, Article, Saint Petersburg Encyclopedia,
- (in Russian) Article on Morflot website
- (in English) Uboat.net Website