Russian battleship Slava
Slava
| |
History | |
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Russian Empire | |
Name | Slava |
Operator | Imperial Russian Navy |
Ordered | 30 January 1900[Note 1] |
Builder | Baltic Shipyard, Saint Petersburg |
Laid down | 1 November 1902 |
Launched | 29 August 1903 |
Commissioned | October 1905 |
Stricken | 29 May 1918 |
Fate | Scuttled near the island of Muhu , 17 October 1917 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Borodino-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
Displacement | |
Length | 397 ft 3 in (121.1 m) |
Beam | 76 ft 1 in (23.2 m) |
Draft | 29 ft 2 in (8.9 m) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion | 2 shafts, 2 vertical triple-expansion steam engines |
Speed | 17.5 knots (32.4 km/h; 20.1 mph) |
Range | 2,590 nmi (4,800 km; 2,980 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
Complement | 846 |
Armament |
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Armor |
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Slava (Russian: Слава "Glory") was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Imperial Russian Navy, the last of the five Borodino-class battleships. Completed too late to participate in the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War, she survived while all of her sister ships were either sunk during the battle or surrendered to the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Serving in the
Description
The ship was powered by two 4-cylinder
Slava's 40-
Wartime modifications
She was reportedly fitted with two 47 mm anti-aircraft (AA) guns during the war, but carried only four 3-inch (76 mm) AA guns in early 1917. Her light armament had been reduced to twelve 75 mm guns by that same date. While she was laid up over the winter of 1916 at Helsinki, the elevation of her main guns was increased to a maximum of 25° which increased their range to 23,000 yards (21,000 m).[4]
Service
Slava was built by the
The Baltic Fleet only had four pre-dreadnoughts in service, as the Second Brigade of Battleships, when World War I began, although the four dreadnoughts of the Gangut class were almost finished. After they were completed and could defend the mouth of the Gulf of Finland, Slava sailed through the Irbe Strait on 31 July 1915 to assist Russian forces defending the Gulf of Riga. More specifically she was to support the Imperial Russian Army with her guns and to defend the gulf against German naval forces.[7]
Battle of the Gulf of Riga
Barely a week later, on 8 August, the Germans began to sweep the
They tried again on 16 August, this time with the dreadnoughts
The German withdrawal allowed Slava, after repairs, to switch to her other task and support the army with gunfire. During one of these missions, as she was bombarding German positions near Tukums on 25 September 1915, she was hit in the conning tower while at anchor, killing her captain and five others. McLaughlin attributes the hit to German field artillery,[11] but Nekrasov quotes German accounts that attribute it to a 10-kilogram (22 lb) bomb dropped by one of a pair of German seaplanes.[14] Slava remained in position and resumed her bombardment. She continued to support the Army until the water in the Gulf of Riga threatened to freeze over at which time she retired to the port of Kuivastu to winter over.[15] While still in port she was hit by three light bombs dropped by a seaplane on 12 April 1916; these did little material damage, but killed seven sailors. On 2 July she resumed her support of the army with a bombardment of advancing German troops despite sustaining one hit by an 8-inch (203 mm) shell on her waterline armor that caused no damage. She repeated these missions a number of times in July and August.[16] These annoyed the Germans enough that they attempted to sink Slava with a coordinated ambush by the submarine UB-31 and low-flying torpedo bombers as she responded to a feint by German cruisers on 12 September, but all their torpedoes missed.[17] This was the first attack by torpedo bombers against a moving battleship.[18]
Battle of Moon Sound
Slava was held back during the initial stages of the German landings (
The German minesweepers made good progress, despite minor damage from shell splinters and numerous near misses by Slava, Grazhdanin, Bayan, and the Russian shore batteries. During this period Slava's front turret became inoperable when a bronze rack and pinion gear bent so that the gear wheel could not be moved. Only eleven shots had been fired between the two guns in the turret before the breakdown. Slava and her consorts were ordered north to allow the crews to eat lunch, but returned to the fray and opened fire on the minesweepers again at 10:04 with her rear turret at an approximate range of 12,000 yards (10,973 m). The minesweepers had cleared a channel to the north while the Russians were eating and the dreadnoughts took advantage of it to engage the Russian pre-dreadnoughts. König opened fire on Slava at 10:14 and hit her with three shells from her third salvo. The first hit Slava's bow, 10–12 feet (3.0–3.7 m) below the waterline, and exploded in the bow dynamo room, flooding that room, the forward 12-inch magazine and other bow compartments, while the second penetrated the capstan flat. The ship took on 1,130 metric tons (1,112 long tons) of water which gave her a list of 8°, later reduced to 4° by counter-flooding. This also increased her forward draft to about 32 feet (9.8 m). The third shell hit the port side armor abreast the engine room, but failed to penetrate. Two more shells struck her at 10:24 in the superstructure near the forward funnel. They damaged a six-inch magazine and the forward stokehold (boiler room) and started a fire which was put out after about fifteen minutes. However, the forward left six-inch magazine was flooded as a precaution. At 10:39 two more shells hit her, killing three men in the boiler room and flooding a coal bunker. Around this time Slava and her compatriots were ordered to retire to the north while Bayan trailed behind to divert fire from the battleships.[21]
Slava's draft had increased too much to allow her to use the dredged channel between Hiiumaa Island and Vormsi (Worms) Island so she was ordered to wait until all the other deep-draft ships had entered the channel and then scuttle herself at the channel entrance. However, the Sailors' Committee organized on the ship after the February Revolution had ordered the engine room abandoned for fear of sinking, and she grounded on a shoal southeast of the channel because there was no one to obey the captain's order to stop. A number of destroyers evacuated the crew before the rear 12-inch magazine exploded at 11:58. However this was not deemed sufficient and three destroyers were ordered to torpedo her. Only one of their six torpedoes worked and Slava settled on the shallow bottom with a hole on the starboard side near the funnel.[22] She was officially struck off the navy list on 29 May 1918 by the Soviets[5] and scrapped in 1935 by the Estonians.[23]
Notes
- ^ All dates used in this article are New Style
- ^ Central European Time is used in this section
Citations
- ^ McLaughlin, p. 136
- ^ McLaughlin, pp. 137, 144
- ^ McLaughlin, pp. 142, 295
- ^ McLaughlin, p. 302
- ^ a b McLaughlin, p. 146
- ^ Nekrasov, pp. 9–17
- ^ McLaughlin, p. 298
- ^ Nekrasov, p. 47
- ^ Halpern, pp. 196–197
- ^ Nekrasov, pp. 50–51
- ^ a b McLaughlin, p. 299
- ^ Nekrasov, p. 52
- ^ Halpern, p. 198
- ^ Nekrasov, pp. 60–61
- ^ Nekrasov, pp. 61–62
- ^ Nekrasov, p. 64
- ^ McLaughlin, p. 300
- ^ Nekrasov, p. 67
- ^ Staff, pp. 85, 98–99
- ^ Staff, pp. 110, 112
- ^ Staff, pp. 113–116
- ^ Staff, pp. 116–117
- ^ Budzbon, p. 294
Bibliography
- Budzbon, Przemysław (1985). "Russia". In Gray, Randal (ed.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. pp. 291–325. ISBN 0-85177-245-5.
- Halpern, Paul G. (1995). A Naval History of World War I. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-352-4.
- McLaughlin, Stephen (2003). Russian & Soviet Battleships. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-481-4.
- Nekrasov, George M. (2004). Expendable Glory: A Russian Battleship in the Baltic, 1915–1917. East European Monographs. Vol. 636. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs. ISBN 0-88033-534-3.
- Staff, Gary (2008). Battle for the Baltic Islands 1917: Triumph of the Imperial German Navy. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Maritime. ISBN 978-1-84415-787-7.
- Vinogradov, Sergei (2015). "Letter". Warship International. LII (1): 9–13. ISSN 0043-0374.
- Vinogradov, Sergei & McLaughlin, Stephen (2018). "The Battleship Slava (1903)". In Taylor, Bruce (ed.). The World of the Battleship: The Lives and Careers of Twenty-One Capital Ships of the World's Navies, 1880–1990. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-0-87021-906-1.
External links
- Short article plus photo gallery (in Russian)