The Yekaterina II Class (1883/1889)
Yekaterina Velikaya (Catherine the Great) was the lead ship of a 4-ship class of Black Sea barbette ships. Click here for a fabulously detailed enlarged view of the top photo, in a new window. With a unique armament layout and mounting system, this was the most original of Russian designs and a final flowering of Russian inventiveness prior to the pre-dreadnought era, when Russian design rather lost its way. The ships mounted six 12" main guns in a triangular layout with 2 twin emplacements under the bridge wings; this arrangement allowed excellent arcs of fire for the forward guns, permitting 4 guns to fire ahead or on broadside whatever the ship's position. The name ship mounted her 12" guns on hydraulic "disappearing gun" carriages. The disappearing gun used the barrels' recoil along with a system of counterweights to fold the barrels below decks, locked in a special reloading position. The guns would then be swung up hydraulically to the firing position, only to "disappear" again when fired. While the system worked well, it was nearly as heavy as a turret mount and much slower-firing. The remaining three ships in the class adopted the same layout but housed their guns in conventional shielded barbettes.
Specifications for the Yekaterina class:
Dimensions: 339'6" x 69' x 28'8" Displacement: 11,032 tons std, 11,396 tons deep laden. Armament: (6) 12"/40, (7) 6" (130mm), (8) 47mm guns. (7) torpedo tubes. Armor: Compound type. 16"/3.3" belt; 12" redoubt; 12"/9" conning tower; 3"/1.5" deck except all steel armor on Georgy Pobiedonosets, central citadel style, no waterline belt. Propulsion: (Yekaterina & Chesma): 14 coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) vertical compound steam engines developing 9,100 shp, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 15 kts. (Sinop & Gyorgy): 16 coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) vertical triple-expansion steam engines developing 13,000 hp, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 16 kts. Crew: 650 - 674.
Ships in class: Yekaterina II · Chesma · Sinop · Gyorgy Pobiedonosets.
Metric specifications:Dimensions: 103.5m x 21.03m x 8.76m. Displacement: 11,032 tons std, 11,396 tons deep laden. Armament: (6) 305 mm/40, (7) 130mm, and (8) 47mm guns. (7) 15" torpedo tubes. Armor: Compound type. 406/83 mm belt; 305 mm redoubt; 305/229 mm conning tower; 76/38 mm deck except nickel-steel armor on Georgy Pobiedonosets, central citadel style, no waterline belt. Propulsion: (Yekaterina & Chesma): 14 coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) vertical compound steam engines developing 6,786 kW, twin screw. Speed: 27.8 km/hr. (Sinop & Gyorgy): 16 coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) vertical triple-expansion steam engines developing 9,694 kW, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 29.6 km/hr. Crew: 650 - 674.
Built at Nikolaiev for Black Sea service against the Turk, Yekaterina took the unconscionably long time of 7 years to build and fit out. The first three ships were all completed in 1889-90. They were quite adequate deterrants to Turkey, being by far the most powerful ships on the Black Sea at the time of their commissioning. The Sinop was the first battleship in the world designed with triple-expansion engines. Together with the small battleship Rostislav, they formed the strength of the Black Sea fleet until the troublesome advent of the Potemkin in 1905. The Yekaterinas were all involved in the nonviolent confrontations with the Potemkin depicted in the Einsenstein film. The class remained in commission until a few years after the Russo-Japanese War. They were withdrawn from service in 1907 except the Sinop which eked out another 15 years as a harbor guard ship. Chesma was selected as a target ship for the Black Sea Fleet; after taking unbelievable amounts of abuse, she went to the bottom in 1913. The name ship went to the breakers in the early Twenties, melted down to fuel the first Five Year Plan.
Aerial observation for the purposes of reconnaissance and gunnery was coming into its own by the turn of the century. Small blimps were used for this purpose in the Russian navy; the 1905 photo of Chesma at left was snapped from a tethered balloon being towed by the ship.
Gyorgy Pobiedonosets (St. George the Victorious) was a somewhat improved version of the design laid down in 1889 and commissioned in 1894. She took advantage of such technological advances as the triple-expansion engine and hardened all-steel armor. The ship was noteworthy for its sympathetic role in the Potemkin mutiny in 1905 in which the crew first mutinied, then went along with a counter-revolution by Tsarist loyalists, abandoning the Potemkin. By this time, the foremast had succumbed to Russia's version of the Japanese "pagoda syndrome," being built up with fighting tops and a circular gunhouse (standard in the Russian fleet and seen on Potemkin at the time) contining a half-dozen machine-guns for close work -- gunning down mutineers and revolutionaries, if necessary. The ship was still active in WWI, was captured by the Whites and used in support of their counterrevolution in Ukraine. Eventually she was evacuated to the Mediterranean and joined the small fleet of ex-White armor rusting away in the Tunisian colonial port of Bizerta. She was scrapped there by the French starting in the mid-Twenties.
A Yekaterina Class Mini Gallery
Quarter view of Yekaterina. Her big guns are folded up below decks.
The Chesma from the bow. There was one wing barbette under each bridge wing and a third on the centerline aft of the superstructure. Yekaterina's guns were mounted in the same places, but ordinarily were stored below decks in the loading position. As you can see, Chesma's gunners were protected inside elaborate gunhouses of the sort that would soon be called turrets.
Details of bow and stern underwater hull: The Chesma on her launch day, June 5, 1886.
Gyorgy Pobiedonosets moored off Sevastopol, Russia's principal navy base on the Black Sea.
Gyorgy Pobiedonosets at her mooring at Sevastopol. The ship's crew mutinied in response to the Potemkin mutiny, but loyalist officers later succeded in wresting the ship back and grounding her at Odessa. This failure sounded the knell for the Potemkin uprising.
Main battery of the Gyorgy Pobiedonosets.
Years after the White defeat in the Russian Civil War, Gyorgy Pobiedonosets lingered at Bizerta, part of a rusting Tsarist fleet that also included the dreadnought General Alexeiev.
The Chesma meets her doom as a target ship, 1913.
