Russian battleship Knyaz Suvorov

The Knyaz Suvorov (Russian: Князь Суворов) was a Borodino-class pre-dreadnought battleship of the Russian Imperial Navy, built by Baltic Works, St Petersburg. Laid down in July 1901, she was launched in September 1902 and completed in September 1904. This ship was named after the 18th-century Russian general Alexander Suvorov. Her only action was at the Battle of Tsushima. During the battle, Knyaz Suvorov had to break off from the main battle line after a Japanese shell hit her control room, killing her helmsman and wounding her captain and Admiral Zinovy Rozhdestvensky. She managed to enter a fog where her crew extinguished several fires. However, she soon came under attack again and was sunk by Japanese torpedo boats.

Description

Knyaz Suvorov was 389 feet 5 inches (118.69 m) long at the waterline and 397 feet 3 inches (121.1 m) long overall, with a beam of 76 feet 1 inch (23.2 m) and a draft of 29 feet 2 inches (8.9 m), 38 inches (965 mm) more than designed. Her normal displacement was 14,415 long tons (14,646 t), almost 900 long tons (914 t) more than her designed displacement of 13,516 long tons (13,733 t).^[1]

Two 4-cylinder vertical triple expansion steam engines drove four-bladed propellers, with twenty Belleville water-tube boilers providing steam to the engines at a pressure of 19 standard atmospheres (1,925 kPa; 279 psi). The engines and boilers were both built by the Baltic Works. The engines had a total designed output of 15,800 indicated horsepower (11,782 kW), but they produced 16,378 ihp (12,213 kW) on trials and gave a top speed of 17.64 knots (32.67 km/h; 20.30 mph). At full load she carried 1,350 long tons (1,372 t) of coal that provided her a range of 2,590 nautical miles (4,800 km; 2,980 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). She had four steam-driven dynamos, each with a capacity of 150 kW, and two auxiliary generators with a capacity of 64 kW each.^[2]

Knyaz Suvorov's 12 inch 40 caliber guns were mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one each fore and aft. They had a rate of fire of about one round per minute. Sixty rounds per gun were carried. The twelve 45-caliber 6-inch (152 mm) guns were mounted in six electrically powered twin-gun turrets carried on the upper deck. They had a practical rate of fire of approximately three rounds per minute and were provided with 180 rounds per gun. Four of the twenty 75-millimeter (3.0 in) guns used against torpedo boats were mounted in casemates just below the forward main gun turret, two on each side. These guns were placed well above the waterline for use in any weather, unlike the remaining sixteen guns, which were mounted in casemates one deck lower and distributed over the length of the ship, close to the water. This was graphically demonstrated when Knyaz Suvorov's sister ship Imperator Aleksander III made a high-speed turn during her trials, heeling 15°, and began taking water through the lower casemates. Each gun had 300 rounds available. All but four of her 47-millimeter (1.9 in) Hotchkiss guns were removed before she was completed and the remaining guns were used as saluting guns. She carried four 15-inch (381 mm) torpedo tubes, one above water in the bow and one in the stern with two torpedoes each, and a submerged tube on each side forward with three torpedoes each. Two of these were removed before 1904, although it is not known which ones were retained.^[3]

Service

The Knyaz Suvorov had a short existence, serving for less than nine months within the Imperial Russian Navy. She was completed at the beginning of September and had virtually no comprehensive sea trials. As a result, her crew was newly assigned and largely inexperienced.^[4] On 26 September 1904 Suvorov participated in a naval review for the Tsar. On 2 October, she left Russia together with the rest of the "Second Pacific Squadron" to the Far East as the flagship of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, having to take a long, nine month journey around the west coast of Africa, which was long and complicated. She arrived in Denmark on 4 October, where the fleet stopped for repairs. The icebreaker Yermak started to perform extreme maneuvers on the approach to a Danish port, and had several shells fired across her bow to warn her to stop. The ship was later sent back to Libau. Due to the orders of Rozhestvensky, the squadron was overloaded with coal at Madagascar so as not to waste time coaling from neutral ships whilst in Asia. This lowered the ships further into the water than their designed weight, putting the main armor belt under the waterline and exposing the lighter armored belt, which would prove fatal during her career, as the bulk of shells at Tsushima would have hit the main armor belt had it not been underwater.^[4]

Knyaz Suvorov was the flagship of Admiral Rozhestvensky at the Battle of Tsushima, the only engagement she ever served in.^[5] Due to her position as the lead ship in the Russian battle line, Suvorov opened fire her twin bow guns at the Japanese battleship Mikasa, the flagship of the opposing fleet, marking the first shots of the battle.^[5] Tōgō Heihachirō, the commander of the Japanese fleet, ordered both Mikasa and Asahi to open fire on Suvorov, which, due to her position at the front of the Russian battle line, was a major target and was hit by Japanese 12-inch shells, disabling both main gun turrets and showering shrapnel amongst the deck, wounding and killing many officers, along with ripping open hoses that were planned to be used to start fighting the fires that had broken out amongst the ship.^[5] About an hour after the battle began, a Japanese shell disabled the steering equipment of Suvorov, forcing her to execute a sharp turn that nearly made her ram the ships behind her, Sissoi Veliki and Navarin, exiting the line in a circular movement.^[6] About a quarter of an hour later, a shell entered the conning tower of Suvorov, wounding her captain, killing both helmsman and knocking Rozhdestvensky unconscious.^[6]

Suvorov started to limp off to the southwest at 9 knots, and soon came under fire by several Japanese battleships. The captain of Imperator Aleksander III decided to recreate the charge executed by Retvizan at the Battle of the Yellow Sea to save the Tsesarevich, and turned his ship towards the Japanese battleline.^[7] With the enemy battleships distracted, Suvorov managed to limp off into the fog and started to fight fires caused during the battle. As Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov’s 3rd Division, which consisted of older coastal-defense ships, attacked several Japanese armored cruisers which Togo had sent out to sink the remaining battleships, teams on Suvorov and Imperator Aleksander III were able to put out fires caused in the battle.^[7] Soon after, she rejoined the tail end of the remainder of the Russian battle line, but could not stay in formation for long, breaking off and starting to head south.^[7] Several minutes later, the Russian destroyer Bychok, came and took off most of the officers on Suvorov, including Admiral Rozhestvensky, leaving a midshipman in command of Suvorov as Bychok went to rescue the crew of the Oslyabya.^[7] With the destroyer slipping over the smoke filled horizon, four torpedo boats of the 11th Japanese Torpedo Flotilla closed in on the crippled Suvorov, now 15 kilometers away from the Russian fleet.^[7] The midshipman commanding the Suvorov tried to fend off the torpedo boats with the only operable 75 millimeter gun located in the stern of the ship, carrying the shells from the magazines by hand while seriously wounded, but failed to reduce the enemy attack.^[7] Soon, one 18 and two to four 14 inch torpedoes struck the ship, surrounding her in a cloud of yellow smoke and sinking her, leaving 20 survivors plus the men rescued by Bychok.^[8]

References

Bibliography

• Antony Preston, World's Worst Warships (2002) Conways Maritime Press
• Forczyk, Robert. Russian Battleship vs Japanese Battleship, Yellow Sea 1904–05. (2009) Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-330-8
• McLaughlin, Stephen (2003). Russian & Soviet Battleships. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-481-4.