Shestovaya mine is a type of naval mine weapon that was used at the end of the 19th century . It was an explosive charge located at the end of a long pole.
Unlike barrage mines (bottom, anchor, floating, etc.), a pole mine was an active attack weapon - it was secretly (usually in the dark) delivered to the side of an enemy ship using small vessels ( mine boats , minosacks , underwater and semi-submarine vessels) and was detonated by a contact or electric fuse .
Pole mines were also armed with large ships - mainly in case of an enemy attempt to deliver a ramming strike, which should have been prevented by the threat of pole mines lowered into the water - but they were not used in combat conditions.
Shestovye mines ceased to be used with the spread of throwing mines and "self-propelled mines" - torpedoes .
Content
- 1 History
- 2 Design
- 3 See also
- 4 notes
- 5 Literature
History
For the first time a pole mine was created and tested in the Russian Empire . In mid-September 1862, during the tests on the Baltic Fleet, the gunboat “ Experience ”, armed with a “mine ram” (as the pole vault was called then), approached the anchored schooner Meteor and blew it up [1] [2] .
"Mining ram" was a powder charge weighing up to one and a half pounds (up to 24 kg), attached to the end of a 15-meter log ( spy ), which served as a continuation of the arm of the armored boat [1] .
The tests were carried out on the initiative and under the leadership of Admiral G. I. Butakov [3] . Then he reported to the Maritime Department:
“With all these experiments, the Commission, under my chairmanship, came to the conclusion that the idea of the destroyers makes it possible for us to have the strongest weapon ever invented, and a charge of 1 pound will produce terrible destruction in the enemy vessel, with complete safety from this for the mine vessel” (TsGA Navy, f. 807, op. 1, d. 58, l. 265). [one]
Pole mines gained their first combat experience during the Civil War in the USA in 1861-1865 .
So, the American pole vault was first successfully used on the Confederate submarine " Hanley " ( Eng. "HLHunley" [1] ). February 17, 1864 she sank the steam corvette of the northerners "Housatonic" ( Eng. "Housatonic" [2] ). The submarine with the entire crew also sank, already on the way back after the attack [4] .
An almost symmetrical response from the northerners followed six months later - on the night of October 27-28, 1864 , a steam-powered longboat equipped with a pole-mine, under the command of Lieutenant Cushing ( Eng. William B. Cushing [3] ) attacked the battleship Southerners "Albemarl" ( Eng. " Albemarle ” [4] ), which stood on the Plymouth roadstead at the mouth of the Roanoke River . The boat team managed to overcome the protective bon from the logs (just disconnecting them) and hit with a pole mine in the underwater part of the battleship. The ship sank within minutes. The boat also died - either from an explosion, or due to the fact that it was drawn by a whirlpool from a sinking armadillo [4] . Lieutenant Cushing and another sailor escaped, the remaining sailors of 13 crew members either died or were captured .
Pole mines were also actively used by Russian sailors during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 . So with the help of pole mines, the Turkish monitor “Seyfi” was sunk by a detachment of mine boats of the Danube Flotilla, and the battleship “Assari-Shevket” was damaged by the boats of the mine transport “Grand Duke Konstantin”.
After the start of the use of torpedoes (the first successful attack (the third in the world, considering unsuccessful combat attempts) took place on January 14, 1878), pole mines began to lose popularity. The last successful use of pole vines took place at the Battle of Fuzhou , with mine boats from French corvettes.
Design
The experiments of G. I. Butakov, conducted in 1862, showed that the distance from the stem to the mine, which is safe for the attacking ship, is 6-8 meters. The total length of the pole ranged from 8 meters (for boats) to 15 (for ships) and up to 18 meters for the heaviest and most powerful mines.
The quantity of necessary explosives was also determined by the first experiments in the order of 20 kg (1-1.5 pounds). At different stages, gunpowder, dynamite or pyroxylin was used as an explosive.
The mine itself, as a rule, was a metal teardrop-shaped or cone-shaped container filled with explosives and put on (or fixed with the help of yokes) on a pole.
The explosion could be caused by a blow or by shorting an electric fuse by the crew of a boat. In Russia, a fuse of the system of the captain of the Russian army Trumberg was used as a shock fuse in Russia.
Poles were used both wooden and composite metal. Fixing the pole on a boat or ship had a movable structure, which made it possible to push the mine from its stowed position into combat and control it (as a lever) both in the plane and in depth. The working depth of the mine was about 2 meters - below the level where the armored belt of armored ships ends.
Usually to control the middle (worn by a boat) mine required an effort of 2-3 people.
By the mid-1870s, the Russian Navy had at least ten types of pole mines. The heaviest was the 140-pound naval mine of Colonel V.F. Petrushevsky’s system (without a pole - 182 kg, charge - 57.5 kg of gunpowder, length - 2200 mm, largest diameter - 790 mm, smallest - 343 mm). Lighter equipped with pyroxylin (from 3.2 to 24.6 kg) [5] . For comparison, the charge of the first Whitehead torpedoes was 27 kg of pyroxylin.
See also
- Towed mine
- Throwing mine
- Sea mine
- Torpedo
- Minosock
- Mine boat
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 Yu. G. Stepanov, I.F. Tsvetkov "The destroyer" Novik "". L .; Shipbuilding, 1981 (Inaccessible link) . Date of treatment July 13, 2009. Archived on September 8, 2009.
- ↑ Marine Encyclopedic Dictionary. St. Petersburg. Shipbuilding. 1993. Volume 2. ISBN 5-7355-0281-6 . Article "Experience"
- ↑ Zolotarev V.A., Kozlov I.A. Three centuries of the Russian fleet, XIX - beginning of XX century. - M .: ACT; SPb .: Polygon, 2004
- ↑ 1 2 Torpedo - or !: The History of Small Torpedo Ships / Ed. ed. A.E. Taras. Compiled by Kalmykov D. I., Kalmykova I. A. - Mn .: Harvest, 1999. ISBN 985-433-419-8
- ↑ Model-Designer 2.98, Marine collection No. 1 of the series "Destroyers and destroyers"
Literature
- Torpedo - pli !: History of small torpedo ships / Comp. D.I. Kalmykov, I.A. Kalmykova; Under the total. ed. A.E. Taras . - Mn. : Harvest , 1999 .-- 368 p. - ISBN 985-433-419-8 .
- Kuzmin A. Notes on the history of torpedo boats . - M. - L .: Military horizon NKVMF USSR, 1939 .-- 136 p.