Bayan-class cruiser

The Bayan class was a group of four armored cruisers built for the Imperial Russian Navy around the beginning of the 20th century. Two of the ships were built in France, as Russian shipyards had no spare capacity. The lead ship, RUSSIAN CRUISER Bayan, was built several years earlier than the later three. The ship participated in several of the early naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, and provided naval gunfire support for the Imperial Russian Army until she struck a mine. Bayan was trapped in harbor during the subsequent Siege of Port Arthur, and was sunk by Japanese artillery. She was salvaged and put into service with the Imperial Japanese Navy with the name of Aso. She mostly served as a training ship before she was converted into a minelayer in 1920. The ship was sunk as a target in 1932.

Her three sisters were all assigned to the Baltic Fleet. RUSSIAN CRUISER Pallada was the first ship lost by the Russians during World War I when she was sunk by a German submarine in October 1914. The two surviving ships were modified to lay mines, and participated in the Battle of Åland Islands in 1915 and the German invasion of the Estonian islands in 1917. They were decommissioned in 1918 and sold for scrap in 1922.

Background
The Bayan class marked a departure from the previous Russian armored cruisers, as they were smaller ships designed to serve as scouts for the fleet rather than as commerce raiders. Authorized in the 1896–1902 building program, the design was outsourced to a French shipyard, Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, because Russian shipyards were already at full capacity. Negotiations began in March 1897, and a contract was signed in May 1898 for one ship with delivery in 36 months.

The Navy was reasonably pleased with the first ship, Bayan, and decided to order another cruiser after the start of the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904. Russian shipyards were still unavailable, so the Navy decided to simply order a repeat with minor modifications based on war experience. This was an attempt to minimize the work load on the Naval Technical Committee (Morskoi tekhnicheskii komitet), but they proved to require more attention than planned and a contract was not signed until 20 April 1905. The contract specified that all drawings would be turned over to allow for the construction of two identical ships in St. Petersburg, using newly available slipways. These changes generally added weight and the armor was reduced in thickness to compensate, although the change from Harvey armor to more resistant Krupp armor meant that there was little actual loss in protection.

Description
The Bayan-class ships were 449 ft long overall and 443 ft between perpendiculars. They had a maximum beam of 57 ft, a draft of 22 ft and displaced 7750 - 7802 LT. The ships had a crew of 573 officers and men.

They had two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft, using steam provided by 26 Belleville boilers. Designed for a total of 16500 ihp intended to propel the cruisers at 21 kn, the engines actually developed 17400 - 19320 ihp during their sea trials and drove the ships to maximum speeds of 20.9 - 22.55 kn. They could carry a maximum of 1100 - 1200 LT of coal, which gave the first Bayan a range of 3900 nmi at 10 kn.

Armament
The main armament of the Bayan-class ships consisted of two 8 in 45-caliber guns in single-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. The guns fired a 87.8 kg shell at a muzzle velocity of 891 m/s. At an elevation of +15°, they had a range of 11163 m. The ships' eight 45-caliber 6 in Canet Model 1891 quick-firing (QF) guns were mounted in casemates on the sides of the ship's hull. They fired shells that weighed 41.4 kg with a muzzle velocity of 792.5 m/s. They had a range of 11523 m when fired at an elevation of +20°.

A number of smaller guns were carried for close-range defense against torpedo boats. These included twenty 50-caliber 75 mm Canet Model 1891 QF guns. Eight of these were mounted in casemates in the side of the hull and in the superstructure. The remaining guns were located above the 6-inch gun casemates in pivot mounts with gun shields. The gun fired 4.91 kg shells to a range of about 7869 m, at an elevation of +20° degrees with a muzzle velocity of 862 m/s. The Bayan class also mounted eight (Bayan) or four 47 mm Hotchkiss guns in the three later ships. They fired a 3.2 lb shell. In addition, Bayan was fitted with two 37 mm Hotchkiss guns that fired a 1.1 lb shell at a muzzle velocity of 1540 ft/s.

Bayan was equipped with two submerged 15 in torpedo tubes, one on each broadside, while those of the three later ships were 18 in in size.

Protection
The waterline belt of the Bayan-class ships was 175 - 200 mm thick over her machinery spaces. Fore and aft, it reduced to 90 - 100 mm. The upper armor strake and the armor protecting the casemates was 60 mm thick. The thickness of the armored deck was 50 mm; over the central battery it was a single plate, but elsewhere it consisted of a 30 mm plate over two 10 mm plates. The gun turret sides were protected by 132 - 150 mm of armor and their roofs were 1.2 inches thick. The barbettes were protected by armor plates 170 mm thick. The sides of the conning tower were 136 - 160 mm thick.

Service
Bayan was assigned to the First Pacific Squadron after completion, and based at Port Arthur from the end of 1903. She suffered minor damage during the Battle of Port Arthur at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War and participated in the action of 13 April 1904, when Vice Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō successfully lured out a portion of the Pacific Squadron, including Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov's flagship, the battleship RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Petropavlovsk. When Makarov spotted the five Japanese battleships, he turned back for Port Arthur, and Petropavlovsk struck a minefield and quickly sank after a mine detonated one of her magazines. After bombarding Imperial Japanese Army positions on 27 July, Bayan struck a mine and was under repair for the next month or so. She was subsequently trapped in Port Arthur and sunk at her mooring by Japanese howitzer shells on 8 December.

The ship was refloated by Japanese engineers the following year; repairs, re-boilering, and the replacement of her armament with Japanese weapons took until 1908 to complete. Renamed Aso in Japanese service, she initially served as a training ship before she was converted into a minelayer in 1920. Aso was decommissioned on 1 April 1930 and renamed Hai Kan No. 4. She was sunk as a target on 4 August 1932 by two submarine torpedoes.

All three of the later ships were assigned to the Baltic Fleet upon completion, although Admiral Makarov was detached to the Mediterranean several times before the start of World War I in 1914. During the first month of the war, Pallada captured codebooks from the German cruiser SMS Magdeburg that had run aground. She was torpedoed by the German submarine SMS U-26 on 11 October 1914 and was lost with all hands. Her wreck was discovered in 2000.

The surviving sisters were modified to lay mines shortly after the war began. They laid mines themselves during the war and provided cover for other ships laying minefields. Admiral Makarov and Bayan fought several inconclusive battles with German ships during the war, including the Battle of Åland Islands in mid–1915, and they also defended Moon Sound during the German invasion of the Estonian islands in late 1917, where Bayan was badly damaged. Their 75 mm guns were removed in 1916–1917 and replaced by one 8-inch and four 6-inch guns. A pair of anti-aircraft guns were also added. Admiral Makarov was in Helsingfors when Finland declared independence in March 1918, and was forced to evacuate even though the Gulf of Finland was still frozen over. She reached Kronstadt after what became known as the "Ice Voyage". The sisters were decommissioned in 1918 and sold for scrap in 1922.