Russian cruiser Pallada (1906)

Pallada (Russian: Паллада) was the last of the four Bayan-class cruiser armored cruisers built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. She was assigned to the Baltic Fleet during World War I where she captured codebooks from the German cruiser SMS Magdeburg that had run aground during the first month of the war. The ship was torpedoed by a German submarine in October 1914 and exploded; none of the crew survived. Pallada was the first warship lost by the Russians during the war.

Design and description
Pallada was 449.6 ft long overall. She had a maximum beam of 57.5 ft, a draught of 26 ft and displaced 7750 LT. The ship had a crew of 568 officers and men. Pallada was named in honour of the earlier Russian cruiser captured by the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War. Both ships were named for the Greek goddess, Pallas Athena.

The ship had two vertical triple-expansion steam engines with a designed total of 16500 ihp, but they developed 19320 ihp on sea trials and drove the ship to a maximum speed of 22.55 kn. Steam for the engines was provided by 26 Belleville boilers. She could carry a maximum of 1100 LT of coal, although her range is unknown.

Pallada's main armament consisted of two 8 in 45-calibre guns in single turrets fore and aft. Her eight 6 in gun were mounted in casemates on the sides of the ship's hull. Anti-torpedo boat defense was provided by 20 75 mm 50-calibre guns; eight of these were mounted in casemates on the side of the hull and in the superstructure. The remaining guns were located above the six-inch gun casemates in pivot mounts with gun shields. Pallada also mounted four 47 mm Hotchkiss guns. The ship also had two submerged 15 in torpedo tubes, one mounted on each broadside.

The ship used Krupp armour throughout. Her waterline belt was 190 mm thick over her machinery spaces. Fore and aft, it reduced to 90 mm. The upper belt and the casemates were 60 mm thick. The armour deck was 50 mm thick; 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 turrets were protected by 132 mm of armour and the conning tower had walls 136 mm thick.

Service
Pallada was built by the Admiralty Shipyard in Saint Petersburg. Construction began on 24 June 1905, although she was not formally laid down until August, and the ship was launched on 10 November 1906. Pallada was completed in February 1911. She spent her entire career with the Baltic Fleet.

On 26 August 1914, during the first month of World War I, the German light cruiser Magdeburg ran aground near the island of Odensholm in the Gulf of Finland. Her escort, the V25-class torpedo boat SMS V-26, failed to pull her off and rescued part of the crew before Pallada and the protected cruiser RUSSIAN CRUISER Bogatyr appeared and opened fire. The Germans blew up the front part of the ship, but failed to demolish the rest of the ship. They failed to destroy their naval codebooks, which were discovered by the Russians. A copy was later given to the British where it proved enormously helpful to Room 40 in reading German wireless traffic for much of the war. Together with the armoured cruiser RUSSIAN CRUISER Rurik, Pallada unsuccessfully searched for German ships between Bornholm and Danzig on the night of 27 August. Less than two months later, on 11 October, Pallada was torpedoed by the German submarine SMU U-26 and blew up with the loss of all hands, the first Russian warship sunk during the war.

Wreck
On 6 October 2012 the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported that the wreck of Pallada had been discovered by a diver group outside Hanko near the coast of Finland in 2000, but the group had waited until 2012 before publishing their find.

The ship is lying in three pieces, all upside-down, at a depth of about 40 to 50 m. Although the wreck was severely damaged during the sinking and is now covered in silt, a number of details such as a large wooden emblem of the Russian double-headed eagle are still intact. One of the eight-inch turrets is resting on the seafloor next to the bow section.

On 6 September 2013, Helsingin Sanomat reported that the previously largely untouched wreck of Pallada had been looted.