2017-05-28 22:20:05

On May 24, 1900, in the presence of Emperor Nicholas II and Empresses Maria Feodorovna and Alexandra Feodorovna, the armored cruiser Aurora was launched.

Lucky loser.

The main event in the history of the cruiser "Aurora" is considered to be a blank shot, which became the signal for the storming of the Winter Palace during the Great October Socialist Revolution.

Much less is known about the main military event in the history of the cruiser - the participation of "Aurora" in the tragic for the Russian fleet Tsushima battle. The Aurora is undoubtedly a lucky ship. The cruiser whose specifications They were significantly inferior to the most modern ships of that time, not only managed to survive in the battle, but also avoided the shameful participation of lowering the flag in front of the victorious enemy.

The ship, launched on May 24, 1900 in the presence of Emperor Nicholas II and Empresses Maria Feodorovna and Alexandra Feodorovna, was accepted into the Russian fleet in June 1903 and was one of the newest by the time the Russo-Japanese War began.

[Members of the imperial family at the pier of the New Admiralty shipyard after the launch of the cruiser Aurora. ]

The newest, but by no means the most perfect. The problems with Aurora began at the design stage and never ended. The deadlines for the construction of the ship were repeatedly disrupted, and when it came to testing, the engineers clutched their heads from a huge number of shortcomings and imperfections. Due to the congestion of government shipyards in St. Petersburg, where the construction of the "Aurora" was underway, work on its construction was carried out in a hurry and at the same time with a lack of workers.

[The hull of the cruiser "Aurora" on the water near the slipways of the Novo-Admiralty shipyard. ]

The machines and boilers of the Aurora turned out to be unreliable, the cruiser did not reach the planned speed indicators, and there were many questions about the ship's armament.

First trip.

Trials of the cruiser at the beginning of 1903 continued, and it took a lot of time to bring the Aurora to mind, but it was not. The aggravated situation in the Far East required the immediate strengthening of the Pacific squadron, for which a special detachment of ships was formed in the Baltic. The Naval Ministry intended to include the Aurora in this detachment, for which it was ordered to complete the tests as soon as possible.

On June 16, 1903, "Aurora" officially became part of the Russian Imperial Navy and almost immediately was included in the detachment of Rear Admiral Virenius, which was concentrating on the Mediterranean Sea for the speedy passage to Port Arthur.

[Rest of the crew in the outboard bunks on the waist of the cruiser "Aurora". ]

On September 25, 1903, the Aurora, under the command of Captain 1st Rank Sukhotin, left the Great Kronstadt raid, going to join Virenius's detachment. In this campaign, the "Aurora" had a lot of technical malfunctions, including the next problems with the machines, which caused extreme dissatisfaction with the command. While in Suez, the crew had to fix problems with the steering gear. In Djibouti on January 31, 1904, "Aurora" found the news of the beginning of the war with Japan, and on February 2 - the highest order to return to Russia.

The Aurora reached the Russian military base in Libau on April 5, 1904, which ended her first campaign.

The ship's priest of "Aurora" was killed by "friendly fire".

[The cruiser "Aurora" as part of the Second Pacific Squadron. ]

The military situation for Russia was unfavorable, and the Russian command decided to form the Second Pacific Squadron, which was to pass through three oceans and change the situation in the naval theater of operations.

At the Aurora, work was carried out to eliminate technical deficiencies and the strengthening of weapons. The new commander of the "Aurora" was Captain 1st Rank Evgeny Egoriev.

On October 2, 1904, the Second Pacific Squadron in four separate echelons left Libau to travel to the Far East. "Aurora" headed the third echelon of ships consisting of destroyers "Impeccable" and "Bodry", icebreaker "Ermak", transports "Anadyr", "Kamchatka" and "Malaya". On October 7, the Russian ships were divided into small detachments. "Aurora" ended up in the 4th detachment under the command of Rear Admiral Oscar Enquist and had to move along with the cruiser "Dmitry Donskoy" and the transport "Kamchatka".

The tension on the Russian ships led to the fact that in the North Sea, off the coast of Great Britain, the Russian squadron mistook the fishing ships for enemy destroyers. In the ensuing chaos, Russian sailors fired on not only fishermen, but also each other. As a result of this “friendly fire”, the Aurora was damaged, and the ship's priest, Father Anastasiy, was mortally wounded.

Coal loading record holders.

[The cruiser "Aurora", repainted in White color, shortly before leaving Manila, 1905]

The further campaign took place quite calmly. The team on the "Aurora" got close-knit, which was helped a lot by its commander.

Senior ship doctor Kravchenko wrote in his diary: “The first impression of the Aurora is the most favorable. The crew is cheerful, vigorous, looks straight into the eyes, and not sullenly, does not walk on the deck, but flies straight ahead, following orders. All this is gratifying to see. At first I was struck by the abundance of coal. There is a lot of it on the upper deck, and even more in the battery deck; three quarters of the wardroom are filled with it. The stuffiness is therefore unbearable, but the officers do not even think to lose heart and not only do not complain about the inconvenience, but on the contrary, proudly informs me that their cruiser has been the first to load up to now, took first prizes and, in general, is in very good standing with the admiral. "

Leisure on the Aurora was provided by an amateur theatrical troupe of sailors and officers, whose performances were highly appreciated by sailors from other ships.

[Staff of mechanical engineers, machine conductors and machine crew Cruiser "Aurora"]

The Aurora's crew was also very strong in the matter of loading coal. So, on November 3, 1300 tons of coal at a rate of 71 tons per hour were loaded onto the Aurora in conditions of unbearable heat, which was the best result in the entire squadron. And in the last days of December 1904, with a new load of fuel, the sailors of the Aurora broke their own record, showing the result of 84.8 tons of coal per hour.

If the mood of the crew and its preparation did not cause anxiety in Captain Yegoriev, then this could not be said about the ship itself. The infirmary and the operating room were so badly arranged that they could not be used in the tropics. They had to adapt the new premises, arrange for their possible protection from artillery fire. All provisions were concentrated in almost one place, and therefore, in the event of the flooding of this part of the ship, 600 people would be left without food. Much of this had to be corrected. On the upper deck, it was necessary to arrange from spare Bullywin mine nets protection from the hits of wooden fragments of masts and a traverse from the same nets with sailor bunks to protect the servants' guns. The inner wooden shields of the sides were broken and removed, which could give a lot of fragments, ”wrote the commander of the Aurora in March 1905, when the meeting with the enemy was already approaching.

The captain of the Aurora was one of the first to die.

[Captain 1st Rank Evgeny Romanovich Egoriev. ]

On May 1, 1905, the Second Pacific Squadron, after some reorganization and brief preparations, left the coast of Annam and headed to Vladivostok. "Aurora" took its place on the right outer side of the convoy of transports to the wake of the cruiser "Oleg". On May 10, with complete calm, the last coal loading took place, coal was accepted with the expectation of having a supply at the entrance to the Korean Strait, which should have been enough to reach Vladivostok. Soon after the separation of the transports of the cruisers "Oleg", "Aurora", "Dmitry Donskoy" and "Vladimir Monomakh" together with the third armored detachment formed the left wake column.

On the night of May 14, 1905, the Russian squadron entered the Korea Strait, where Japanese ships were already waiting for it.

For the Aurora, the Battle of Tsushima began with a firefight with Japanese ships at 11:14 am. At the beginning of the battle, "Aurora" supported the cruiser "Vladimir Monomakh" with fire, which was engaged in a firefight with the Japanese reconnaissance cruiser "Izumi", forcing the latter to withdraw.

With the appearance of the third and fourth Japanese detachments, which launched an attack on Russian transports, the Aurora, which was covering transport ships, found itself under powerful enemy fire. The cruiser received its first damage.

[Damage to the bow of the cruiser "Aurora" in the Tsushima battle. ]

But it was really hard for the crew of the Aurora at about three o'clock in the afternoon, when the Japanese ships managed to come close and put the Russian cruisers in the crossfire. Damage followed one after another, as a result of one of the hits, a fire started dangerously close to the bomb cellar, fraught with an explosion of ammunition. It was only thanks to the dedication of the Aurora sailors that the catastrophe was averted.

At 15:12, a 75-millimeter shell hit the front bridge ladder. Its fragments and fragments of the ladder fell through the viewing slot into the wheelhouse and, reflected from its dome, scattered in different directions, injuring everyone in the wheelhouse. The commander of the Aurora, Captain 1st Rank Yevgeny Romanovich Egoriev, was fatally wounded in the head and died soon after. One of the senior officers took command of the ship.

The crew did not drop the honor of the flag.

[Stern flag of the cruiser "Aurora" after the Battle of Tsushima. ]

Twenty minutes later, the Aurora barely dodged the enemy torpedo. The hit of a 203-millimeter Japanese projectile led to holes, as a result of which the compartment of the bow torpedo tube was flooded. Despite the losses and damage, the Aurora continued to fight. Shrapnel knocked down the flag of the ship six times, but the Russian sailors put it back in place.

At about half past four in the evening, the Russian cruisers were covered from Japanese fire by a column of Russian battleships, which gave the Aurora's crew time to catch their breath. The final artillery battle ended at about seven in the evening. The defeat of the Russian squadron was obvious. The surviving ships did not retain the general formation and management, the remaining part of the squadron in the ranks left the battlefield, literally in every direction.

[Damage to the cruiser "Aurora". ]

By the evening of May 14, its commander Yevgeny Egoriev, as well as nine sailors, were killed on board the Aurora. Five more sailors died of their wounds. 8 officers and 74 lower ranks were wounded. By ten in the evening, the cruising detachment of Admiral Enquist numbered three ships - in addition to the Aurora, these were Oleg and Zhemchug. In the dark, Japanese destroyers tried to attack Russian ships, and the Aurora had to evade Japanese torpedoes more than ten times during the night of May 14-15.

Admiral Enquist tried several times to turn the cruisers to Vladivostok, but the Japanese blocked the way, and the naval commander no longer believed in the possibility of a breakthrough.

Return.

[The cruiser of the first rank "Aurora" on the raid of Manila after the Battle of Tsushima. ]

The longer the forced stay in Manila lasted, the more discipline fell on the Aurora. News of revolutionary unrest in Russia caused ferment among the lower ranks, which the officers, with difficulty, but still managed to calm down.

The repair of the Aurora was completed in August 1905, shortly before the peace treaty between Russia and Japan was signed in Portsmouth. Russian ships began preparations to return home. The new commander of the "Aurora" was appointed captain of the 2nd rank Barshch.

On October 10, 1905, after the final approval of the Russian-Japanese treaty by the parties, official Washington lifted all restrictions on the actions of Russian ships. On the morning of October 15, "Aurora", as part of a detachment of ships that were ordered to return to the Baltic, headed for Russia.

[Damage in the chimneys of the cruiser Aurora. ]

The return trip was also lengthy. New 1906 "Aurora" met in the Red Sea, where she received an order to follow to Russia independently. At the same time, 83 sailors from the cruiser "Oleg", who were subject to demobilization, went on board. After that, the "Aurora" turned into a real "demobilization cruiser" - from the crew of the "Aurora" itself, about 300 lower ranks had to be demobilized upon returning to Russia.

In early February 1906, while staying in Cherbourg, France, an incident occurred that prophetically indicated the future glory of the Aurora as a ship of the revolution. The French police received information that the ship's crew had purchased a batch of revolvers for the revolutionaries in Russia. The search on the Aurora, however, yielded no results, and the cruiser continued on her way home.

On February 19, 1906, the Aurora dropped anchor in the port of Libau, completing the longest military campaign in its history, which lasted 458 days. On March 10, 1906, after the dismissal of all sailors subject to demobilization, a little more than 150 people remained in the cruiser's crew. The Aurora was transferred to the fleet reserve.

11 and a half years remained before the main shot of the cruiser ...

The number one ship of the Russian Navy returned after repairs at the Kronstadt Marine Plant to its eternal anchorage at the Petrogradskaya Embankment in St. Petersburg. All work on it has been successfully completed. The pride of the Russian fleet, the favorite of the Northern capital, has restored its former architectural and historical appearance. And this is an important sign that we are finally beginning to preserve the relics of our own history, regardless of the bends of the ideological conjuncture. The ship that's in Soviet time personified the start of the victorious October Revolution, after the completion of the reconstruction, he returns to the center of St. Petersburg to decorate the sea capital and provide rich food for the mind and a reason for pride for representatives of various generations and cultures.

Ship number one of the Russian Navy was handed over to him in the presence of Deputy Commander-in-Chief Vice Admiral A.N. Fedotenkov and towed to St. Petersburg. The acceptance certificate following the repair of the Aurora was signed on July 15, 2016 in a festive atmosphere at the Kronstadt Marine Plant.

The operation to return the ship to the place of eternal anchorage was carried out at night, when the water level in the Neva is at its highest. The cruiser Aurora left the Kronstadt Marine Plant at 21.00.

The cruiser was escorted to the place of eternal anchorage by five tugs, one of which was assigned to the Leningrad naval base, diving and fire boats.

"Aurora" was the first to go into the planned layout of bridges from 15 to 16 July. All other ships entering and leaving the Neva allowed the legendary cruiser to pass. The schedule for the night passage of the ship along the Neva was agreed in advance with the schedule for laying the bridges - Blagoveshchensky, Dvortsovy and Troitsky.

In the middle of the night, with full illumination, the ship approached the place of its anchorage, where a complex operation was carried out to lay it out and put it in the parking place between four installed barrels, to establish mooring lines and to set up a ladder bridge weighing 17 tons. All these actions were completed by the morning of July 16.

For the return of the cruiser, the place of its parking was prepared by special floating craft from the Leningrad naval base. Measurements carried out by naval hydrographs and navigational calculations showed that the depth reserve under the Aurora's keel at the Petrogradskaya embankment will be 1.75 meters. This, in the opinion of the sailors, guarantees the safety of the anchorage of the first rank ship. While the Aurora was not in place, the city reconstructed the Petrogradskaya embankment and inspected the communications to which the cruiser was connected.

The performance characteristics of the cruiser "Aurora"

"Aurora" is an armored cruiser of the first rank of the Baltic Fleet of the "Diana" class. Built at the New Admiralty in St. Petersburg in 1903.

The cruiser "Aurora" was armed with 42 guns of four different calibers, three torpedo tubes. Its full displacement is 7130 tons, and the thickness of the armor is from 63.5 mm on the deck to 152 mm on the wheelhouse. It could go at a speed of 19.2 knots, and its maximum range was 4000 nautical miles. The cruiser's crew consisted of 570 people, including 20 officers. The cruiser is 126.8 meters long, 16.8 meters wide, and has a draft depth of 6.4 meters.

The history of the service of the cruiser "Aurora"

The Aurora received her baptism of fire during the Russo-Japanese War - she was one of two Russian ships that survived the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905. After the war in 1906, the cruiser returned to St. practice of cadets and midshipmen of the Marine Corps. Small-caliber artillery was partially removed from the ship, two 152 mm guns were added.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the cruiser joined the 2nd cruiser brigade of the Baltic Fleet, conducted artillery fire and carried out patrol service. By the summer of 1914, fourteen 152-mm guns and four 75-mm anti-aircraft guns were installed on the Aurora.

After the October Revolution

On November 7 (October 25, O.S.), 1917, the ship found itself in the center of revolutionary events: it is believed that the blank shot of the Aurora was the signal for the Bolsheviks to seize the Winter Palace. However, according to the testimony of a number of eyewitnesses of the events, the assault then began without a signal from the ship.

The cruiser "Aurora": the pride of the Russian fleet

After the revolution, the cruiser was in the reserve of the fleet, its guns were removed and transferred to the armament of the Volga flotilla. In 1922 it was decided to restore the Aurora as a training ship.

In this capacity, the cruiser received ten new 130 mm guns and became part of the Baltic Fleet Naval Forces.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. the personnel and guns of the "Aurora" took part in the defense of Leningrad, and the ship itself, which was in Oranienbaum, was included in the air defense system of Kronstadt, having received new anti-aircraft guns. After being hit by several artillery shells on September 30, 1941, the ship landed on the ground in the Oranienbaum harbor.

Training base and ship-museum

In October 1948, after refurbishment, the Aurora was put to an eternal parking lot at the Petrogradskaya embankment in Leningrad. Until 1956, the cruiser was the training base of the Leningrad Nakhimov School. On July 5, 1956, the Ship Museum was opened on the ship by personnel and veterans as a branch of the Central Naval Museum. In 1960, by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the ship was taken under state protection as a historical and revolutionary monument and became one of the symbols of the 1917 revolution and Leningrad. In particular, his image was placed on the Order of the October Revolution, and the cruiser itself was awarded this order in 1968.

In the first half of the 1980s. The Aurora hull fell into disrepair, and in 1984 repair and restoration work began. On August 16, 1987, the cruiser was returned to her anchorage.

On July 26, 1992, the Andreevsky naval flag returned to the Russian Navy was raised on the ship.
In the 1990s - 2000s. the museum on the cruiser "Aurora" was annually visited by about 500 thousand people, more than 2 thousand excursions were conducted. Over a thousand historical exhibits and documents were kept on board the ship. The exposition includes 10 flags and banners of the ship, 14 orders and 24 medals, which were awarded in different years to the members of the cruiser crew. An exhibition of gifts from government, military and public organizations from different countries was opened. During the work of the museum, it was visited by over 30 million people from more than 160 countries of the world.

On December 1, 2010, the cruiser, by order of the RF Minister of Defense, was decommissioned from the Navy and transferred to the balance of the Naval Museum. The military unit serving on the ship was disbanded. On February 6, 2012, "Aurora" was included in the structure of the federal state institution of culture and art "Central Naval Museum" of the Ministry of Defense as a branch.

The history of repairs of the cruiser "Aurora"

The historic armored cruiser "Aurora", which operated as part of the Russian Imperial and then the Soviet Baltic Fleet, was repaired many times at the docks of the Kronstadt Marine Plant and other factories in St. Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad. The results of the last one can be seen today.

"Aurora" in a concrete shirt. Renovation from 1945 to 1947.

The ship met the Great Patriotic War at the wall in the harbor of Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov) on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. In the second half of September 1941, during massive German air raids, the cruiser received holes, shells exploded in the hold. Having taken on board thousands of tons of water, the ship sat on the ground and remained in a semi-submerged state almost until the end of the war.

In 1944, it was decided to restore the cruiser as a monument to the revolution. In the summer of 1945, the Aurora was raised, the water was pumped out, the holes were repaired. The condition of the "Aurora" was difficult: after an emergency repair, the cruiser gave a leak and sat down on the ground again. The ship was towed to Kronstadt, where it was docked at the Marine Plant.

In the fall of 1945, the cruiser was transferred to Leningrad, where repair and restoration work continued until the end of 1947.

During the overhaul, the appearance of the ship changed, approaching what it had in 1917. The superstructures were restored to the Aurora, including the complete replacement of the chimneys, which were badly damaged during the war. They installed weapons of the same type as those that were in 1917, but on coastal machines. The bow bridge was restored, the wooden deck of the upper deck was made of pine. Significant changes have also taken place inside the ship. The worn-out boilers were removed from the Aurora, replaced with two new ones, two of the three main steam engines were dismantled, the armored shafts of the engine and boiler rooms, and part of the auxiliary mechanisms were cut and removed. In total, about a thousand tons of various mechanisms were unloaded from the cruiser.

The changes especially affected the underwater part of the hull. A survey carried out in 1945 showed that it was in a condition allowing its further operation afloat. They decided to achieve watertightness by means of internal concreting of the cladding.

Sealing of damage to the hull with concrete was considered the most effective and durable in those years. The work on sealing was carried out by the workers of the Sudobetonverf plant afloat, simultaneously with other work carried out in the above-water part of the hull. Concreting was preceded by laborious cleaning of the surfaces. Then steel reinforcement from rods with a diameter of 6–8 mm was welded to the set, forming a grid with cells of 70x70 mm, and concrete from high grade cement was poured into it. Reinforced concrete cladding was carried out throughout inner surface siding to approximately one meter above the waterline. The result is a waterproof concrete "jacket" with a thickness of 50 to 90 mm and a weight of about 450 tons.

In November 1947, the ship was put on Bolshaya Nevka near the Petrogradskaya embankment (now Petrovskaya embankment). For many years "Aurora" served as a training base for cadets of the Nakhimov Naval School.

The museum on the "Aurora" began to be created in 1950 by the forces of personnel, veterans and enthusiasts. Since 1956, the cruiser's museum exposition has become a branch of the Central Naval Museum.

Keep afloat. Renovation from 1984 to 1987

By the end of the 1970s, the problem reappeared: the outer underwater part of the hull underwent corrosion, the inner concrete "jacket" cracked in many places and lost its tightness. The ship began to receive water, which had to be pumped out using pumps. The issue of repairs arose with new urgency.

The corresponding work from 1984 to 1987 was carried out by the Leningrad Shipyard named after V.I. A.A. Zhdanov () according to the project. The repair was preceded by exploration and design work. In the Central State Archives of the Fleet, specialists studied about 6,000 cases from 13 funds, more than 500 drawings, descriptions, documents, albums on mechanical installations and artillery weapons.

According to the developers of the repair project, the cruiser was an engineering structure, living according to the laws and traditions of the naval service. This means that while preserving it, it was necessary to read such qualities as strength, unsinkability, fire safety and resistance to aggressive environmental factors.

“It was decided to restore the ship not in the form of a frozen monument, but as a living reality of the historical days of the Great October Revolution, to keep the cruiser afloat under the flag of the USSR Navy while preserving and renovating the museum,” wrote Viktor Burov, scientific director of the restoration and preservation of the Aurora. ... However, this approach implied stringent requirements for the condition of the body, mechanisms and installations.

The concept of the Aurora as a memorial ship afloat in the fleet was diametrically at odds with the concept advocated by numerous opponents.

In short, their proposals boiled down to gentle repairs and careful restoration of the hull, equipment and mechanisms.

Several options for protection from the external environment were proposed: from placing the cruiser on an underwater pedestal to creating a floating underwater dock.

As a result, the arguments of the developers of the repair project were accepted - the crumbling underwater part up to 1.2 m above the waterline was considered unsuitable for repair and cut off. The new underwater part was made from modern materials. The wood and copper parts of the hull plating were not recreated. The new underwater and the old surface of the hull were connected by welding.

The surface part was divided into four sections, installed on the new underwater part. A boiler room was created in the engine room, placing museum exhibits there - models of two boilers of the Belleville - Dolgolenko system and elements of the boiler equipment.

They put in order and installed the main stern machine. The carapace deck was made anew. Most of the old armor plates returned to it.

But the most important task was to recreate the external architectural and historical appearance and internal structure of the ship on the eve of the October Revolution.

All the upper deck structures and equipment were restored: artillery installations, wheelhouses, bridges, a radio station, boat and searchlight armament, emergency and mooring devices, cargo devices, etc. Significant work was required to recreate the internal premises associated with the combat activities of the cruiser. The pipes and masts of the cruiser were rebuilt. However, those that stood before the renovation were also not original - they were installed at the end of the 40s. It was decided to leave the guns on the coastal machines.

Almost all of the ship's interior was redesigned. On the battery deck, there is a museum compartment with an exposition and work rooms for employees, a team's catering unit with a galley, a quarters for officers, a wardroom and a commander's saloon. Below, on the living deck, are the crew quarters, equipped according to the requirements of the modern Navy. The systems of communications, electricity, fire extinguishing have been modernized.

According to the developers of the repair, the applied technology made it possible to maximize the use of genuine body parts. Were, for example, completely preserved contours and such unique designs as bronze cast stem and arch stem with rudder blade.

The task of reviving, to the greatest extent possible, the appearance of the historical cruiser and the details of its design, weapons, equipment from the times of 1917 was recognized as completed. After repair and restoration work, which lasted three years, in August 1987, the "Aurora" was returned to its parking place - on the Petrogradskaya embankment near the Nakhimovskiy VMF.

The results of the repairs were received ambiguously by specialists and the public.

The main complaint of opponents is that, in their opinion, the work carried out was a rework, not restoration.

Many drew attention to the loss during the repair of many valuable pieces of equipment and mechanisms of the historic "Aurora", and the decision to leave the cruiser afloat, while it could be installed on an underwater pedestal or in a special floating dock, was criticized.

Particular rejection is still caused by the decision to cut off the entire underwater part and attach a welded new one, especially since the old cut off part was treated really barbarously. It was not dismantled or disposed of, but together with many of the surviving parts of the equipment, they were thrown to rust in one of the bays not far from St. Petersburg. Until now, the huge, more than a hundred-meter, remains of the historic "Aurora" peep out of the waters of the Gulf of Finland. This gives many reasons to call the current "Aurora" a dummy or a mock-up of an old cruiser.

Rumors do not subside that there are two "Auroras" - a fake current and a drowned real one. In any case, according to estimates, no more than 40% of the "Aurora" is historical.

However, with the validity of many critical remarks, it should be borne in mind that over the hundred years of its existence, the ship has been rebuilt, modernized and re-equipped more than once. That is, by 1984 it was far from the original, launched in 1900.

Repair of the ship-museum 2014-2016

The cruiser was towed to the Kronstadt Marine Plant for repairs on September 21, 2014. According to the Aurora's board of trustees, the cost of repairing the cruiser was about 840 million rubles, which were used to renovate the ship's hull and to create a new exposition of the branch of the Central Naval Museum operating on the Aurora.

The shipbuilders carried out the most significant amount of work in the interior of the Aurora. The museum exposition was updated, the premises of the cruiser crew were restored, modern systems video monitoring and fire extinguishing. According to experts, in the future "Aurora" will need to dock every 5-10 years to assess the thinning of the hull over time.

Carrying out renovation works"Aurora" at the Kronstadt Marine Plant in 2014–2016, unlike all previous repairs, did not involve any interference in the ship's structure, rebuilding the hull, or radically re-equipping the interior. The repair concept is based on the perception of a historic cruiser as an operating ship of the fleet, a monument ship afloat.

In the fall of 2014, the dock repair of the cruiser was carried out. Particular attention was paid to a thorough examination of the condition of the hull, especially its underwater part, and mechanisms in contact with the external environment. An ultrasonic examination of the hull has established that over the years that have passed since the last repair, the dynamics of corrosion of the hull is practically absent.

Inspection of the outboard fittings led to the decision to completely replace it. During the dock repairs, the outer hull of the ship, underwater and surface parts were cleaned and painted. In addition, we repaired cisterns, tanks and a number of other mechanisms, carried out a pressure test and checked the tightness of the abutment of the bronze pins and the steel case. Despite the fact that the rods were made during the construction years of the ship, no damage was found. Inspection of the hull connections made in 1987 revealed their quality.

The second docking of the Aurora was carried out in the spring of 2016. Among the major repair tasks, it is necessary to highlight the survey of power cable routes, replacement of the power grid, repair of decks, masts and all life support systems of the ship, installation of a mast, replacement of rigging, repair of boat devices, boats, lifeboats, restoration of superstructure, hull structures and practical items.

During the repair, not only the ship itself was updated, but also its life support systems. In particular, it is equipped with the latest domestic “water fog” fire extinguishing system. It extinguishes fires with high-pressure water spray, or the so-called water mist with a droplet size of less than one hundred microns and is not inferior in characteristics to the best foreign samples. New system video surveillance from 52 cameras almost completely excludes the possibility of unnoticed entry into the ship.

The main work was carried out by the specialists of the Marine Plant.

Museum ship

In 1956, it was decided to establish a museum of naval and revolutionary glory on board the legendary cruiser, and in the exposition of this unusual cruiser museum to store exhibits that will help to trace its glorious history in detail: documentary photographs, ship items and documents that represent considerable historical value.

In 1960, "Aurora" was included in the list of protected by the state monuments. In 1968, she was awarded the Order of the October Revolution, in which she herself was depicted. Since 2013, the cruiser has been returned to the Navy. A branch of the Central Naval Museum is located on board the cruiser.

During the renovation, which was completed in July 2016, the historical appearance of the flagship's cabin was restored, the design project of which was approved by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy. The crew quarters and the mess-room were redecorated.

In addition to the dock works and the renovation of the ship's equipment, the museum part has been redesigned. Updated teak deck

A new museum exposition was created on board the Aurora during the renovation. It has been expanded, and its character has also been changed. If earlier the museum talked about the "Aurora" primarily as a cruiser of the October Revolution, now it presents the ship as a veteran of three wars: the Russian-Japanese wars of 1904-1905, the First World War and the Great Patriotic War.

A new part of the exposition was the medical unit, where X-ray equipment was used for the first time in Russia.

The place of the exposition is provided with systems of lighting, air conditioning, etc. The exposition has been increased from 6 to 9 halls. Expositions rich in multimedia equipment have been created.

The stern of the "Aurora" was decorated with a new order flag, developed by the heraldic service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

The ship is the object cultural heritage Russian Federation... The cartoon "Aurora" was shot about him, he was also featured in the film "Cruiser" Varyag "". A number of songs are dedicated to "Aurora", she is depicted on many postage stamps, both Soviet and foreign. In addition, the image of the cruiser was struck on commemorative coins of 1967 in denominations of 10, 15 and 20 kopecks.

Photo report about the repair of the cruiser "Aurora" at the Kronstadt Marine Plant (part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation).

Genuine biography of "Aurora" with little-known details

For several generations of Soviet (and not only Soviet) people, the name of this cruiser has become a kind of fetish. The legendary ship that announced the offensive with its volley new era in the history of mankind, the symbol of the Great October Socialist Revolution is the most replicated cliche. And what is the real history of the cruiser "Aurora"?

A ship born at the turn of the century

At the end of the 19th century, the Russian navy grew and was replenished with new ships. According to the classification of that time, there was such a subclass of cruisers - armored, that is, having an armored deck to protect the vital parts of the ship from the hinged fire of enemy artillery. The armored cruisers did not carry side armor and were not intended for a duel with battleships. The cruiser "Aurora" laid down on May 23, 1897 in St. Petersburg (in the New Admiralty), of the same type as the "Pallada" and "Diana" laid down earlier, belonged to this type of warships.

Armored cruiser "Aurora", 1903

In the Russian navy, there was (and still is) a tradition of the continuity of the names of ships, and the new cruisers inherited the names of sailing frigates.

The construction of the ship took more than six years - the "Aurora" was launched on May 11, 1900 at 11:15 am, and the cruiser entered the fleet (after completion of all outfitting work) only on July 16, 1903.

Its name - "Aurora" (morning dawn) - the cruiser inherited from the forty-four-gun Russian frigate, which in 1854 distinguished itself in battles during the siege of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The construction of the "Aurora" was carried out under the guidance of the talented Russian engineer K. M. Tokarevsky at the Novoadmiralteyskiy and Franco-Russian factories.

CRUISER AURORA. TACTICAL AND TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS:

• Class - Cruiser rank I.
• Type - KR I "Pallada".
• Shipyard - "New Admiralty". St. Petersburg.
• Laid down - May 23 (June 4 O.S.) 1897
• Launched - 11 (24 O.S.) May 1900
• Commissioned on 16 (29 O.S.) July 1903 (Baltic Fleet).
• Full displacement - 6,731 tons.
• Length - 126.7 m.
• Width - 16.8 m.
• Draft - 6.2 m.
• The power of the mechanisms is 11 971 hp.
• Speed ​​- 20.0 knots.
• The cruising range is 4,000 miles (7,200 km).
• Fuel stock - 964 tons of coal.
• Artillery weapons (1917): 152 caliber (Kane system) - 14; 76.2 caliber (Lender anti-aircraft guns) - 6.
• Torpedo tubes - 3 (1 surface; 2 underwater).
• The mass of metal produced by the guns from one side: in an onboard salvo - 267 kg; in one minute - 652 kg.
• Crew - 570 people (of which officers - 20 people).
• The armor was supplied by Izhora, and the artillery by the Obukhov factories.

This ship was by no means unique in its combat qualities. The cruiser could not boast of either a particularly frisky speed (only 19 knots - battleships of that time developed a speed of 18 knots), or armament (8 six-inch main battery guns - far from amazing firepower).

Ships of another type, then adopted by the Russian fleet ("Bogatyr") armored cruisers were much faster and one and a half times stronger.

And the attitude of officers and crews to these "goddesses of domestic production" was not too warm - cruisers of the "Diana" type had a lot of shortcomings and constantly arising technical problems.

Nevertheless, its direct purpose is to conduct reconnaissance, destroy enemy merchant ships, cover battleships from attacks of enemy destroyers, patrol service - these cruisers were quite consistent, having a solid (about seven thousand tons) displacement and, as a result, good seaworthiness and autonomy. With a full supply of coal (1,430 tons), the Aurora could go from Port Arthur to Vladivostok and return without additional bunkering.

All three cruisers were intended for the Pacific Ocean, where a military conflict with Japan was brewing, and the first two of them were already in the Far East by the time the Aurora entered service with operational ships. The third sister, too, was in a hurry to visit her relatives, and on September 25, 1903 (just a week after completion, which ended on September 18), the Aurora with a crew of 559 under the command of Captain 1st Rank I. V. Sukhotin left Kronstadt.

In the Mediterranean Sea "Aurora" joined Rear Admiral AA Virenius's detachment, which consisted of the battleship "Oslyabya", the cruiser "Dmitry Donskoy" and several destroyers and auxiliary ships. However, the detachment was late for the Far East - in the African port of Djibouti on Russian ships they learned about the Japanese night attack on the Port Arthur squadron and the beginning of the war. It was considered too risky to proceed further, since the Japanese fleet blocked Port Arthur, and there was a high probability of meeting with superior enemy forces even on the approach to it. There was a proposal to send a detachment of Vladivostok cruisers to the Singapore region to meet Virenius and go with them to Vladivostok, and not to Port Arthur, but this quite reasonable proposal was not accepted.

"Favorite" of Admiral Rozhdestvensky

On April 5, 1904, "Aurora" returned to Kronstadt, where she was included in the 2nd Pacific Squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Rozhdestvensky, which was preparing to march on the Far Eastern theater of military operations.

1. Adjutant General E.I. Alekseev, governor of the Far East.

2. The commander of the Manchurian army operating against the Japanese, Adjutant General, General of Infantry A.N. Kuropatkin.

3.Cont-Admiral A.A. Virenius, commander of a squadron that sailed into the waters of the Eastern Ocean.

4. Rear Admiral M.P. Molas, appointed at the disposal of the governor.

5. Lieutenant General N.P. Linevich.

6. The commander of the battleship "Tsesarevich" I.K. Grigorovich.

A poster from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

Zinovy ​​Petrovich Rozhdestvensky

Here on it, six of the eight main-caliber guns were covered with armor shields - the experience of the battles of the Arthurian squadron showed that fragments of high-explosive Japanese shells literally mow down unprotected personnel. In addition, the commander was replaced on the cruiser - Captain 1st Rank Yevgeny Romanovich Egoriev became him.

Admiral Rozhestvensky was, shall we say, an original person. And among the many "quirks" of the admiral was the following - he had the habit of giving nicknames entrusted to him to the warships, which were very far from examples of fine literature. So, the cruiser "Admiral Nakhimov" was called "Idiot", the battleship "Sisoy the Great" - "Invalid shelter", and so on. The squadron included two ships with female names - the former yacht "Svetlana" and "Aurora". The commander nicknamed the first cruiser "The Maid", and the "Aurora" was awarded the nasty title "Prostitute podzabornaya". If only Rozhdestvensky knew what kind of ship he names so little respectfully!

"Aurora" was a member of the cruiser detachment of Rear Admiral Enquist and during the Tsushima battle conscientiously carried out Rozhestvensky's order - she covered transports.

This task was clearly beyond the capacity of the four Russian cruisers, against which first eight, and then sixteen Japanese, acted. They were saved from heroic death only by the fact that a column of Russian battleships accidentally approached them and drove away the advancing enemy.

The cruiser did not distinguish itself in something special - the author of the damage attributed to the Aurora by Soviet sources of damage, which was received by the Japanese cruiser Izumi, was in fact the cruiser Vladimir Monomakh. The very same "Aurora" received about a dozen hits, had a number of injuries and serious casualties - up to a hundred people killed and wounded.

damage to the "Aurora" after the Tsushima battle

The commander died - his photograph is now on display in the museum of the cruiser framed by a steel sheathing sheet pierced by a splinter from a Japanese shell and charred deck planks.

Damage to the cruiser
According to the senior mine officer Lieutenant GK Stark, during the battle, the Aurora received 18 hits from medium and small caliber shells. The main damage to the cruiser:

1. On the starboard side, the hawse is damaged by shrapnel; the anchor chain is broken; the anchor stopped yielding.

2. From the hawse to the upper deck, one meter from the waterline, there were two holes with an area of ​​0.18 m² and 10-15 small holes; two frames are deformed.

3. In the room of the bow mine apparatus, the fastening of the right anchor is damaged, several rivets are knocked out.

4. A shell exploded in the area of ​​the 71st starboard frame at the junction of the battery deck inflicted a large hole and ruptures over a length of 3.7 m; two frames are bent.

5. In the area of ​​the 40th frame, there is a crack and 5 holes.

6. There are more than ten small holes in the second coal pit.

7. On the port side, in the area of ​​the 65th frame, three holes were formed; the ladder to the navigating bridge is broken.

8. On the spardeck in the area of ​​the 47th frame there is a hole with an area of ​​0.45 m².

9. Chimneys received multiple injuries, the largest of which was a hole with an area of ​​3.7 m in the front pipe; middle pipe due to a hole of about the same area, it leaned forward a little.

10. All boats, boats and longboats of the cruiser are riddled with shrapnel, as are the ventilation sockets.

11. The foremast of the "Aurora" received three hits: the first one demolished the fore-top and fore-mars-rails, the second knocked down a third of the topmast, the third hit the mast at the top, making a crack in it.

12. The cruiser's artillery suffered significant damage: all 75-mm guns, except one, were damaged, and five of them were completely out of order. The stern 152 mm gun on the starboard side became unusable, the right 37 mm gun on the stern bridge was knocked overboard with the entire installation.

13. Mars rangefinder station destroyed; a searchlight was shot down from the right wing of the aft bridge. Barr & Stroud's only rangefinder is broken.

Based on the results of the inspection of the cruiser in Manila, the American commission determined that the Aurora needed 30 days of repair to safely continue sailing.

The 1st rank cruiser "Aurora" on the raid of Manila after the Battle of Tsushima, June 1905

At night, instead of covering the wounded Russian ships from the furious mine attacks of the Japanese, the cruisers Oleg, Aurora and Zhemchug broke away from their main forces and headed for the Philippines, where they were interned in Manila. However, there is no reason to accuse the cruiser crew of cowardice - the responsibility for fleeing from the battlefield lay with the confused Admiral Enquist. Two of these three ships were subsequently lost: "Pearl" was sunk in 1914 by the German corsair "Emden" in Penang, and "Oleg" in 1919 was sunk by British torpedo boats in the Gulf of Finland.

The Aurora returned to the Baltic at the beginning of 1906 along with several other ships that had survived the Japanese defeat. In 1909-1910, "Aurora", together with "Diana" and "Bogatyr", was part of a foreign voyage detachment specially designed for practical training by midshipmen of the Marine Corps and the Marine Engineering School, as well as students of the Training Team of combat non-commissioned officers.

The Aurora crew did not participate in saving the inhabitants of Messina from the consequences of the 1908 earthquake, but the Russian sailors from the Aurora received a medal for this feat from the grateful residents of the city when the cruiser visited this Sicilian port in February 1911. And in November 1911, the Aurors took part in the celebrations in Bangkok in honor of the coronation of the Siamese king.

World War I in the Baltic

The cruiser underwent the first modernization after the Russo-Japanese War, the second, after which it accepted the now saved appearance, - in 1915. The ship's artillery armament was strengthened - the number of 152-mm main-caliber guns was first brought to ten, and then to fourteen. Numerous 75-mm artillery was dismantled - the size and survivability of the destroyers increased, and the three-inch shells no longer posed a serious threat to them.

The cruiser was able to take on board up to 150 mines - mine weapons were widely used in the Baltic and proved their effectiveness. And in the winter of 1915-1916, a novelty was installed on the Aurora - anti-aircraft guns. But the glorious cruiser might not have survived until the second modernization ...

Armored cruiser "Aurora" in 1916

The Aurora met the First World War as part of the second brigade of the Baltic Fleet cruisers (together with Oleg, Bogatyr and Diana). The Russian command was expecting a breakthrough by the powerful German Open Sea Fleet into the Gulf of Finland and an attack on Kronstadt and even St. Petersburg. To counter this threat, mines were hastily placed, and the central mine and artillery position was equipped. The cruiser was entrusted with the task of carrying out patrol service at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland in order to promptly notify of the appearance of German dreadnoughts.

The cruisers went out on patrol in pairs, and at the end of the patrol period, one pair replaced the other. The Russian ships achieved their first success on August 26, when the German light cruiser Magdeburg sat on the rocks near the island of Odensholm.

The cruisers Pallada arrived in time ( elder sister"Aurora" died in Port Arthur, and this new "Pallada" was built after the Russo-Japanese War) and "Bogatyr" tried to capture the helpless enemy ship. Although the Germans managed to blow up their cruiser, Russian divers found secret German ciphers at the crash site, which served both the Russians and the British during the war.

But a new danger awaited the Russian ships - from October, German submarines began to operate on the Baltic Sea. Anti-submarine defense in the fleets of the whole world was then in its infancy - no one knew how and with what it was possible to hit the invisible enemy hiding under water, and how to avoid his sudden attacks. Neither diving shells, nor, moreover, depth charges and sonars were still in sight. Surface ships could rely only on the good old ramming - after all, not to take seriously the developed anecdotal instructions, in which it was prescribed to cover the periscopes seen with bags and roll them up with sledgehammers.

On October 11, 1914, at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, the German submarine U-26 under the command of Lieutenant-Commander von Berckheim discovered two Russian cruisers: the Pallada, which was completing its patrol service, and the Aurora, which came to replace it. The commander of the German submarine, with German pedantry and scrupulousness, assessed and classified the targets - in all respects, the new armored cruiser was a much more tempting prey than a veteran of the Russian-Japanese war.

The torpedo hit caused the detonation of the ammunition magazines on the Pallada, and the cruiser sank along with the entire crew - only a few sailor caps remained on the waves ...

"Aurora" turned around and took refuge in the skerries. And again, you should not blame the Russian sailors for cowardice - as already mentioned, they did not know how to fight submarines yet, and the Russian command already knew about the tragedy that happened ten days earlier in the North Sea, where a German boat sank three English armored cruisers at once. "Aurora" escaped destruction for the second time - the cruiser was clearly preserved by fate.
In the fire of revolutions and wars

It is not worth dwelling on the role of "Aurora" in the events of October 1917 in Petrograd - more than enough has been said about this.

We only note that the threat to shoot the Winter Palace from the cruiser's guns was pure bluff. The cruiser was under repair, and therefore all the ammunition was unloaded from it in full accordance with the applicable instructions. And the stamp "volley" Aurora "is incorrect purely grammatically, since" volley "is the simultaneous fired shots from at least two barrels.

The Aurora did not take part in the civil war and in the battles with the British fleet. An acute shortage of fuel and other types of supplies led to the fact that the Baltic Fleet was reduced to the size of a bunker - an "active detachment" - consisting of only a few combat units. "Aurora" was taken to the reserve, and in the fall of 1918, some of the guns were removed from the cruiser for installation on improvised gunboats of river and lake flotillas.

At the end of 1922, "Aurora" - the only ship, by the way, of the old imperial Russian fleet, which retained its name given to it at birth - it was decided to restore it as a training ship. The cruiser was repaired, ten 130-mm guns were installed on it instead of the previous 6-inch ones, two anti-aircraft guns and four machine guns, and on July 18, 1923, the ship entered sea trials.

Then, for ten years - from 1923 to 1933 - the cruiser was engaged in a business that was already familiar to him: cadets of naval schools were practicing on board.

The ship made several foreign voyages, participated in the maneuvers of the newly revived Baltic Fleet. But the years took their toll, and due to the poor condition of the boilers and mechanisms, "Aurora" after another repair in 1933-1935 became a non-self-propelled training base. V winter time it was used as a floating base for submarines.

During the Great Patriotic War, the old cruiser was stationed in the harbor of Oranienbaum.

The guns were once again removed from the ship, and nine hundred and thirty, installed on the coastal battery, defended the approaches to the city. The Germans did not pay much attention to the decrepit veteran, trying to disable the best Soviet ships (such as the cruiser "Kirov"), but the ship still received its portion of enemy shells. On September 30, 1941, the half-sunken cruiser, damaged by artillery shelling, landed on the ground.

The cruiser "Aurora" in Oranienbaum, 1942

But the ship again - for the third time in its more than forty-year history - survived. After the blockade of Leningrad was lifted in July 1944, the cruiser was taken out of the state of clinical death - she was lifted from the ground and (for the umpteenth time!) Put into repair. The boilers and onboard vehicles, propellers, side shaft brackets and the shafts themselves, as well as part of the auxiliary mechanisms, were removed from the Aurora. They installed the weapons that were on the ship in 1915 - fourteen 152-mm Kane guns and four 45-mm salute cannons.

Now the cruiser was to become a monument ship and at the same time a training base for the Nakhimov school. In 1948, the renovation was completed, and the restored "Aurora" stood where it stands to this day - to the Petrogradskaya embankment opposite the building of the Nakhimov's school. And in 1956, the Ship Museum was opened on board the Aurora as a branch of the Central Naval Museum.

Aurora ceased to be a training ship for the students of the Leningrad Nakhimov School in 1961, but it still retains its status as a museum ship. Long voyages and sea battles are a thing of the past - the time has come for a well-deserved and honorable pension. A ship rarely has such a fate - after all, ships usually either perish at sea, or end their journey at the wall of the plant, where they are cut for scrap ...

General Veteran

In the Soviet years, of course, the main (and perhaps the only) attention was paid to the revolutionary past of the cruiser. Images of "Aurora" were present wherever possible, and the silhouette of the three-pipe ship became the same symbol of the city on the Neva, like the Peter and Paul Fortress or Bronze Horseman... The role of the cruiser in the October Revolution was extolled in every possible way, and there was even a joke-anecdote: "Which ship in history had the most powerful weaponry?" - "Cruiser" Aurora "! One shot - and the whole power collapsed!"

In 1967, the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution was widely celebrated in the Soviet Union. In Leningrad, at Smolny, bonfires were burning, near which, leaning on rifles, stood people in soldier's greatcoats and pea jackets of revolutionary sailors of the seventeenth year with an indispensable attribute - with machine-gun belts crossed on the chest and on the back.

The cruiser Aurora follows the filming location of the movie Aurora Salvo, 1967

It is clear that the well-deserved ship simply could not be ignored. For the anniversary, the film "Aurora's salvo" was made, where the cruiser played the main role - himself. For greater reliability of the depicted events, all filming was done on location. "Aurora" was towed to a historical place to the Nikolaevsky bridge, where the episode of the seizure of the aforementioned bridge was filmed. The sight was impressive, and thousands of Leningraders and guests of the city watched as the gray three-pipe beauty slowly and majestically floated along the Neva.

However, it was not the first time for "Aurora" to act as a movie star. Back in 1946, during the renovation, "Aurora" played the role of the cruiser "Varyag" in the movie of the same name. Then "Aurora", as a true actress, even had to make up for her character - the shields were removed from the guns (they were not on the "Varyag"), and a fourth fake pipe was installed for the veracity of the image of the heroic cruiser of the Russo-Japanese war.

The last repair of the Aurora took place in the mid-80s of the last century, and rumors about a “fake Aurora” are connected with this. the amputated remains and gave rise to rumors.

In 1992, the Andreev flag was raised on the ship again, the cruiser is listed in the Russian Navy, and at present there are officers and sailors on the ship (even if there are ten times less of them than they once were). Of course, the Aurora itself will not be able to move away from the eternal anchorage site, but all auxiliary mechanisms and life support systems are maintained by the cruiser crew in a working condition. In a working well-groomed condition and naval weapons.

Today the main occupation of the cruiser "Aurora", which is more than a hundred years old, is to serve as a museum. And this museum is very visited - on board the ship there are up to half a million guests a year. And honestly, this museum is worth visiting - and not only for those who are nostalgic for times gone by.

museum on "Aurora"

It is wonderful that "Aurora" has survived to this day. All over the world, such monument ships can be counted on one hand:

" Victoria "

"Cutty Sark"

"Queen Mary"

"Mikasa"

Victoria and Cutty Sark in England, Queen Mary in the USA, Mikasa in Japan. It remains only to wish the veteran good health for the next hundred years; after all, a blank shot in October 1917 is just one of many pages in the long biography of the glorious cruiser. And from it, as from a song, you cannot erase a word ...

Vladimir Kontrovsky

The ship has long become a symbol of revolution, and not everyone now knows that behind it there are tens of thousands of miles of ocean voyages, participation in three wars, as well as many thousands of officers trained for the fleet.

The "Aurora" was laid down at the St. Petersburg shipyard "New Admiralty" in May 1897, and on May 11, 1900 was launched. The cruiser received its name in honor of the 44-gun sailing frigate Aurora, which became famous in the battles in the Far East during the war of 1853-56. The cruiser entered service with the warships of the Russian fleet in July 1903. It was a typical ship; in parallel with it, two more cruisers of the same project were built - "Diana" and "Pallada".

With a solid size (126.7 meters long and 16.8 meters wide), the Aurora had poor booking - the ship belonged to the category of 1st rank armored cruisers. Initially, even some of the artillery pieces on it did not have armor shields. The cruiser had good weapons, it was installed: 152-mm guns - 8, 75-mm - 24, 37-mm - 8, 63.5-mm - 2, as well as three torpedo tubes. Subsequently, the number and caliber of the guns changed several times, anti-aircraft guns, machine guns and a device for installing minefields appeared.

With such a solid armament, the cruiser had a low speed: the maximum speed was just over 19 knots, the economic speed was only 11 knots (for comparison, it had 24 and 16 knots) and a short autonomous navigation range (2500 miles at economic speed and 1320 miles at maximum). which significantly reduced the possibility of its combat use. "Aurora" was intended for independent action at a short distance from the base, as well as to support battleships in battle when operating as part of a squadron.

The cruiser went on her first campaign on September 25, 1903, it was assumed that she would be reinforced. But in connection with the outbreak of war with Japan, the cruiser Aurora, which had joined the detachment of ships of Rear Admiral AA Virenius in the Mediterranean, was returned to the Baltic.

The cruiser "Aurora" set off on a new campaign in August 1904 as part of the squadron of Vice Admiral Z. P. Rozhestvensky, which was heading for the Pacific Ocean to participate Russo-Japanese War... The cruiser's campaign began unsuccessfully. On October 10, several shells from other Russian ships fell into it by mistake, firing at British fishing vessels, mistaken in the fog for destroyers. A ship priest was killed on the cruiser and one sailor was wounded.

The cruiser Aurora received her baptism of fire in the battle of Tsushima on May 14. During the battle, which lasted for the cruiser from 14:30 to 18:00 hours, the Aurora received about 10 direct hits from shells. On the cruiser, fires repeatedly broke out, several compartments were flooded, five guns and all rangefinder stations were out of order. The commander of the ship, Captain 1st Rank E.R. Yegoryev, and 14 crew members were killed, 83 people were wounded. But the ship did not lose speed and at night, together with the cruisers Oleg and Zhemchug, having fought off the Japanese destroyers, was able to break away from the pursuit of the enemy. The cruisers could not break through to the north towards Vladivostok, and were forced to leave for the neutral Philippine port of Manila, where they were interned by the Americans.

The cruiser Aurora returned to the Baltic in 1906. The ship underwent a major overhaul, after which it became a training vessel, on which the cadets and midshipmen of the Marine Corps were trained. At that time, the students of the cadet corps, who successfully completed the full course of science, received the title of naval midshipmen and were sent on a long (up to a year or more) voyage on warships, after which they passed exams and received the first naval officer rank "midshipman".

Until the summer of 1912, "Aurora" made several voyages with detachments of midshipmen of the Marine Corps of other educational institutions fleet, for some time was a stationary ship in the Souda bay in Crete. During the First World War, "Aurora" as part of the 2nd brigade of cruisers fought in the Baltic, mainly performing reconnaissance and patrol functions, covering the laying of minefields and the actions of light ships. At this time, the ship's firepower was increased, instead of six 75-mm guns, 152-mm guns were installed, as well as five anti-aircraft guns.

At the end of 1916, the cruiser Aurora was repaired in Petrograd, where she took part in revolutionary events. In the crew of the cruiser, the influence of the Bolsheviks was strong, therefore, during the period of preparation for the armed uprising on October 25, 1917, the ship was instructed to enter the Neva and take under protection the Nikolaevsky bridge, which connects Vasilievsky Island with the central part of the city. It was from there that the famous Aurora shot sounded. According to a number of historians, the shot was fired much earlier than the storming of the Winter Palace began. This has not played a fundamental role for a long time, since it was the "Aurora" that became the symbol of the revolution.

Thanks to her participation in those events, the name of the Aurora was retained, although most of the warships were renamed by the new government. During the Civil War, the Aurora's crew thinned significantly. And in 1919 the ship was put on storage. The decision to return the ship to service was made in the fall of 1922. The cruiser "Aurora" again became a training ship, on which cadets of naval educational institutions underwent naval practice until 1940.

The cruiser Aurora met the Great Patriotic War in the port of Oranienbaum (now the southwestern part of St. Petersburg). The cruiser itself practically did not participate, except for repelling the raids of enemy aircraft. Only a small part of the crew remained on the ship, the rest of the sailors, having removed most of the guns from the cruiser, smashed the enemy on the approaches to Leningrad.

During the three years of the blockade, the cruiser was repeatedly hit by bombs and shells. The ship had to be landed on the ground, as a large amount of water entered the holds through the holes. But even in such difficult conditions, the small crew of the Aurora did not stop fighting for the survivability of the ship. Already in the summer of 1944, the cruiser was raised from the ground and sent for repairs.

In 1948, the repaired cruiser Aurora was anchored at Petrogradskaya Embankment. Until 1956, it was used as a training ship of the Leningrad Nakhimov School, and then a museum was opened on it, which became a branch of the Central Naval Museum. In 1992, the St. Andrew's flag was raised on the Aurora cruiser again (after 75 years!).

The cruiser Aurora has been in service for 110 years. After it became a museum, tens of millions of people visited the cruiser to touch the living history of the glorious Russian navy. Naturally, less than 50 percent of the original Aurora, launched in May 1900, remained on the cruiser, but this does not detract from the historical value of the ship that honorably carried the St. Andrew's flag through the legendary Battle of Tsushima. It is not for nothing that they say that history comes to life on board the Aurora.

Gunnery officer of the cruiser "Aurora" Evdokim Ognev

Our country is wide and immense. How many cities, villages, farmsteads there are ... And each has its own story. And this little history is a grain of the history of a great powerful state.

There is a small rivulet in the Voronezh province that makes many bends on its way. From what is winding, and its name is Kriusha. In the 30s of the 18th century, Cossack settlers formed a village on the banks of the river, which became known as Kriusha. Later, when a new one with the same name was formed near the village, the ancient settlement began to be called Staraya Kriusha, and the younger one - Novaya.

Here in 1887, Evdokim Pavlovich Ognev, the gunner of the Aurora cruiser, was born, who fired a historic shot that served as the signal for the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917.

In Kriush itself, the search for materials about the fellow villager was organized by the librarian E.A. Artamonov. The old-timers remembered the Ognev family and their relatives. It turned out that two cousins ​​of Evdokim Ognev live in Staraya Kriush. The eldest of them - Maria Fominichna Ovcharova - said that Evdokim all the time wrote to his sister Pelageya Pavlovna from the fleet and from the Don, where he fought. In 1918, from the Ognev detachment, two soldiers stopped at Pelageya Pavlovna's driveway, to whom the gunner gave his sister's address.

Pavel Prokofievich (father of Evdokim Pavlovich), a baker by profession, in search of a better life with his family often moved from place to place. Now it is reliably known that the Ognevs after Staraya Kriushi lived on the Trety Log farm (now the Volgograd region), on the Popov farm, in the villages of Mikhailovskaya, Zotovskaya, Velikoknyazheskaya (now Proletarskaya Rostov region).

Evdokim's sister, Maria Pavlovna, said that as a child, the younger brother disappeared on the river all day, he loved to arrange desperate "sea" battles with his peers on rafts, troughs, abandoned old boats. During one such "battle" on Manych, Fedotka's elder brother dislocated his leg, and Evdokim carried him home for seven kilometers in his arms ...

In their free time from the watch, friends often retired somewhere in a forecastle or in a carpentry workshop and had intimate conversations. Each talked about his life, native places. Then Evdokim Ognev's turn came: “I listen to you, brothers, and think: how much our life is similar with sores. It seems that a friend of hers had spied on her ... My father, Pavel Prokofievich, was "lucky" all his life. The first wife died soon after, leaving him with his daughter Pelageya. I took the second one from the neighboring village of Novotroitskoe, Fedosya Zakharovna, my mother. We lived with the need for an embrace. Dad rolls baking, and we sipped kvass. They drove through the farms and villages in the district, through the Cossack villages, looking for work. Father did not get along with the owners, he was reputed to be a lover of truth. They knocked about in strange corners - the family had eight mouths. I grew up, dad conceived: "I'll go to bed, and the youngest, Evdokim, I will make him literate, I will lead him into people." Indeed, I went to the parish "university" for four winters. The father did not survive, waved his hand: "It's not destiny, go, Evdokim, to the day laborers." When I turned fifteen, I went to the Grand Duke for a better life. Uncle Alexei advised. "

In military service Ognev since 1910. Initially, he was a sailor in the Baltic Fleet, and after graduating from the gunnery school in 1911, he was assigned to the cruiser Aurora.
From the memoirs of A.V. Belyshev, the former first commissar of the cruiser "Aurora":

“On October 25, 1917, the Aurora approached the Vasilievsky bridge along the Neva and anchored. At dawn, thousands of Petrograd workers came to the embankment, welcoming the sailors. Never before had such large warships entered the city so far.

The forces of the revolution multiplied and grew stronger. Detachments of Red Guards and soldiers marched to the center of the city along the bridge that had been brought down from Vasilyevsky Island.

By morning, the entire city and its most important strategic points, except for the Winter Palace, where the provisional government had taken refuge, were in the hands of the insurgent people. Towards evening, a tug approached the cruiser. Secretary of the Military Revolutionary Committee V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko. He said that an ultimatum was presented to the interim government - to surrender. The answer is expected by 9:00. If the ultimatum is rejected, revolutionary detachments will take the Winter Palace, where the ministers have taken refuge, by storm. Antonov-Ovseenko warned that in this case, fire would appear over the Peter and Paul Fortress. It will signal the Aurora to fire a blank shot at the Winter Palace, announcing the beginning of an attack on detachments of Red Guards, sailors and soldiers.

Winter is taken. Hood. V.A.Serov. 1954 year

The Aurors were also to participate in the storming of the last stronghold of the old world. About fifty sailors under the command of the sailor A.S. Nevolin went ashore and joined the free detachment of Baltic sailors. The decisive moment has come. At about 9 o'clock the command of the cruiser raised a combat alarm. Everyone took their places. The tension grew. Shooting was heard from the shore, and the Peter and Paul Fortress did not make itself felt. At 35 minutes on ten, there was still no signal. And when the long-awaited fire broke out in the evening haze, it was already 9 hours and 40 minutes.

Nasal, pli! - the command thundered.

Gunnery Evdokim Ognev pulled the trigger of the six-inch gun. Like a thunderclap ripped the air over the city. Hurray was heard through the rumble of a shot from Palace Square. Ours went to the assault. "

In 1918, to fight the enemies of the revolution, Evdokim Pavlovich was sent at the head of a detachment to Ukraine, where he soon died in battle.

Memoirs of P. Kirichkov, a participant in the events: “When the whites surrounded the carts, they were greeted with rare shots by a paramedic and a Red Army sled. All of them, together with the wounded, were hacked to death, and I was tied with reins, thrown to the bottom of the chaise and went to the Veselyi farm to the chieftain. Krysin, a White Guard from the Cossack Khomuts, with two fellow villagers rode next to the cart in which I was lying. The traitor boasted of killing the commander. I remember his story from start to finish.

Monument to Evdokim Ognev in the village of Staraya Kriusha, Voronezh Region

“... When the last supply left the Cossack Khomutets farm, the guns were left with three: Ognev, his orderly and a limping Cossack named Krysin from among those who joined the detachment in Cossack Khomutets. The shells ran out, the orderly brought the horses out of the gully, and the three horsemen, under the whistle of the White Guard bullets, began to leave for the steppe. While the whites realized that there was no one else in front of them, and they brought the horses out of the shelter, the three horsemen continued to leave without hindrance. The pursuit rushed after them. The Cossacks fired at a gallop. One bullet hit Ognev. For some reason, Krysin began to lag behind. When the horsemen drew level with the old Scythian mound, Krysin stopped the horse. He tore off the rifle from his shoulder and shot down the wounded Ognev with a shot. The orderly looked around, saw the commander fall, did not have time to understand anything - he was killed by the second shot. Krysin jumped off his horse, went up to Ognev, cautiously turned him over and began to remove the boots from the dead man ... "

Ognev was buried in a common grave on the Kazachiy Khomutets farm near Rostov-on-Don. He was also included by the Bolsheviks among the canonized heroes of October.

The memory of the hero is still alive in his native village. A monument to Evdokim Pavlovich Ognev is erected in the rural park. And the school museum contains a huge amount of information about the fellow countryman: parchments with memoirs of participants in the events, portraits of Ognev and even a cartridge case from "Aurora".

There were several myths in this regard.

The myth of the "Aurora salvo" was born literally the day after the storming of the Winter Palace, the signal for which was a shot from the legendary cruiser. Such information began to appear in the local press. Subsequently, already in the Stalin years, the version that "Aurora" fired at Zimniy with real shells was actively replicated: this was written about this in the "Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks," the film of the same name was released in the 1960s; in 1937, Mikhail Romm shot the film Lenin in October, where the audience's attention is also focused on this episode. The myth of the "volley" and literature did not pass by: Alexei Tolstoy in "Walking through the Torments" writes about the roof of the Winter Palace pierced by a shell.

This was all that was left of the recently noisy and drunken hustle and bustle of the capital. The idle crowds left the squares and streets. The Winter Palace was emptied, pierced through the roof by a shell from the Aurora. (Alexey Tolstoy. "Walking through the agony." Book 2)

On October 21, the Bolsheviks sent commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee to all the revolutionary units of the troops. All the days before the uprising, vigorous combat training was going on in military units, factories and plants. Combat ships - the cruiser "Aurora" and "Zarya Svoboda" also received certain assignments.<…>The revolutionary units of the troops, prepared for the uprising by the work of the Bolsheviks, exactly carried out combat orders and fought side by side with the Red Guard. The navy did not lag behind the army. Kronstadt was the fortress of the Bolshevik Party, where the authority of the Provisional Government had not been recognized for a long time. Cruiser"Aurora" with the thunder of his cannons aimed at the Winter Palace, he announced on October 25 the beginning of a new era - the era of the Great Socialist Revolution. (A short course on the history of the CPSU (b))

The cruiser "Aurora" and the icebreaker "Krasin" in the dry dock named after P.I. Veleshchinsky Kronstadt Marine Plant. 09/25/2014 © Andrey Sheremetev / AndreySheremetev.ru

Reality

The first - and the main debunkers of the myth were the sailors themselves from the cruiser "Aurora". The day after the events described, an article appeared in the Pravda newspaper in which the sailors tried to prove that there was no shelling of Zimny ​​from their side: if the cruiser fired "for real", not only the palace would be completely destroyed, but also the surrounding areas, they argued. The text of the refutation was as follows:

“To all honest citizens of the city of Petrograd from the crew of the cruiser Aurora, which expresses its sharp protest against the accusations thrown, especially the accusations that have not been verified, but cast a stain of shame on the cruiser crew. We declare that we have not come to smash the Winter Palace, not to kill civilians, but to protect and, if necessary, die for freedom and revolution from counter-revolutionaries.
The press writes that Aurora opened fire on the Winter Palace, but do gentlemen reporters know that the cannon fire we opened would not leave stone unturned not only from the Winter Palace, but also from the streets adjacent to it? Is it really there?

We appeal to you, workers and soldiers of Petrograd! Don't believe provocative rumors. Do not believe them that we are traitors and pogromists, and check the rumors themselves. As for the shots from the cruiser, only one blank shot from a 6-inch gun was fired, indicating a signal for all ships stationed on the Neva, and calling them to be vigilant and ready. We ask to reprint all editions.
Chairman of the ship committee
A. Belyshev
Comrade Chairman P. Andreev
Secretary / signature / ". (Pravda, No. 170, October 27, 1917)

For many years, while the myth of the power of revolutionary weapons, in which a single blank shot grew to a whole salvo of military weapons, was beneficial to official propaganda, no one recalled this note. Already at the time of Khrushchev's "thaw" this text appeared in the magazine "New World", in the article by V. Kardin "Legends and Facts" (1966, no. 2, p. 237). However, the newspaper Pravda did not respond amiably to its own quotation 50 years ago, publishing in March 1967 a message on behalf of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union of the SSR warning Soviet people against reading articles “imbued with false tendencies towards unjustified revision and belittling of revolutionary and heroic traditions of the Soviet people ”. The article did not leave indifferent the top leadership of the country either. In one of his speeches at the Politburo L.I. Brezhnev was indignant: “After all, some of our writers agree (and they are published) to the point that there was allegedly no salvo of Aurora, that it was, they say, a blank shot, etc., that there were no 28 Panfilovites, that there were fewer of them, this fact was almost invented that there was no Klochko and there was no his call, that "Moscow is behind us and we have nowhere to retreat ...".

Many years later, already during perestroika, "imbued with a false trend", the article was reprinted in the Ogonyok magazine.

The military also refutes the myth about the shelling of the Winter Palace from the cruiser: the ship, which really gained military fame by participating in the Russian-Japanese and World War I, has undergone major repairs since 1916, which means that all the ammunition from it by the time of the October events should have been already long ago removed - in accordance with the applicable instructions.

Another myth is that the shot of the Aurora is a signal for checking the time of the revolutionary squadron, sounded at 21:00 on October 25, 1917. (" ... Nobody set the task of the revolutionary sailors to give the signal for an assault. They simply gave a military signal, which was given regularly, so that time reconciliation was carried out on all ships .... This practice now exists in armies and navies around the world. ... I think that it is possible to assert with a high degree of accuracy the shot thundered exactly at 21.00. ...”)

Let's turn to theory and history:

Accurate knowledge of the time on the high seas is necessary for ships to reliably determine the location (especially longitude). A lot of effort was put by scientists, sailors, watchmakers of the world to achieve the required accuracy and develop error-free methods. The British Parliament even offered a generous bonus for successfully solving this problem. For example, at the equator, a time error of only 1 minute leads to an inaccuracy in determining a position on the Earth's surface of almost 30 km. All this was widely known in 1917 (let's look at the Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A.Efron). At that time, the main method of determining a place out of sight of the coast was astronomical.

Ships check their chronometers (in those years with coastal ones) immediately before going out to sea, under favorable hydrometeorological conditions, using astronomical luminaries and phenomena with accurate knowledge of longitude. Yes, and it is advisable to check the time by such a signal only far from the coast in a separate voyage of a squadron of ships when a large error in reckoning a place or a serious error in the readings of the chronometers on one of the ships is detected. I think it is clear that this does not apply to the ships that were stationed on the Neva.

At the beginning of the 20th century in Petrograd there already existed a "system of uniform time" - at the suggestion of D.I. Mendeleev, a cable was laid from the "normal", that is, standard, clocks of the Main Chamber of Weights and Measures to the General Staff, under the arch of which a clock was installed, never running and not lagging behind with the inscription on the dial: "Right time." This inscription can be read even today - go under the arch to the Winter Palace or to Nevsky Prospect.

As you know, the tradition of the midday shot for civilian needs in St. Petersburg was firmly established on February 6, 1865. On that day, at exactly noon, a 60-pound signal gun was fired from the Admiralty building, while the gun fired on a signal transmitted by cable directly from the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1872, in connection with the development of houses in the Admiralty courtyard, the Naval Ministry proposed to transfer the signal weapon to the Peter and Paul Fortress. On September 24, 1873, the midday shot was fired for the first time from the bastion of the fortress.

The British Astronomical Maritime Yearbook "Nautical Almanac" (published since 1766) from which tables of lunar distances were removed in 1907 for determining longitude on the high seas (instructions for calculating them are printed before 1924) were supplied by the Maritime Department on all ships of the Navy since 1856 It was only in 1930 that our country began to publish its own astronomical yearbook.

It is interesting to note that until January 1, 1925, the astronomical day began at noon, and the RSFSR switched to the time system based on the Greenwich meridian from February 8, 1919. And although the new style of chronology was introduced by the SNK Decree of January 26, 1918, in the headlines of many newspapers there are double dates already in 1917.

The production of nautical watches (not chronometers - they are foreign ones) is organized in the Workshop of nautical instruments of the Main Hydrographic Department. Russian seaworthy instruments are awarded with diplomas at international exhibitions in 1907 (Bordeaux) and 1912 (St. Petersburg).

If we take into account that the speed of sound was measured by the Milan Academy of Sciences back in the 17th century, then it is understandable - the accuracy of the signal shot from a cannon, with the departure of the century of sails in the middle of the 19th century, the development of watchmaking could only satisfy time control for everyday civil needs. For example, on January 9, 1917, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the actions of the German auxiliary cruiser (sailboat!) "Seeadler" in the capture of the steamer "Gladys Royle" were initially perceived as the ancient, ancestral custom of checking the chronometer with a mortar shot, and responded with a flag. By the end of the 19th century, the most common time signaling system in the ports of the world was with electric signal balls. The transmission of time signals by telegraph was also widely developed, especially with the advent of Hughes' direct-printing devices (remember the term "yuzogram"?).

In 1912-1913, at the initiative of France, 2 international conferences on the use of radio for transmitting precise time signals (ONOGO system) were held. The first chairman of the international commission was Academician O.A. Backlund (1846-1916) - director of the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1914, the first time signal transmission experiment was carried out in St. Petersburg (regular broadcasting began on December 1, 1920, although it did not become particularly known to the fleet).

Since 1910, radio stations in Germany, England and France have already transmitted time signals, since 1912 they were transmitted according to the venier principle, which made it possible to determine clock errors with an accuracy of 0.01 seconds, since 1913 at least 9 radio stations in the world have transmitted such signals.

The most famous document of 1720 - "Book of the Charter of the Sea. Regarding everything that concerns the good management of the presence of the fleet at sea, ”signals were introduced to control ships during joint navigation. Yes, both flags and cannon shots, drumbeats, ship bells, musket shots were used to feed them. Based on the experience of the combat operations of the fleet in the Mediterranean in 1797, "Complete signals to be produced in the fleets of His Imperial Majesty" were compiled. In 1814 A.N. Butakov is compiling a complete dictionary of semaphore signals. After the actual creation by Vice Admiral G.I. Butakov of tactics of actions of steam ships in 1868 published the "Book of Evolutionary Signals" and "Code of Naval Signals". They were based on flag signals. For night signaling, even before the creation of Morse code, flashlights were used. The revised "Code of Signals" in 1890 was rightly criticized by Vice Admiral S.O. Makarov. With the advent of electricity on ships, the Ratier-class signal lamp became famous. When darkening ships, klotik and wake lights were used to control the formation. Various figures raised on halyards, shields with signs were also used. Signaling and communications were taken seriously. They were spying on the decryption of the signals.

From the death of ships in the Tsushima battle, the command of the Russian fleet concluded that in addition to the flag and light signals of the searchlight, it is necessary to have another type of signaling, which would not depend on the presence or absence of superstructures and masts. These are signal flares. Veri's pistol (according to another Baer transcription) is still in service with the Navy (for more than 100 years!). They were imported from abroad at the beginning of the century, they were expensive, and therefore many domestic analogues were created. The system of Captain 2nd Rank Zhukov (1908) was especially famous, although it was intended mainly for supplying combat and evolutionary signals, for everyday signals, which include time signals, in his opinion, there was enough signaling with flags and lanterns. The question is whether the famous red fire was from Peter and Paul Fortress signal flare?

As you can see, the need for such an archaic method of checking the chronometers of quite modern, well-equipped warships (well, in no way resembling Francis Drake's "Golden Hind", albeit a troubled time in the country), like a cannon shot, and even in the middle of Petrograd at the beginning of the 20th century is clearly absent, as it is now. For the needs of time control on the ship itself, flasks were fought off on watch.

It would be all the more surprising if such a regular signal was given by a rather expensive artillery charge of the main caliber. After dismantling the 37-mm Hotchkiss cannons from the Aurora, 76.2-mm anti-aircraft guns of the Lender system would most likely be used as signal (there is also a term salute). From a blank volley of 152-mm cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the windows in the city are still trembling, and in the Hermitage, before the cannon was turned towards Vasilyevsky Island, an alarm was triggered - a lot of windows would have blown out on the Angliyskaya Embankment - for a regular signal it is clearly not right. An example is November 20, 1992, when the midday shot was fired for the only time in the courtyard of the Naryshkin Bastion.

Back to "Aurora":

The ship, under the command of Lieutenant N.A. Erickson, on October 22, 1917, after the completion of repairs at the Franco-Russian plant, was prepared to go to sea for a sample of vehicles (and not for withdrawal from Petrograd for counter-revolutionary purposes, as presented by the Bolsheviks ) and even took on board part of the ammunition - there is a war in the Baltic. On board there are quite accurate chronometers, as on most ships of that time, British-made (in importance and tradition, they are very guarded). The navigator has the "Nautical Almanac" with the Guide to the use of the English nautical month and, of course, other nautical instruments.

Chief of the watch - Warrant Officer L.A. Demin (1897-1973), in the future Rear Admiral, Doctor geographical sciences, who prepared more than 100 nautical charts and directions, for 16 years (from 1957 to 1973) headed the Leningrad branch of the All-Union Astronomical and Geodetic Society - is still young, but he will not forget to start such a chronometer ?!

The situation with the gun sights is a little unclear - there is a version that they were removed and locked somewhere in the cabin, but think about whether someone would then stand on ceremony with the locked cabin. The cruiser gunmen do not remember this.

The bright searchlights of the Mangin system are also operational, a similar signal could have been given by them.

Despite S.N. Poltorak, tasks for certain actions in the preparation of the storming of the Winter Palace "Aurora" were nevertheless set. These are orders of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies No. 1219 dated October 24, 1717 on the transfer of the ship to Combat Readiness and No. 1253 dated 10.24.17 on the task of restoring traffic on the Nikolaevsky bridge. By order No. 1125, Aleksandr Viktorovich Belyshev was appointed commissar of the ship, even with the indication of the time 12 hours and 20 minutes. And by telegram from Tsentrobalt from 24.10.17, "Aurora" was subordinated to the Military Revolutionary Committee, this document on 27.10.17, No. 5446, was registered at the Main Naval Headquarters (it was received by the officer on duty, Ensign Lesgaft). They counted on the pressure of the cruiser's guns, they even sent checks. Most of the team is on the side of the VRK.

After making measurements of the unfamiliar Nevsky fairway "Aurora" at 3 h. 30 min. On 10/25/17 she anchored at the Nikolaevsky bridge opposite the Rumyantsevs' mansion (44 Angliyskaya embankment) and complied with the order to ensure traffic on the bridge.

By 19 o'clock in the Neva entered, having completed the transition from Gelsinfors (Helsinki) with a call to Kronstadt, combat-capable destroyers "Bully" and "Samson", a little earlier the patrol ship "Yastreb" and other ships.

It would be very naive to believe that such a transition was made by ships without reliable knowledge of time (and, as a result of longitude), even with visual reference points, and they did not correct it in the port of Kotlin Island, equipped with everything necessary for this, but preferred to “ask again”, according to versions of S.N. Poltorak, at the Aurora. The mine war, which was widely waged in the Baltic, you know, is a dangerous thing and you need to go on a strictly checked fairway, and the forts of Kronstadt are at the ready.

The radio stations (including medium-wave tonal ones) of the cruiser and other ships are also in perfect order. Radiograms of the listed ships can be found in the Central State Administration of the Navy, case numbers have even been published in the open press.

Between the ships, the Peter and Paul Fortress, in which uniform confusion is going on with the guns and artillerymen, which GI Blagonravov can hardly cope with (having called the gunners from the training ground), and the surrounded Winter Palace on a boat (from the Aurora?) V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko. (This is also known from the memoirs of L.D. Trotsky).

Let's consider the second part of the assumption - the Aurora's shot sounded exactly at 21.00. The most often called 21.40, 21.45. Eyewitnesses of the events (former members of the Provisional Government, Aurora members, deputies) and reporters of Petrograd newspapers of those years with different political preferences indicate the time quite accurately and it does not differ too much.

Comparing and analyzing their memories, newspaper publications (and this is a topic for a separate and most serious article), archival documents, one can be sure that the former commissar of "Aurora" A.V. Belyshev calls 21.40 quite right. Only now it all began with the explosion of a grenade in the palace, then the troops defending the Winter Palace began firing.

A salvo from the Aurora was required, but it had a completely different

meaning -" only one blank shot from a 6-inch cannon was fired, signifying a signal for all ships stationed on the Neva, and calling them to be alert and ready."This is from the text of the letter from the crew of the cruiser" Aurora "- I attach it to the article. I am very surprised that it has not been published in full for a long time. What made the team write this letter becomes clear from other publications of those days. And the surname of the unknown secretary of the cruiser's court committee to this day is Miss (he is Estonian by nationality).

I understand that this is how the Aurora shot is historically correct and should be called.

And a shot was fired (by the gunner E.P. Ognev from the team of A.V. Belyshev) at the note sent to the Aurora by Antonov-Ovseenko or Blagonravov. There was also fire from the destroyers, even the signal cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress fired. The Winter Palace and city buildings were destroyed.

And the shot, according to historians, was fired at 21:40, while the assault began after midnight, which, alas, does not confirm the theory of the signal function of the Aurora in the capture. Nevertheless, the Cruiser "Aurora" is depicted on the Order of the October Revolution, which he himself was awarded in 1967.

sources

http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=413187&cid=7

http://actualhistory.ru/myth-avrora-cruiser - here is the decoding of footnotes

InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -