Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander III ?

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Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander III ?

#1

Post by CanKiwi2 » 14 Dec 2010, 14:56

I read somewhere that Finland purchased 7x12" coastal artillery guns from the French. These had been stored in Tunisia and were Russian guns from a ship which had ended up interned in Bizerte after the Russian Civil War and which was scrapped in 1936. The deal was in the works just before the Winter War started.

Does anyone have any more info on whether this occurred and also, where did they plan to use these guns after they were delivered?
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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#2

Post by CanKiwi2 » 14 Dec 2010, 21:20

Found the answer to my own question: Imperator Aleksandr III was the third, and last, ship of the Imperatritsa Mariya-class dreadnoughts of the Imperial Russian Navy. She was begun before World War I, completed in 1917 and saw service with the Black Sea Fleet. She was renamed Volia before her completion and then General Alekseyev in 1920. The ship did not take part in operations during World War I because her sister ships were given a higher priority for completion. She was delivered in 1917, but the disruptions of the February Revolution rendered the Black Sea Fleet ineffective and she saw no combat. Volia was surrendered to the Germans in 1918, but they were forced to turn her over to the British by the terms of the Armistice. The British turned her over to the White Russians in 1919 and they used her to help evacuate the Crimea in 1920. She was interned in Bizerte with the rest of Wrangel's fleet. The French decided not to sell her back to the Soviet Union and she was sold for scrap in the late 1920s to pay her docking costs although she was not actually broken up until 1936.

Her guns were put into storage and were later used by the Germans and Finns for coastal artillery during World War II. The Finns and the Soviets continued to use them throughout the Cold War. The ship's main armament consisted of a dozen Obukhovskii 12-inch (305 mm) Pattern 1907 52-calibre guns mounted in four triple turrets distributed the length of the ship. Her secondary armament consisted of eighteen 130-millimeter (5.1 in) B7 Pattern 1913 55-calibre guns mounted in casemates. They were arranged in two groups, five guns per side from the forward turret to the rear funnel and the remaining four clustered around the rear turret.

In January 1940 France gave them to Finland, after refusing to sell seven to the Finns in the summer of 1939. Of the twelve main guns, eight made it to Finland, while four were seized by Germany when it invaded Norway in April 1940 and captured them on board the SS Nina in Narvik harbor. The Germans emplaced all four guns, after rebuilding them to accept German ammunition, in armoured turrets in 'Batterie Mirus' on Guernsey. The Finns used four guns in coastal artillery positions at Isosaari and Mäkiluoto. Two other guns were used to repair Soviet TM-3-12 railway guns abandoned at Hanko when the Soviets evacuated in 1941. After the war these were handed over to the Soviet Union, where they were kept operational until the 1990s. The remaining two guns were kept as spares for the others, one of which was used to replace one gun damaged during tests with 'super charges' in the 1970s. One gun turret is now a memorial at Isosaari while the remaining spare barrel is preserved at the Finnish Coast Artillery Museum at Kuivasaari.

The Nina also carried some of the General Alekseyev's 13-cm guns. Several of these were used at the fort at Tangane on the island of Rugsundøy. They engaged the British light cruiser HMS Kenya, reportedly scoring one hit on the cruiser, during Operation Archery in 1941, but saw no other combat during the war.
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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#3

Post by JTV » 14 Dec 2010, 21:58

You were fast to write the reply to your own qustion, but since I already wrote this and it contains bit more detail, I am going to add it anyway. Hopefully it has some new data for you:

As mentioned Finland had negotiated about twelve 305-mm guns originating from Imperator Alexander III already before Winter War. During World War the Russians had build rather strong coastal artillery to Finnish south coast and once Russian military left grand majority of the coastal guns were left behind. The largest caliber coastal guns that the Russians had left behind were 12-inch guns similar to ones used in Imperator Alexander III. Since these were the biggest and most powerful guns in Finnish use, the Finns could certainly use some spare parts and getting more guns would have naturally also allowed adding some more heavy coastal batteries.

After long negotiations France ended up donating the guns to Finland. There were twelve of these guns, but only eight of them arrived to Finland. One of the ships transporting them, Nina, was captured by the Germans when they invaded Norway and the four guns in it ended up to Batterie Mirus in Guernsey. The eight guns that arrived to Finland two went to Finnish coastal artillery. Two of them were reserved for two one-gun steel turrets of coastal fort in Isosaari Island (outside Helsinki) and two were reserved for planned two-gun steel turret on Mäkiluoto coastal fort. Building of the coastal battery with two turrets for Isosaari fort started in 1941 and they were almost ready when the work was stopped 15th of January 1945 - Allied Control Comission had decided to forbidden guns larger than 120-mm in caliber from Finnish coastal artillery placed east of Porkkala (location of new Soviet base bit west of Helsinki) and Isosaari was in this part of coast. So the two guns in Isosaari were transported to depot. Mäkiluoto fort had one earlier build turret with similar 12-inch guns, but the 2nd turret for which these particular guns were intended was actually never build. Paris peace treaty of 1947 outdated the Allied Control Commission decision and Finnish military started moving the heavy coastal guns back to its coastal forts. Among these were two 12-inch guns of Isosaari fort, which were returned to fort in 1961 - 1962 and the battery was finally made operational. The barrel that broke in testing in 1970's was in western turret of Isosaari battery - the damaged barrel was replaced. Western turret of Isosaari 12-inch battery was disassembled in year 1982, the eastern turret remains and is in museum use (but unrenovated?).

As mentioned some got also used as spare parts for captured railway guns. After Winter War the Soviets got naval base to Hanko/Hango/Gangut peninsula. When Continuation War started in June of 1941 Finnish Army besieged it and finally the Soviets evacuated it in December of 1941. Among materials that the Soviets left behind during this evacuation were railway gun batteries, which they had tried to demolish before leaving. One of these railway batteries had three 12-inch railway guns TM-3-12 ("305/52 ORaut" for Finnish military). Finnish military repaired those three guns in 1942 - 1943 and guns received from France were used for the work. As mentioned the guns were sold back to Soviet Union after Continuation War.

Some of the guns from Imperator Alexander III may still be in use in Finland. While these old guns have obviously been replaced my more modern weapons in military use, some remain for museum purposes. Kuivasaari coastal fort outside Helsinki has museum battery with two 12-inch guns in steel turret, the turret and its guns were renovated in 1991 - 1992 and these guns may have been used for renovating it. Kuivasaari also has one spare barrel in its exhibition. Every now and then on special occasions guns of its 12-inch turret are used for firing blank shots. There have also been plans of renovating another 12-inch museum battery to Örö coastal fort, but I have not heard anything of it lately.

Jarkko
Last edited by JTV on 15 Dec 2010, 06:31, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#4

Post by CanKiwi2 » 14 Dec 2010, 22:33

Thx Jarkko, appreciate the additional information, now have to figure out how to use that in the "What If" I was working on. Which for these guns was along the lines of: If Finland had actually gotten these guns delivered and had had time to install them before the Winter War started, where would they had put them for the best bang for the buck.

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#5

Post by ML » 14 Dec 2010, 23:43

Just to add some more details:

The eight 12" guns Finns eventually got from Bizerta were barrel numbers 86, 127, 113, 121, 119, 91, 96 and 129. Based on where the barrels were located they were probably used as follows:

- 86 and 127 were used to repair the Soviet 12" railway guns in Hanko. These were given back to Soviet Union in 1945.

- 113 and 121 were used to build two single-gun turrets to Isosaari. The barrels were transferred to depot in 1945 and returned to Isosaari in 1960's. Eastern turret is still preserved as museum piece with barrel # 113 in place. Western turret with barrel # 121 suffered barrel explosion in 1960's or 70's and the barrel was replaced with another, number of which is unknown to me. Some time in 1960's there were two 12" spare barrels in Isosaari.

- 119 and 91 were to be used to build another 12" twin turret to Mäkiluoto. Turret was never built and barrels were evacuated in 1944 before Porkkala was rented to Soviets with the existing 12" twin turret. Barrel # 91 is now spare barrel in Örö.

- 96 was stored for future use. It is now one of the two spare barrels in Kuivasaari.

-129 was transported to Hanko. I am not sure whether it was used to repair the third railway gun or not. All three railway gun barrels were badly damaged and at least one was a total loss.

In addition to 8 Bizerta guns Finns had nine 12" barrels left by Russians to Finland in 1918. Four of them were at Örö and five in fortress of Ino. Ino guns had to be dismantled according to Tartu peace treaty in 1920. They were eventually used to build twin turrets to Mäkiluoto and Kuivasaari in 1930's, although I haven't been able to track the barrel numbers. Two guns from Örö were moved to Ristiniemi in Vyborg Bay in 1930's and destroyed in Winter war.

The twin turret in Kuivasaari has now barrels # 15 (right) and # 111 (left). Barrels were evacuated in 1945 and same barrels returned in 1960's. These barrels originate probably from the fortress of Ino. One of the two spare barrels in Kuivasaari is # 18, which is not from Bizerta (probably from Ino).

Örö has nowadays two 12" guns in single mounts (not really turrets) and two spare barrels. Mounted barrels are possibly the same that Russians installed already during WW1.

There is also some information that Germans would have compensated the capture of 4 Bizerta guns by giving Finns 1944 four 12" guns they got as war booty in Estonia. If this really happened is unknown.

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#6

Post by CanKiwi2 » 22 Dec 2010, 14:56

So a theoretical question here.

Assuming Finland had successfully bought and received ALL the guns from the Imperator Aleksander III (a dozen Obukhovskii 12-inch (305 mm) Pattern 1907 52-calibre naval guns and eighteen 130-millimeter (5.1 in) B7 Pattern 1913 55-calibre naval guns and received these in 1937, and also had the nine 12" barrels left by the Russians to Finland in 1918 in storage through the 1920’s, what would be the best usage for these in terms of adding to the exisiting Coastal Defences? Trying to factor out 20/20 hindsight of course :?

And a practical question. Can anyone point me to information on Finland''s Coastal Artillery Defences through the 1930's? Finnish sites are fine - I can get the gist of it with the translation software I use.

Thanks.............Nigel
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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#7

Post by John Hilly » 23 Dec 2010, 15:31

Is this site already familiar to You?

http://www.oocities.com/finnmilpge/fmp_ ... ort39.html

Sending You a PM
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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#8

Post by CanKiwi2 » 23 Dec 2010, 18:30

John Hilly wrote:Is this site already familiar to You?

http://www.oocities.com/finnmilpge/fmp_ ... ort39.html
Thx Juha-Pekka, didn't have that site on my radar at all. That's exactly what I was looking for.

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#9

Post by Jagala » 26 Dec 2010, 22:50

What-ifs are not my strong suite and I am no kind of artillery man, but here's my take:

Since we are talking about a country will a purely defensive military policy, the best deployment of any weapon or weapon system would have been one which would have provided the greatest amount of deterrence, i.e. raised the threshold of war for any potential aggressor. However, I don't think these additional artillery assets would have made much of an impression on Stalin or his military planners.

The second best deployment would have been one that didn't lower the threshold of war, i.e. one that didn't appear too threatening or as an obstruction to a potential aggressor's plans, so to speak. As it happened, the Finnish-Estonian coastal artillery co-operation was already a "sufficient cause" and in that respect it wouldn't have greatly mattered where any number of additional guns would have been placed.

Thirdly, the main role of coastal artillery is, of course, to prevent landing operations and to limit the freedom of action of the enemy's naval forces. I think the existing Finnish coastal artillery did that quite satisfactorily in the Winter War and thus there was no particular area that should have been reinforced.

(I can hear an objection raised here: didn't the Soviets attack across the ice-covered Bay of Vyborg and manage to create a bridgehead at a deadly critical spot on the Finnish coast? Wouldn't even a small number of heavy coastal artillery guns have been able to even the odds there? I must confess I have no idea.)

That leaves us the fourth option: to use the guns to support the infantry fighting on the Karelian Isthmus. As it was, the coastal artillery units along the shores of Lake Ladoga did a fairly good job with what relatively little they had and the guns survived aerial attacks and counter artillery bombardment better than expected.
The lack of especially heavy and long range artillery was a major weakness in the Finnish defenses and the guns could conceivably have made a difference. Maybe not enough to turn the war around but maybe enough to make the breakthrough in February an even costlier and slower affair - and the possibility of an Allied expedition force (and the ensuing political complications) an even bigger dark cloud on the horizon for Stalin.

(The big problem in any what-if is that even if Finland had recived the guns in 1937, the costs of deploying them, building fortresses and other installations would have been considerable, and it is difficult to see that the size of the defense budget in those years would have grown to accommodate these costs. In other words, some other area of military procurement would have been the loser (in what could be seen as a zero sum game) and the odds are that it could have been a more critical area.)

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#10

Post by JTV » 30 Dec 2010, 21:43

Jagala made some good points especially concerning deployment costs, but maybe there is room for second opinion from slightly different perspective - namely, what were these guns actually good for.

While using these 12-inch guns as supporting artillery for the Army either in Karelian Isthmus or Gulf of Viipuri might look smart, from technical viewpoint they were poorly suited for that sort of use. For one thing their theoretical barrel life expectency was rather low - only 600 shots. In addition ammunition and the fuses existing in Finnish use were not really designed for shooting targets like infantry and tanks. Finnish military didn't have any real high explosive (HE) ammunition designed that sort of use until some (left behind by the Soviets when they had been evacuated) were found in Hanko/Hango/Gangut. Finnish used ammunition closest resembling HE-ammunition were "miinakranaatti", which with their thick shell casing and relatively small high explosive charge were more akin to armour piercing high explosive shell, than real high explosive shell. In addition apparently sensitive fuses were not commonly available for 305-mm ammunition either, which would have further reduced their effectiveness. Hence if intended to be used for shelling such targets, at least new ammunition should have been designed. BTW: Existing ammunition might have worked pretty well against fortifications, but apparently they were never put to that sort use.

What these guns were good for, was exactly what they had been originally designed for - shelling large heavily armoured ships. Year 1918 Russians didn't leavy any of the 12-inch guns behind in such condition, that could have simply been immediately taken to Finnish use. Taking them to use took lot of money and effort. The reason why Finnish Coastal Artillery decided to do this in 1920's was that smaller guns were not considered powerful enough against battleships. The second biggest coastal gun in Finnish inventory was 10-inch Durlacher, which had notably smaller maximum range (27.5 km vs 36 - 42 km) and smaller (225 - 235 kg vs 355 - 470 kg) shells. At the same time these 12-in guns were obviously very useful also against warships with-in size range of destroyers and cruisers due to easily out-ranging their guns. While the Soviets didn't build new battleships, they still had small number of older battleships in their arsenal and in 1939 Finnish coastal artillery had to fight these.

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#11

Post by Jagala » 31 Dec 2010, 09:55

What I (as an artillery-wise ignorant armchair GHQ general) had foremost in my mind was a counter-artillery role, i.e. an ability (sorely missing in RL) to at least severely disrupt the Soviet artillery regiments and battalions pounding the Finnish positions, but I now I can see that it was too far removed from reality.

BTW you did not mention what you would have these guns (and the ammunition that could have been acquired and been available one way or another. Am I right to infer that at least during the Winter War there was no use for them, i.e. that additional guns would have meant redundancy or lack of cost-effectiveness?

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#12

Post by JTV » 31 Dec 2010, 20:34

Jagala wrote:BTW you did not mention what you would have these guns (and the ammunition that could have been acquired and been available one way or another. Am I right to infer that at least during the Winter War there was no use for them, i.e. that additional guns would have meant redundancy or lack of cost-effectiveness?
Well that part would be clearly in "what if" category and personally I consider that whole area somewhat useless (Considering scientific theory is that one can't change history since it always creates always alternative reality and as far as changes caused by changing one detail are concerned butterfly theory probably applies). Another main problem that if building of new 12-inch coastal battery would have started in 1940, getting it ready by 1944 would still be uncertain.

Anyway, as far as concerned getting "most bang for the buck" for the particular 12-inch guns in this sort of use I would suggest two sets of alternatives:

1. Defensive alternatives: Reinforcing already existing coastal batteries, just like Finnish Coastal Artillery had planned. In such a case the basic thing would be to reinforce protection of those coastal sectors in Finnish south coast, which were considered as most likely high-priority targets for Soviet Navy. So, Isosaari Island (with its gun protecting Helsinki) would obviously get very high on that list and Örö Island would also certainly make sense. Also some coastal forts around Kotka (like Kirkonmaa or Pukkio) might have been good candidates for additional 12-inch coastal battery.

2. Offensive alternatives: Start building coastal battery for these 12-inch guns to Ulko-Tammio in 1940 (*). If the battery build to Ulko-Tammio would get ready by 1944 it would certainly make the life interesting for Soviet naval assets operationg from Lavansaari Island (Soviet forward base in 1942 - 1944) and Lavansaari Island itself would be barely without range. Also, if the Finnish - Soviet border would end up as in it did, Ulko-Tammio would still be in Finnish side of border (so no guns lost).

Extremely offensive alternative would be start building 12-inch coastal battery to Ino or Terijoki starting in late 1941, getting it ready in time by 1944 would be very uncertain, but if successful Soviet naval assets operating from Kronstadt naval base would be very unhappy (not only would Kronstadt naval base be easily within range, but any ships operating from there would have to always sail through very wide area within range of the particular coastal battery). Downside - the guns would be almost certainly lost in 1944, since evacuating them would be extremely difficult.

(*) I have to admit this was not purely my own idea. Year 1944 Finnish Coastal Artillery was planning 234-mm coastal battery to that island.

Personally I think Ulko-Tammio is my favourite from all those alternatives - likely still reasonably change of success getting the battery ready in time for to prove its value in war and also good chance of not loosing its guns in armistice of 1944. Also even if compeleting building it in time would not succeed, there would be a chance of completing it post year 1947 (althought in such case completing building it might get cancelled for political reasons - with its location might be tad too obvious to see against whom it was intended).

Jarkko

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#13

Post by CanKiwi2 » 31 Dec 2010, 23:17

Thx ML, Jarkko and JTV

That's all very much appreciated. The whole Coastal Artillery setup for Finland is something I need to do a lot more research into and what you've responded with really helps. I'm doing a "What If" over in the "What If" Forums right now and I admit, I jumped into it with very little knowledge of the Coastal Artillery and the role they played. And yes, "What If's" can be a bit pointless in terms of looking back at the past. On the other hand they sure are fun to write and they force you to learn a lot really quickly.

I'm into the Heimosodat right now and can I find anything on the 1918/1920 Petsamo Expeditions in English. Nope! Just a mention of them, so I know they happened, but no details.

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Re: Russian guns from the battleship Imperator Aleksander II

#14

Post by CanKiwi2 » 31 Dec 2010, 23:19

And thx Jagala as well :) (didn't mean to miss you out there)

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A question about the Örö coastal artillery fortification

#15

Post by CanKiwi2 » 15 Jul 2013, 12:59

I'm reading about Örö, and there's a bit that says that during the civil war of 1918 the fort was in the RDAS hands. Was the RDAS the Red forces?
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