Admirals of the United States of America long resisted the emergence in its fleet of light cruisers, preferring the beloved “Washington” class. End to the resistance put by the London naval Treaty, limitirovanie not only limit the size of ships of different classes, but the total capacity allocated for each class. Although the Americans became happy owners of the largest quotas for heavy cruisers — 18 units, but almost all of it was already selected. There was nothing left to do but go to build a less ambitious units, weapons which could not exceed the caliber of 155 mm.
OVERSEAS THE CONCEPT OF “LIGHTNESS”
Boats Holland, triumphantly marched around the world were not the sole representatives of overseas inventions in the field of underwater shipbuilding. Almost simultaneously, quite suddenly, there was another branch that is associated with the name of Simon lake. This son of the owner of a small steel mill in the seaside town of Plesantville “ruined” Jules Verne, or rather, his famous novel about the adventures of captain Nemo on the submarine “Nautilus”. Read at the tender age of “bestseller” has completely changed Simon’s life, by the way, a very long (he had seen both world wars and died as many as in 1945). A real “skate” the lake was the development of the project is very original underwater “objects” that with equal reason be called and rode the submarine, and the submersible vehicle.
We have already seen how the Italian designers and consistently enough for the purpose to improve the quality of their light cruisers of the “condottieri”. However, with all the advantages come down to a decent level of protection, the armament remained the same — eight 152-mm guns, which, moreover, could not be called rapid-fire. Even on paper they are inferior competitors last generation from other countries. For example, the British, with their twelve 6-dyuymovymi, not to mention pyatnadcatiletnij the Japanese and the Americans. If the meeting with the latter seemed unlikely because of the terms of policy and geography, Britain remained among the most likely opponents. More likely the traditional “foe” was France, just started building a new strong light cruisers “La Galissoniere”. Were in the ranks “, condotieri” potentially lost a duel such formidable adversaries.
After the First world war, in addition to shipbuilding giant — Britain and the major European players in the face of France, Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union, in quiet corners of Europe still remained small countries trying hard to develop a national military shipbuilding for their own projects. However, sometimes I had to resort to the “elders”. In the end, was born a very unique ships. And not in the last instance they proved to be just cruisers.
We have already talked about the long road that designers have been Italian light cruisers with their “condottieri”, which began with a frankly weak “Bande Nere” and culminating in the powerful “Giuseppe Garibaldi” and “Abruzzi”. For their successive steps, each of which led to the emergence of more and more protected and balanced ship, closely followed Mediterranean their eternal rivals and neighbours the French. Up to a certain point in Paris believed that the events develop in favourable terms: they are the powerful leaders may be able to compete with not too “covered” by the cruisers of Mussolini. But with every new series of “potential enemy” the hopes of this kind were becoming ephemera. The fracture occurred on the “Raimondo montecuccoli” and “Aosta valley”, which has carried a solid side armor, it is able to protect from the French 138-millimetrovogo in the medium range and a disadvantage for projectile angles of the meeting.
The situation by the end of 30-ies of the cruising forces of the Soviet Union, very much like the case of bygone days when the country was an Empire and was called Russia. Stalin and his loyal Commissars wanted to create a “large fleet” is not less than the last Tsar and his entourage. And again ambitious plans were constantly in conflict with higher-priority and urgent tasks, lack of experience and aspirations to create something, which is obviously superior to future adversaries. However, unlike tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union managed not only to develop but also time to implement in the metal is original and very interesting project domestic cruiser. “Light heavyweight” of the 26th (“Kirov”) and its development, 26-bis (“Maxim Gorky”) was undoubtedly an interesting alternative to the standard “contractual” light and heavy cruisers. But the idea with the intermediate 180-mm caliber, it turned out not quite successful, mainly due to insufficient rate of fire and survivability of the barrel of the gun. In addition, the ships were very expensive to reproduce them in dozens of instances seems unrealistic from a financial point of view.
British military shipbuilding has centuries-old experience of development and combat use of the most advanced designs and technologies. On the eve of the Second world war-the British squadrons were surface ships: battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers. Therefore underwater vessels by the Admiralty was not honored. However, the attack on Gunter Prina 15 Oct 1939 in Scapa Flow, when he crept into a German submarine sank the battleship right into the main base of the British Navy, put squarely the question of creating subversive underwater vehicles.
We left two outstanding inventors, John Holland and Edmund Zelinskogo, in 1886 in a pretty sad state. The firm of submarines collapsed simultaneously with the physical collapse of the pile with their first and only joint design. The money ran out, wanting to continue the experiments there. Holland seems to be had only to retrain for something less exotic. But he wanted to build submarines. And then he undoubtedly is lucky of different European countries already reported quite promising boats, capable long enough to be under water and attack the enemy. Blow to the Naval Ministry USA, stubbornly wanting to adopt none of the samples, which we described earlier, was the news that his “secret vessel” motor is going to build Spain. The relationship between one of the oldest colonial powers and the young American “democracy” is active on these colonies looked, was getting worse and worse. And congressmen finally decided to fork out.
The Washington naval agreement of 1922 was a significant barrier to growing the race for naval armaments, which began during the First world war. Under this agreement the Japanese fleet by number of aircraft carriers and capital ships (battleships, cruisers) are much smaller than the fleets of England and the United States. Some compensation for this could serve as a permit for the construction of the points of forward basing in the Pacific Islands. And because agreements about the number of submarines to achieve in Washington and failed, the Japanese admirals began to plan the placement on remote island bases of small coastal boats.
While the British Admiralty systematically extinguished the enthusiasm of its inventors-“submariners” in former British overseas colonies, and now the most economically powerful nation in the world, energetic engineers to continue their experiments. And, in the end, the United States has become the birthplace of real submarines, suitable not only for experimentation and advertising “horror stories” in the spirit of sir Basil Zaharov, but also for combat use.