Chapter 146: The Demise Of The Black Sea Fleet, Part 1
Admiral Eberhardt had already wanted to turn back to Sevastopol upon learning the news of Major General Lugin’s rapid annihilation.
But by then it was already too late; he was about to engage Lieutenant General William Sushun’s Germanian pre-dreadnought detachment from the south.
（Note: Yesterday a reader reminded that it should be “William Suhong”; this is just a difference in translation versions, so I kept it as is. “Sushun” is probably a relatively old transliteration from the previous dynasty）
While Spee’s battlecruiser squadron was finishing off the Lushan Odessa Detachment Fleet, the distance between him and Lieutenant General Sushun’s pre-dreadnought detachment was only about a dozen nautical miles.
If Admiral Eberhardt wanted to flee at this point, with his speed of 21 knots, he definitely couldn’t outrun the two 27-knot Moltke-class battlecruisers personally led by Admiral Spee.
Rather than being outflanked and chased down to heavy damage or even total destruction for nothing, it was better to go all out and gamble on taking a few down with him before dying.
Especially after these past few days, the Black Sea Fleet had been in a state of pure loss.
During air raids, they had no power to fight back; after the air raids ended, the fleet didn’t dare return to port and shut down. Keeping the boilers running constantly was to avoid being caught off-guard if airships came again and temporary firing-up wasn’t fast enough.
And in that small midday battle, a detachment fleet was concentrated on by the enemy’s superior forces and defeated individually, nearly annihilated without losses. Having suffered such great misfortunes repeatedly, even a clay figure would be roused to anger—who would want to die so pathetically in the end?
“Whole fleet prepare for battle, form battle line! Target, Germanian pre-dreadnought detachment dead ahead!”
Admiral Eberhardt gritted his teeth and issued the order to fight to the death.
The Lusha Black Sea Fleet quickly began turning, forming a battle line.
The Imperatritsa Mariya battleship at the front of the formation faced off against Lieutenant General William Sushun’s flagship Schwaben;
The Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya battleship in the second position faced the second ship in the opposing battle line, Weidling;
The pre-dreadnought Svyatoy Evstafiy, also a pre-dreadnought, was at the rear, facing the opponent’s last ship Zähringen.
Soon, the Lushans’ 305 mm shells and the Germanians’ 240 mm shells began firing at each other.
Although the Germanian naval gun models were nearly a decade old, because their caliber was much smaller, both sides’ firing rates were about the same.
Both sides fired at a rate of one round every half minute, hurling shells at each other.
With the strength of battleships, crushing the opposing pre-dreadnoughts should have been quite easy.
But unfortunately, Admiral Eberhardt’s two battleships were not in peak condition—
Imperatritsa Mariya had just been hit by one 500 kg aerial bomb and two small bombs from an airship during the air raid on Sevastopol harbor the day before yesterday. It damaged the rotating mechanism of No. 2 main turret and the rear funnel.
This crippled a quarter of Imperatritsa Mariya’s firepower; only three of the four main turrets could fire, and maximum speed dropped from 21 knots to 19 knots.
Although the damaged funnel had been emergency-sealed, once speed increased, various black smoke still leaked out, spreading over the deck and affecting observation to some extent.
Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya had been hit by 6 small bombs at the time, damaging some superstructures and fittings; rangefinding and observation and aiming instruments were affected to some degree, and emergency repairs could not fully compensate.
After engagement began, both sides methodically exchanged shells.
The Lushans’ auxiliary ships, no longer holding a numerical advantage, didn’t dare charge forward; they stayed low-key, guarding the main force ships and watching for enemy torpedo boats launching torpedo charges.
“Boom boom boom~”
The first salvo was fired by the Lusha Fleet when they were 15 km apart.
When the three Lusha ships fired their second salvo, the three Germanian ships fired back without showing weakness, only about 30 seconds later.
Then, both sides conducted low-frequency spotting fire, slowly firing and calculating corrections; in 17 minutes they fired 20 salvos, but with no results.
Engagement distance dropped from 15 km all the way to 12 km, right at this moment, just like then.
“Damn it! The warship is interfered by smoke leaking from the funnel, causing aiming efficiency to drop!”
“Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya too—definitely those observation and aiming hardware pieces replaced after that bombing have accuracy break-in issues!”
Admiral Eberhardt saw that after 20 salvos exchanged, there were still no hits, knowing the warships’ accuracy had been affected.
15 km should originally have been the maximum efficient engagement range for battleships; at that distance, ten or eight salvos should land a hit. Now due to instrument and equipment accuracy errors, they had to shorten the engagement distance by another two or three km.
Fortunately, when distance shortened to 12 km, Imperatritsa Mariya finally achieved the first hit on Schwaben with her 23rd salvo.
“Boom!” The 305 mm armor-piercing shell slammed into Schwaben’s 225 mm main armor belt. The main armor couldn’t withstand such fierce penetration and was torn open with a terrible distorted hole.
But the Lushans’ weak metallurgical industrial base produced brittle-hard armor-piercing shell heads that often fragmented upon penetrating the enemy’s thick main armor.
After penetrating the first layer of steel plate, the fragmented shell exploded immediately upon hitting the internal deck armor, failing to cause secondary penetration.
The Germanian battle line notoriously favored using deck armor to protect the core area below the waterline. The end result was that Lushan large-caliber armor-piercing shells could penetrate the main armor and damage some facilities every time, but always struggled to cause flooding.
Schwaben took a shell head-on, which destroyed one side’s lower casemate deck and crippled the starboard secondary gun firepower; the rest continued functioning normally.
“Hit! And it penetrated as expected!”
On Imperatritsa Mariya, Admiral Eberhardt personally saw one of his flagship’s armor-piercing shells punch through the opponent and explode inside the hull, blasting a huge gash in the side with steel plates curling outward; he couldn’t help but be exhilarated.
After days of frustration, they had finally gotten a little revenge today!
If this trend continued, as long as he could eliminate the opponent’s three pre-dreadnoughts within half an hour, the entire battle’s outcome might turn around!
Even if Moltke and Goeben arrived on the battlefield after half an hour or so, having already destroyed the three Germanian pre-dreadnoughts, he could then justly fight 3 against 2!
Imperatritsa Mariya plus Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya plus Svyatoy Evstafiy against Moltke plus Goeben.
Advantage still mine!
Life or death on this one move!
“Quick, continue closing distance! Settle the fight ASAP! Sink all three enemy pre-dreadnoughts before the enemy’s two battlecruisers arrive!”
To seize time, Eberhardt decisively chose a more aggressive tactic, trying to trade extreme close range for drastically improved hit rates on both sides, landing solid blows to decide life and death quickly.
Engagement distance quickly shortened from 12 km, gradually to 11 km, 10 km.
The Lushans had a total of 25 305 mm giant cannons, while the opponent had only 12 240 mm guns; firepower was absolutely overwhelming.
The distance shortening had the most obvious effect on Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya, whose observation equipment was damaged.
Originally without a single hit, during the shortening to 10 km, she repeatedly struck her opposing Weidling with a full three 305 mm armor-piercing shells!
Weidling’s aft bridge and aft main turret were destroyed by violent explosions, but Germanian excellent structural design and innate damage control prevented any ammunition detonation.
Before being crippled, Weidling counter-hit Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya with two 240 mm shells, one blasting superstructures and destroying some facilities, the other hitting the main armor belt but unfortunately ricocheting—
If at this moment, fighting Weidling was the even older Gangut-class from the Baltic Fleet, one less generation than Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya, then this shell might actually have a chance of penetration within 10,000 meters.
But unfortunately, no such luck.
Gangut-class side main armor was 227 mm, while Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya was reinforced to 252 mm; that crucial one-inch thickness reinforcement sometimes decided life and death.
“Great! 240 mm guns can’t penetrate our main armor even at 10 km! Maintain this distance—no, close a bit more, hit them hard!”
Admiral Eberhardt saw the enemy ships couldn’t penetrate their main armor and was completely reassured, growing ever more carried away as they fought.
In just 15 minutes, the three Lusha ships cumulatively hit the Germanians with 7 shells, while the Germanians only hit back with 5, without causing any serious damage.
This was still a result won by the higher quality of Germanian sailors and more exquisite artillery tactics, but no artillery tactics could overcome absolute hardware disparity.
In the fierce battle, Lieutenant General William Sushun saw the situation turning dangerous and sent another open telegram, requesting Admiral Spee to accelerate further and get the two Moltke-class ships to the battlefield ASAP.
……
Several minutes later, as William Sushun’s side grew increasingly urgent, Schwaben received Admiral Spee’s reply.
“General, Commander Spee replied. Hold for another 20 minutes! The telegram also says he is aware our main guns cannot penetrate the enemy ships’ armor belts.
But intelligence indicates the Imperatritsa Mariya class has seaworthiness and bow trim issues. To balance the hull, enemy ships may have reduced bow armor design. If forced into extreme close range engagement, try attacking the enemy bow as much as possible.”
Lieutenant General Sushun read the telegram and didn’t know what to say for a moment.
The battle was already halfway done—where did this intelligence come from? If there was intelligence, why not say it earlier?
But what could he do now? Treat a dead horse as a live one and try.
Anyway, engagement distance was already very close, with hit rates rising on both sides.
Their Weidling was already in bad shape; the enemy seemed to realize it was the most damaged and wanted to focus fire to sink it first—Weidling had now taken 5 hits cumulatively, with nearly all turrets unusable.
Thanks to Weidling drawing fire, Schwaben and Zähringen’s output remained decent.
Lieutenant General Sushun immediately adjusted tactics; at 9 km distance, he fired as much as possible at the forward half of Imperatritsa Mariya, adding a bit more lead, dozens of meters.
Effort pays off; in the subsequent salvos, Schwaben finally hit Imperatritsa Mariya’s bow with two 240 mm armor-piercing shells, and Zähringen hit Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya’s bow with one.
More importantly, with engagement distance down to just 9 km, the German ships’ numerous 150 mm secondary guns could begin exerting power.
These 150 mm guns originally couldn’t possibly penetrate the Lusha main force ships’ main armor, only harassing superstructures. But at 9 km close range, they could aim more precisely, targeting the bow. In just minutes, the bows of the two Lusha battleships were blasted open with several large holes by 150 mm guns.
“Lushan warships indeed have inherent problems! Poor seaworthiness! They pitch! Bow armor thinned to paper-thin, easily penetrated!”
When Lieutenant General William Sushun saw this, hope ignited in his eyes.
At least their counterattack was meaningful now, not just buying time and absorbing damage for the battlecruiser squadron.
The two opposing Imperatritsa Mariya-class ships, after repeated bow hits, immediately suffered massive flooding in non-core compartments.
Those two ships already had a slight bow-down trim, bow sinking and stern rising.
Now with hundreds and over a thousand tons of bow flooding respectively, the bow sinking became even more severe.
Bow sinking first caused ballistic deviation; the subsequent hit rates of the two Lusha main force ships dropped by at least 20% as a result.
But that wasn’t the most fatal; the most fatal was that after bow sinking, navigation resistance greatly increased, sharply reducing speed.
And with the stern trending upward, part of the propeller might even cavitate into air, reducing effective thrust and slowing speed even more.
Soon, Imperatritsa Mariya dropped from 19 knots to 15 knots, and Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya to 16 knots. At this speed, they had no advantage over pre-dreadnoughts—in fact, slightly slower.
Admiral Eberhardt could no longer close distance with William Sushun. Unless he sent Svyatoy Evstafiy ahead at full speed alone to throw away a life.
Admiral Eberhardt watched this change in fury, jumping in rage and repeatedly ordering all three ships to focus fire on the already heavily damaged Weidling—to sink at least one no matter what.
The remaining 22 305 mm guns capable of firing all pounded Weidling continuously for another seven or eight salvos. Finally, after taking over 20 305 mm armor-piercing penetrations cumulatively, Weidling could no longer hold and exploded and sank on the spot.
Throughout, the Lushans wasted a lot of firepower; after 15 hits, even if left alone, Weidling would deteriorate and sink after drifting for hours.
But with Admiral Eberhardt already enraged, at 9-10 km he couldn’t tell if the enemy ship would die on its own, so to ensure it was dead he desperately slammed shells.
Only after Weidling finally sank did he redirect fire to the relatively more damaged Zähringen.
But before a few salvos, as distance gradually opened, their two Imperatritsa Mariya-class ships slowed further with worsening bow flooding, hit rates dropping on both sides, and Moltke and Goeben finally arrived on the battlefield.
More critically, with the two Imperatritsa Mariya-class speeds falling below 15 knots and bow flooding causing turning difficulties, the opposing Germanian auxiliary ship group finally saw their chance.
5 destroyers and over a dozen torpedo boats immediately launched a torpedo charge.
——
PS: Today is also about 12,000 words, that’s it. Black Sea Fleet annihilation – part 2 will wait for tomorrow morning’s first update.
