{"id":2055,"date":"2020-05-05T16:52:25","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T15:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/?p=2055"},"modified":"2020-05-17T17:31:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-17T16:31:18","slug":"the-russian-baltic-fleet-in-1914-organisation-modelling-and-painting-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/2020\/05\/05\/the-russian-baltic-fleet-in-1914-organisation-modelling-and-painting-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Russian Baltic Fleet in 1914 – Organisation, Modelling and Painting Guide – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2nd Cruiser Brigade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our Treasurer recently decided to expand his WW1 naval campaign into the Baltic – a theatre that saw a lot of interesting naval actions and a major amphibious assault.<\/p>\n

That meant acquiring the Russian Baltic Fleet.\u00a0 Fortunately Russian naval enthusiasts have unearthed a lot of good material from their naval archives in the last few years and made it available on-line.\u00a0 After brushing up on the Russian alphabet and with liberal use of Google translate, this information is just a click or two away as long as you use Cyrillic text for your searches!\u00a0 I’ll give the correct 1914 Cyrillic names of the units, commanders and ships below with their western script equivalents.<\/p>\n

1\/3000 is the scale of my German Fleet, so off went my order to get started to Navwar – who still have an unrivaled range and reasonably priced models for this period.<\/p>\n

First up on the painting table are 6 cruisers from the 1st and 2nd \u0411\u0440\u0438\u0433\u0430\u0434\u0430 \u041a\u0440\u0435\u0439\u0441\u0435\u0440\u043e\u0432\u044a (Cruiser Brigades).<\/p>\n

The flagships were the big old armoured cruisers \u0413\u0440\u043e\u043c\u043e\u0431\u043e\u0439 (Gromoboy, meaning Thunderer), and \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u044f (Rossiya, meaning Russia)\u00a0 respectively.\u00a0 These are oldish Navwar sculpts and needed some work, but also needed quite a bit of conversion work to bring them up to 1914.\u00a0 Both had been considerably upgunned from the 1904 era Navwar model with prominent new casemates on the top decks\u00a0 – Gromoboy had also had a complete new set of boilers, but you can’t see them!\u00a0 Bring on the modelling knife, plasticard sheet and rod, bits of old national trust membership cards and superglue and voila:<\/p>\n

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Original models of Gromoboy (top) and Rossiya (bottom)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Gromoboy (top) and Rossiya (bottom) after conversion – casemates and guns moved\/added, boats re-positioned, funnels and bridges tidied up\/added and for Gromoboy stern shape and ship length corrected with a new stern casemate and conning towers also added<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next were two other much newer, smaller armoured cruisers of 1st Brigade, the sisters \u0410\u0434\u043c\u0438\u0440\u0430\u043b\u044a \u041c\u0430\u043a\u0430\u0440\u043e\u0432\u044a (Admiral Makarov, a celebrated admiral lost in the war against Japan) and \u0411\u0430\u044f\u043d\u044a (Bayan, a celebrated 11th century bard).\u00a0 These needed very little work – not much more than just filing away the 11pdr gun in the bow and moving a couple of boats.<\/p>\n

Last in this first batch were two 2nd class cruisers of 2nd Brigade, the sisters \u0411\u043e\u0433\u0430\u0442\u044b\u0301\u0440\u044a (Bogat\u00fdr, a Russian medieval warrior\/knight) and \u041e\u043b\u0435\u0433\u044a (Oleg – the name of several celebrated historical figures).\u00a0 These veterans of the Japanese war also needed some tidy ups and removal of some of the small guns from Oleg:<\/p>\n

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Oleg (top) and Bogat\u00fdr (bottom) with funnels tidied, turret shape\/size corrected, aft superstructure enhanced\/corrected, boats added and 4x11pdr guns removed from Oleg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finally painting and basing.\u00a0 The Baltic Fleet introduced a two tone paint scheme for all large warships in an order of March 7th 1912, with light grey upperworks and a darker grey hull side.\u00a0 All of these warships had unpainted wooden decks.\u00a0 Finally the Baltic Fleet continued to use 1m wide funnel bands throughout the war (painted out in most other navies).\u00a0 1st Brigade used red and 2nd Brigade blue in 1914.\u00a0 First ship had a band at top of 2nd funnel, 2nd ship a band half way down 2nd funnel, 3rd ship a band at the top of 2nd and 3rd funnels and fourth ship a band half way down 2nd and 3rd funnels:<\/p>\n

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1st Cruiser Brigade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2nd Cruiser Brigade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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1st Cruiser Brigade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2nd Cruiser Brigade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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1st Cruiser Brigade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2nd Cruiser Brigade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These ships underwent a bewildering number of changes in their armament during their lives, but contemporary records, photos and plans confirm their armament in 1914 as:<\/p>\n

1st Brigade<\/p>\n

\u041a\u043e\u043d\u0442\u0440\u044a \u0410\u0434\u043c\u0438\u0440\u0430\u043b\u044a \u041a\u043e\u043b\u043e\u043c\u0435\u0439\u0446\u0435\u0432\u044a – Rear-Admiral Kolomeytsev<\/p>\n

Gromoboy (flag) – 4×8″, 22×6″, 4x75mm(11 pdr), 4x47mm (3pdr), 2 TT<\/p>\n

Admiral Makarov (2nd ship)- 2×8″, 8×6″, 20x75mm(11pdr), 2 TT<\/p>\n

Bayan (4th ship) – 2×8″, 8×6″, 22x75mm(11pdr), 2 TT<\/p>\n

2nd Brigade (initially titled \u0411\u0440\u0438\u0433\u0430\u0434\u043e\u0439 \u043a\u0440\u0435\u0439\u0441\u0435\u0440\u043e\u0432\u044a 1-\u0439 \u0440\u0435\u0437\u0435\u0440\u0432\u0430, 1st Reserve Cruiser Brigade)<\/p>\n

\u041a\u043e\u043d\u0442\u0440\u044a \u0410\u0434\u043c\u0438\u0440\u0430\u043b\u044a \u041b\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0432\u044a – Rear-Admiral Leskov, promoted on 10.8.14, having been appointed to command a couple of days before war broke out<\/p>\n

Rossiya (flag) – 4×8″, 22×6″, 15x75mm(11 pdr), TTs all removed<\/p>\n

Bogat\u00fdr (2nd ship) – 12×6″, 12x75mm(11pdr), 4x47mm (3pdr), 2 TT<\/p>\n

Oleg (3rd ship) – 12×6″, 8x75mm(11pdr), 8x47mm (3pdr), 2 TT<\/p>\n

Most 3pdr guns and all 6pdr and 1pdr guns had been removed from the ships as they were found to be ineffective deck clutter in the war against Japan.<\/p>\n

The next batch will add the remaining cruisers in these Brigades and begin adding the destroyer and torpedo boat flotillas…….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Treasurer recently decided to expand his WW1 naval campaign into the Baltic – a theatre that saw a lot of interesting naval actions and a major amphibious assault. That meant acquiring the Russian Baltic Fleet.\u00a0 Fortunately Russian naval enthusiasts have unearthed a lot of good material from their naval archives in the last few … Continue reading “The Russian Baltic Fleet in 1914 – Organisation, Modelling and Painting Guide – Part 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Russian Baltic Fleet in 1914 Organisation, Modelling and Painting- Part 1","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,8,28,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modelling-and-painting-articles","category-naval","category-painting-guides","category-world-war-one"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9A5LG-x9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2055"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2124,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055\/revisions\/2124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}