The cruiser Aurora gained wide fame due to the blank shot fired from its gun on the night of October 25, 1917; it is believed that it served as the signal for the storming of the Winter Palace.
The ship has long been a symbol of the revolution, and not everyone now knows that behind it are tens of thousands of miles of ocean voyages, participation in three wars, as well as many thousands of officers trained for the navy.
The Aurora was laid down at the St. Petersburg shipyard Novoye Admiralteystvo in May 1897 and launched on May 11, 1900. The cruiser was named after the 44-gun sailing frigate Aurora, which became famous in battles in the Far East during the war of 1853-56. The cruiser entered service with the Russian Navy in July 1903. It was a standard ship, and two more cruisers of the same project, Diana and Pallada, were built in parallel with it.
Despite its solid dimensions (length 126.7 meters and width 16.8 meters), the Aurora had weak armor – the ship belonged to the category of armored deck cruisers of the 1st rank. Initially, even some of the artillery guns did not have armor shields. The cruiser had good armament, it was equipped with: 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 guns repeatedly changed, anti-aircraft guns, machine guns and a device for installing minefields appeared.
With such a solid armament, the cruiser had a low speed: maximum – just over 19 knots, economical – only 11 knots (for comparison, the cruiser “Varyag” had 24 and 16 knots) and a small range of autonomous navigation (2500 miles at economical speed and 1320 miles at maximum), which significantly reduced the possibilities of its combat use. “Aurora” was intended for independent actions at a short distance from the bases, as well as for combat support of battleships when operating as part of a squadron.
The cruiser set out on its first voyage on September 25, 1903, and it was assumed that it would be sent to reinforce the squadron in Port Arthur. However, due to the outbreak of war with Japan, the cruiser Aurora, which had joined the squadron of ships of Rear Admiral A. A. Virenius in the Mediterranean, was returned to the Baltic.
The cruiser Aurora set out on a new voyage in August 1904 as part of the squadron of Vice-Admiral Z. P. Rozhestvensky, which was heading to the Pacific Ocean to participate in the Russo-Japanese War. The cruiser's voyage began unsuccessfully. On October 10, it was mistakenly hit by several shells from other Russian ships that fired at English fishing vessels that were mistaken for destroyers in the fog. The ship's priest died and one sailor was wounded on the cruiser.
The cruiser Aurora received its baptism of fire in the Battle of Tsushima on May 14. During the battle, which lasted from 14:30 to 18:00 for the cruiser, Aurora received about 10 direct hits from shells. Fires broke out on the cruiser several times, several compartments were flooded, five guns and all rangefinder stations were out of order. The ship's commander, Captain 1st Rank E.R. Egoryev, 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 Japanese destroyers, was able to break away from the enemy pursuit. The cruisers were unable to break through to the north towards Vladivostok and were forced to go to 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 major repairs, after which it became a training vessel, where cadets and midshipmen of the Naval Corps underwent practical training. At that time, students of the Cadet Corps, who successfully completed the full course of studies, received the rank 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 of “midshipman”.
Until the summer of 1912, the Aurora made several voyages with detachments of midshipmen of the Naval Corps of other educational institutions of the fleet, for some time she was a station ship in Suda Bay on Crete. During the First World War, the Aurora, as part of the 2nd cruiser brigade, 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 undergoing repairs in Petrograd, where it took part in the revolutionary events. The Bolsheviks had a strong influence on the cruiser's crew, so during the preparation for the armed uprising on October 25, 1917, the ship was ordered to enter the Neva and take under protection the Nikolaevsky Bridge, which connected Vasilievsky Island with the central part of the city. It was from there that the famous shot of the Aurora was fired. According to a number of historians, the shot was fired much earlier than the storming of the Winter Palace. 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 its participation in those events, the Aurora retained its name, although most of the warships were renamed by the new government. During the Civil War, the Aurora's crew was significantly thinned out. And in 1919, the ship was mothballed. The decision to return the ship to service was made in the fall of 1922. The cruiser Aurora again became a training ship, where cadets of naval educational institutions underwent sea training 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 in battles, except for repelling enemy air raids. Only a small part of the crew remained on the ship, the remaining 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 grounded, as a large amount of water entered the holds through holes. But even in such difficult conditions, the small crew of the Aurora did not stop fighting for the ship's survivability. 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 the Petrograd 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 cruiser Aurora 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, remains on the cruiser, but this does not diminish 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.
