1:42 SCALE
It’s the end of the 19th century.
Russia is actively building a powerful ocean fleet, with destroyers forming its base.
Squadrons of these ships require cruisers for reconnaissance,
so the ship-building program included three protected cruisers of the same type
named after ancient Roman and Greek goddesses.
The lead ship of the series was Diana.
Names for the ships were chosen by the emperor Nikolai II. Diana, Pallada, and Aurora
are not only the names of the ancient goddesses.
The cruisers inherited these names from the Russian frigates
that became famous during the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856.
According to the ship-building program of 1895, the main reason for the program
was to bring the Russian naval powers up to par with the German forces and the forces of smaller Baltic countries.
The length of Diana was about 127 m, its width was about 16 m,
total displacement was 6,657 tons, and draft was almost 6.5 m.
Boilers and steam engines for all three cruisers were built by the Society of French-Russian Factories,
now the Admiralty Shipyard, in Saint Petersburg.
During sea trials, Diana reached a speed of 19 knots.
The steel for the cruiser was provided by the Admiralty Izhora Plants of Saint Peterburg,
and the deck armor was ordered via France due to the high load of the Russian factories.
The ship's main armor protection was its arch deck of 38-63 mm thick.
The conning tower had 152-mm round protection, and its roof was 51 mm thick.
During the design and building process, the composition of the artillery armament was revised a number of times.
In the end, eight 152-mm Canet guns became the ship's main battery.
The secondary armament featured twenty four 75-mm Canet guns.
The Diana-class cruisers became the first ships of this type to be built in Russia.
In general, they outmatched all first-rank cruisers previously built in Russia.
However, due to their prolonged build times, these ships became obsolete
and had lesser parameters compared to the next generation of cruisers—Bogatyr or Varyag—
that joined the fleet almost simultaneously with Diana and her sisterships.
Cruiser Diana was assigned to the Pacific Ocean Squadron right after she entered service.
As soon as October 1902, the ship headed to her place of service.
This hard cruise took half a year, and the cruiser visited 15 ports across three parts of the world during this time.
In April 1903, when Diana arrived at Port Arthur, the spirit of the oncoming war was already in the air.
On the night of January 27, 1904, Diana and Pallada became the first Russian ships to enter the war
by firing at the Japanese destroyers that suddenly attacked the Port Arthur raid.
During the famous Battle of the Yellow Sea on July 28, 1904, the squadron of Russian cruisers, including Diana,
was caught between two allied and enemy destroyer squadrons.
During the intense skirmish, Diana received a heavy hull breach below the water line from a 203-mm shell.
25 crew members were injured or worse.
However, when the Russian squadron turned back to Port Arthur,
the cruiser commander, Prince Anatoly Lieven, decided not to diverge from the initial mission
and tried to break through to Vladivostok.
In the falling dusk, Diana ran away from the Japanese ironclads and cruisers,
but it was impossible to avoid meeting enemy destroyers.
During the next four hours, the cruiser was consecutively attacked by 13 destroyers.
This is when the vast experience of commander Lieven,
who himself commanded destroyers for a while before assignment on Diana, was put to use.
Moving at full speed and changing course often, Diana, not opening fire or exposing herself in the darkness,
dodged the enemy torpedo attacks.
After breaking through the enemy encirclement and then evaluating damage and coal capacity,
the cruiser headed to the French Saigon, where she was later interned.
After the end of the Russo-Japanese war, Diana returned to Saint Petersburg.
Over the next 10 years, the cruiser armament was modernized several times.
The number of main battery guns changed and all secondary armament artillery were dismounted as useless.
Finally, Diana was equipped with 10 of the newest 130-mm guns.
During World War I, the cruiser was a part of the Baltic Fleet.
It defended the Russian mine-artillery positions in the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga,
and even took part in the raids against enemy communication lines.
On June 17, 1916, Diana and cruiser Gromoboi,
escorted by destroyers, went out to Gotland island at the center of the Baltic Sea
to intercept the German transport ships carrying iron ore from Sweden.
Due to bad weather and fog, the convoy was late,
but on the way, the Russian ships encountered eight German destroyers that covered the convoy.
Three Russian destroyers maneuvered and lured the enemy right to the cruisers.
The Germans went for a torpedo attack, but Diana and Gromoboi hit the enemy with the first salvo.
Powerful fire from the Russian cruisers didn't allow the enemy ships
to reach an appropriate distance for an accurate torpedo launch.
German destroyers launched about a dozen torpedoes
from an unfavorable position and rushed back to hiding in a smoke screen.
In the autumn of 1916, Diana returned to Helsingfors for the winter, where she entered the next year...
The last cruise of Diana was the famous Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet—
rescuing Russian ships from capture by German forces.
After her return to Kronstadt, the cruiser was disarmed and mothballed.
That's how the history of Diana ended. In 1922, the ship was used for scrap.