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''Vitse-admiral Popov'' was a monitor built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1870s. It was one of the most unusual warships ever constructed, and still survives in popular naval myth as one of the worst warships ever built. The hull was circular to reduce draught while allowing the ship to carry much more armour and a heavier armament than other ships of the same size. ''Vitse-admiral Popov'' played a minor role in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and was reclassified as a coast-defence ironclad in 1892. The ship was decommissioned in 1903 and sold for scrap in 1911. == Background == In 1868, the Scottish shipbuilder John Elder published an article that advocated that widening the beam of a ship would reduce the area that needed to be protected and allow it to carry thicker armour and heavier, more powerful guns in comparison to a normal ship. In addition such a ship would have a shallower draught and that only a moderate increase in power would be required to match the speed of the normal ship. Sir Edward Reed, then Director of Naval Construction of the Royal Navy, agreed with Elder's conclusions. Rear-Admiral Andrei Alexandrovich Popov of the Imperial Russian Navy further broadened Elder's concept by broadening the ship so that it was actually circular and he made the design flat-bottomed, unlike Elder's convex hull, to minimise its draught.〔McLaughlin, pp. 111, 117–18, 123, 125〕 Popov's design was intended to meet an 1869 requirement to defend the Dnieper-Bug Estuary and the Kerch Strait. The requirement was for very heavily-armoured ships of draught and armed with rifled guns, four of which should cost no more than four million rubles. The met all of the requirements except that their armament was not powerful enough, so General-Admiral Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich selected Popov's circular design in late December 1869. A model was built with a circular hull and performed well during tests in the Baltic Sea at St. Petersburg in April 1870; when Tsar Alexander II received reports of the trials, he nicknamed the ship a "popovka".〔McLaughlin, pp. 111, 118〕 Popov's initial design proved to be too grandiose and had to be scaled down. On 24 October, the Tsar approved his design for a ship in diameter, armed with two 11-inch guns, and protected by of armour. It was estimated to cost 1.94 million roubles per ship and the total cost of the programme, including improvements to the shipyards, would cost 8.5 million rubles. For further testing, the ''Kambala'' (''Flounder''), a circular ship in diameter, was built in 1871. Equipped with two engines of eight nominal horsepower each, her trials during that summer were considered a success.〔McLaughlin, pp. 111, 114〕 ''Vitse-admiral Popov'' was begun as the second ship of the class, after , but Popov took the opportunity, when construction of the ship was suspended shortly after it began, to massively enlarge the ship to accommodate larger, more powerful guns and heavier armour. The Tsar approved the new design on 25 August 1873 although construction did not resume immediately. He also renamed the ship from ''Kiev'' to ''Vitse-admiral Popov'', after her designer,〔Silverstone, p. 387〕 on 21 October.〔McLaughlin, pp. 117〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Russian monitor Vitse-admiral Popov」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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