Combat Gallery Sunday: The Cold War artwork of Pavel Pavlinov and Andrey Babanovsky
Admiral of the fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei Georgiyevich Gorshkov, accomplished, especially considering what the Soviets had to work with, an impressive feat. Gorshkov gave his life to the Red Banner Fleet, joining at age 17 in 1927. By WWII, he was in the Black Sea and rose to command a destroyer squadron after much heavy contact with the Axis forces in the landlocked body of water increasingly owned by the Germans. He received the Order of the Red Banner twice for his wartime exploits.
Recognised as cut from a different cloth than the typical party functionaries, by just age 46 he was given command of the entire Soviet Navy by Nikita Khrushchev and spent the next 30 years building the largest fleet in either Asia or Europe and the second largest (only outclassed by the USN) in the world– seizing that cherished spot from the British Royal Navy who only begrudgingly relinquished their own first place title holder to the Americans a generation before. Had there been no Gorshkov, it could be argued there would have been no Tom Clancy and the Soviets would have been content with only a minor naval force, a role Russia had basically always fulfilled.
At the high water mark of the Red Banner Fleet’s power in 1973 came this chapbook of postcard drawings entitled, “Modern ships of the USSR Navy” by Pavel Pavlinov and Andrey Babanovsky. Sure, it was Soviet propaganda of the most obvious, but it froze a moment in time and presented it in its best light– regardless of the fact that a lot of the ships were poorly manned by conscripts simply glad to not be in the Army, officered by professional mariners that lacked the fundamental foundation of an NCO corps they could depend on, and suffered from often suicidal nuclear engineering plants and moody weapon and sensor packages.
But, you have to admit: they look pretty!
Note the Foxtrot diesel boat on the cover. The Project 641 subs were among the most numerous in the Red Fleet
Sverdlov cruiser Mikhail Kutuzov. These all-gun cruisers were obsolete when completed, but the Russians carried them on their Navy list throughout the Cold War. Packed with 1940s-era electronics, they could always serve as a flagship post-Atomic exchange/EMP!
Operating in the polar cap
Looks to be a Kresta-class cruiser
The Soviets were serious when it came to amphibious light tanks and landing vehicles, fielding the PT-76, PTS, and BTR series vehicles along with lots of Polnocny-class and Alligator-class LSTs to truck them ashore. While not capable of large-scale landings, this capability still gave Baltic and Black Sea-based NATO allies heartburn
Moskova-class helicopter carrier Leningrad. The three 17,000-ton Moskovas, the first Soviet helicopter carriers, could tote almost two dozen Ka-25 or Mi-8 aircraft and were seen as big medicine to help curb the NATO hunter-killer threat in SSBN Bastion areas.
The Soviets built 32 Gus- and 20 Aist-class LCAC’s, the former, shown above, capable of carrying 25 troops, while the latter were capable of carrying 200 troops or 4 light tanks. They would later be carried in the carried by the Ivan Rogov-class dock landing ship, the first Soviet LSDs, which were under construction at the time the book came out.
Osa class fast attack boat. Those big SS-N-2 Styx missiles had been proved in combat just a few years before. Egyptian Komar-class missile boats used the Styx to splash the WWII-vintage Israel Navy destroyer Eilat during the Six Day War in October 1967
Beriev Be-12 Mail flying boat seaplane
As for Gorshkov, he only stepped down from commanding his fleet at age 75, reluctantly handing the reins to Adm. Vladimir Chernavin, who, less than a half-decade later, preside over the force’s break-up and spiraling demise which was to endure for two decades.
Thank you for your work, Mr. Pavlinov and Babanovsky
Warship Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017: The Potemkin’s little red brother
Here we see the modified Bogatyr-class 1st class protected cruiser Ochakov (Очаков) of the Tsarist Navy as she appeared when first commissioned. She went by several different names and flew a myriad of different ensigns in her time, including that of the first Red admiral and the last White Russian general.
Ordered as part of the Imperial Russian Navy’s 8-year building plan, the German yard of AG Vulcan Stettin won the contract to design and build a class of protected cruisers that, for the time of the Spanish-American War, were modern. The basic design was a 6,000-ton ship with a main battery of 152mm guns, a secondary battery of a dozen 75mm guns, six torpedo tubes (four on deck and two submerged), the capability to carry sea mines and make 23-knots. In short, the Tsar’s admiralty described these ships as “a partially armored cruiser, resembling a high-breasted battleship in appearance, and in fact is a linear, lightly armored ship.”
The cruisers of this type were rightly considered the best representatives of the class of medium armor deck cruisers of their day.
Only class-leader Bogatyr was built in Germany. Follow-on vessels Oleg and Vityaz were built in two Russian yards in St Petersburg, intended for the Baltic Fleet, while two others, Kagul (we’ll call her Kagul I, for reasons you will see later) and Ochakov were constructed in the Black Sea– the latter at the Lazarev Admiralty Yard in Sevastopol. As the five cruisers were built in five different yards spread across the continent, it should come as no surprise that they were all slightly different.
Laid down within 14 months of each other, they were envisioned to commission about the same time, however Vityaz was destroyed by fire on the builder’s ways in 1901 and scrapped, leaving the other four ships to enter service between August 1902 and October 1905, with the hero of our tale, Ochakov, named after a city in Mykolaiv region of Ukraine, joining the fleet on 2 October 1902 though, suffering from several defects in her electrical system and boilers, she was still in what could best be described as extended builder’s trails as late as November 1905.
OCHAKOV (Russian Protected Cruiser, 1902-1933). View made on the deck looking aft toward the ship’s twin 6-inch mount and the bridge. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida, 1986. Description: Catalog #: NH 101049
Trapped in the Black Sea due to Ottoman control of the Straits, Ochakov, and Kagul I did not participate in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905 though sister Oleg fought at the Battle of Tsushima and managed to barely escape to be interned in the Philippines while Bogatyr sortied from Vladivostok for commerce raiding during the conflict.
Speaking of the Black Sea Fleet in 1905, something happened that you may have heard of:
Caught up in the anti-Tsarist backlash that resulted from defeat in the Pacific and loss of two out of three Russian fleets, the country was thrown into the what is described as the Russian Revolution of 1905. Some two months after the war ended, one of the darkest chapters of that unsuccessful episode was The Sevastopol Uprising.
There, one Lt. Pyotr Petrovitch Schmidt, from an Odessa-based naval family of German descent (his father fought at Sevastopol during its great siege in the Crimean War), was something of a rabble-rouser.
Schmidt
A graduate of the Naval Officers’ Corps in Saint Petersburg (53rd out of 307, class of 1886) he was soon dismissed to the reserves in 1889 after spending much of his time with the frozen Baltic Fleet on the sick list, but rejoined the warm Black Sea Fleet in 1892 only to transfer into the merchant shipping service in 1900, going on to command several steamers. Recalled to the colors for the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he was given command of the coal transport Irtysh which was sailing for the Pacific to be sunk at Tsushima but before it left Russian waters he was thrown in the brig for insulting a fellow officer but later let out to rejoin his ship. However, by the time the fleet made it to Africa, he was back on the sick list and sent to the Black Sea Fleet to help hold it down for the duration of the war, nominally given command of Torpedo Boat No. 253.
Stripped of most effective officers and NCOs to man the other ill-fated Russian task forces and left with ships full of raw recruits and untalented leaders, the Black Sea Fleet in late 1905 was a powder keg of inefficiency that led to the famous mutiny of the battleship Potemkin in June, which was quickly put down and the ship recaptured, the 42 men considered to be in the thick of it thrown in the brig on the minelayer Prut.
Enter Schmidt, stage left.
He formed the “Union of Officers-Friends of the People in Sevastopol” and in October 1905 led a crowd to the Odessa city prison to protest the arrest of local revolutionaries and began distributing leaflets. This landed him in the jail alongside the other reds, but he was quickly released. He was cashiered at the rank of Captain 2nd Rank.
However, by 11 November, representative crew members from at least seven Black Sea Fleet warships were attending Schmidt’s group’s fiery meetings, with some calling for outright rebellion. The new sailors’ soviet elected him as their leader.
By 13 November, with an estimated 2,000 sailors and longshoremen in mutiny across Odessa, the officers of the Ochakov beat feet and left the mutineers in charge. The leaderless crew signaled that Schmidt should join them and he did, arriving at around 2 p.m. on 14 November with his 16-year-old son in tow and Imperial shoulder boards still on his uniform. Understrength– just 350 crew, with few senior NCOs and no officers, remained– the unfinished warship was clearing for an uncertain fight.
Then they went to get the Potemkin‘s locked up leaders:
Having thrown out the Admiral’s flag on Ochakov and gave the signal: “I command the fleet, Schmidt”, with the expectation of immediately attracting the whole squadron to this insurrection, he sent his cutter to the “Prut” in order to release the Potemkin people. There was no resistance. “Ochakov” received the sailors-convicts on board and went around with them the whole squadron. From all the courts, there was a welcome “Hurray.” Several of the ships, including the battleships Potemkin [which had been renamed St. Panteleimon, the patron saint of accidents and loneliness] and Rostislav, raised a red banner; at the latter, however, it only fluttered for a few minutes.
By the morning of the 15th, Schmidt fired off a telegram to Tsar Nicholas II:
“The glorious Black Sea Fleet, sacredly devoted to the people, demands Your Majesty to immediately call a meeting of the Constituent Assembly, and no longer obeys orders of Your ministers. Commander of the Fleet P. Schmidt.”
While he initially had seven other warships answering his signals, and his little red fleet was a sight that no doubt gave every Bolshevik a lump in their throat, they really had no chance.
Over the course of the day, one by one the ships took down their red flag, leaving only the cruiser and a destroyer as the only rebels. Gen. Meller-Zakomelsky, the Tsar’s commander ashore, trained every gun in the harbor– including some 12-inch pieces– on the Ochakov and the gunners were loyal. An ultimatum was issued. The battleship Rostislav, with her 254mm guns and Vice Admiral Alexander Krieger aboard, closed to within 900m of the cruiser.
At 1600, the shore batteries and Rostislav opened fire, riddling the cruiser with at least 2 254-mm and 16 152-mm shells. She was able to get six shots off in return, which missed. A fire soon broke out on Ochakov, and Schmidt stopped the fight, lowered the national ensign and red flag, then hoisted a white one. It was all over in 20 minutes. Schmidt and 35 of the sailors thought the key to the uprising were carted off in chains.
In March 1906, Schmidt and three men from Ochakov (sailors AI Gladkov, NG Antonenko, Quartermaster S. P. Priknik) were executed by a firing squad on windswept Berezan Island at the entrance of the Dnieper-Bug Estuary by the crew of the gunboat Terets.
Thrown into a shallow grave, it was unmarked until 1924 when the Soviets began erecting monuments to the people’s heroes of 1905. Of the other 300~ survivors of her red crew and the men that were recycled from the Potemkin mutineers, 14 were exiled to Siberia, 103 imprisoned at hard labor at terms several years, and 151 sent to labor battalions to serve the rest of their original enlistment.
As for Ochakov, her magazines flooded to prevent her from going in one quick puff of smoke, she smoldered for two days but did not sink. Towed into the yard for repairs, the blackened ship had 63 shell holes in her hull and superstructure and several compartments with human remains.
To erase her memory from the fleet, the ship was extensively reconstructed and, oddly enough, given the name of her sister– Kagul, which was, in turn, renamed Pamyat’ Merkuriya in March 1907.
Returning to the fleet, Kagul II as we like to call her (ex-Ochakov), was a much different ship. She proved relatively effective, rebuilt with lessons learned from her plastering by the fleet in 1905 and from against the Japanese.
She also became a test bed for seaplane use for reconnaissance and scouting purposes.
Russian Navy Curtiss Floatplane being hoisted aboard the Cruiser KAGUL (1902-1933) in February 1915, in the Black Sea. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drapshil of Margate, Florida, 1984. Description: Catalog #: NH 100152
Russian Navy Curtiss F-type flying boat serial number 15 seen in the Black Sea, with the cruiser KAGUL (1902-1933) in the background. Information accompanying this photograph indicates that it was taken during the 28 March 1915 operation off the Bosporus. Description: Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida, 1984.Catalog #: NH 100153
When the Great War came, the two cruisers served as the eyes of the Black Sea Fleet and hunted for the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau, bombarded fired the Turkish coast, covered minelaying expeditions (and themselves laid several of their own mine barriers) and captured or sank a number of Ottoman and later Bulgarian coasters.
Unidentified personnel seen on deck aboard the protected cruiser KAGUL (1902-1934) in The Black Sea on 20 March 1915. A twin 152mm/ 6-inch, 45-caliber gun turret appears in the center. Description: Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1983 Catalog #: NH 94406
AMALIA (Turkish Merchant Ship) Photographed in the Black Sea at the time of capture on 4 May 1915 off the Rumelian coast. This 430-register ton merchant ship was carrying a cargo of petrol. This view was taken from aboard the Russian cruiser KAGUL (1902-1932) which made the capture while on a raiding cruise. Description: Courtesy of Boris V. Drashpil Catalog #: NH 94798
Photographed in Port at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea on 27 March 1916 (old style calendar, 13 days behind present western dating). Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1893 Catalog #: NH 94408
After her Great War redemption, again came the revolution.
On 15 March 1917, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated after a week of riots and mutinies by the Imperial Guard in Petrograd. The Baltic Fleet, Northern Fleet, and Pacific Squadron followed suit in swearing allegiance to the Provisional Government, as did the Black Sea Fleet. Memories of the 1905 Mutiny in Odessa and Sevastopol were still strong and, at the end of the month with a red flag on her mast once more, Kagul (II) became Ochakov again, her sailor’s committee in charge.
With the decline of the Russian war effort against the Central Powers, and Lenin and Co removing the Provisional Government in November, the country dropped out of the conflict with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Ceded to German/Austrian control as part of the pact, Ochakov was captured by the Germans in May and remained in nominal service to the Kaiser until the British arrived on 24 November, two weeks after the Armistice.
Turned over to the anti-Bolshevik White Army forces, the largely crewless warship became part of Lt. Gen. Anton Denikin’s Armed Forces of the South of Russia, which led to the cruiser being renamed after that force’s early leader, General Lavr Kornilov (who himself was zapped by Red artillery in April 1918).
In 1919, after Denikin’s attack upon Moscow faltered, he fell back to the Black Sea and evacuated the remnants of his forces from Novorossiysk to the Crimea where Lt. Gen. Piotr Wrangel took over the force, our cruiser included.
The endgame of Wrangel’s effort came in November 1920 when 140,000 soldiers, Cossacks, monarchists and general White Russian diaspora left the Crimea on everything that could float. Wrangel, on his yacht Lucullus, led the working ships of the Black Sea Fleet including two battleships, two cruisers (including our subject), 15 destroyers/escorts, and five submarines first to Constantinople and then to Bizerte in French North Africa where they arrived in December.
There, the fleet in being remained for four years under RADM. Mikhail Berens until its disarmament after the recognition by France of the Soviet Union on 29 October 1924, when her old Cross of St. Andrew was hauled down as ownership had been transferred to the Soviets. After inspection by emissaries from Moscow, Ochakov/Kornilov never left Tunisia and was instead sold as scrap in 1933. Some of her guns were later likely used in French coastal defenses.
GENERAL KORNILOV Possibly photographed at Bizerte, where the ship spent 1920 to 1932 as a unit of the White Russian “Wrangel-Fleet.” From the P.A. Warneck Collection, 1981; Courtesy of B. V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida. Catalog #: NH 92158
Of her sisters, Bogatyr was scrapped in Germany in 1922 after the Reds sold her for spare change along with a number of other Baltic Fleet vessels while Oleg was written off by the Bolsheviks as a combat loss 17 June 1919 after she was torpedoed and sunk by Royal Navy speedboat CMB-4 commanded by Captain Augustus Agar at Kronstadt. As for Kagul I (Pamiat’ Merkuria) she was unable to sortie with Wrangel’s last fleet and, captured at Sevastopol, was renamed Komintern and refitted with material salvaged from Bogatyr and Oleg, later fighting the Germans in WWII until her loss in 1942.
The name Ochakov was celebrated in the Soviet Union, going on to grace a Kara-class cruiser in 1969. Based in the Black Sea (where else?) she was decommissioned in 2011 but later sunk as a blockship to piss off the Ukrainians in 2014.
The more things change.
Specs:
Displacement: 7800 fl
Length: 439 ft. 8 in
Beam: 54 ft. 6 in
Draft: 20 ft. 8 in
Propulsion:
2 shaft vertical triple-expansion steam engines
16 Normand-type boilers
23,000 hp
Speed: 23 knots
Endurance: 5320 (10) on 1194 tons coal
Complement: 30 officers and 550 sailors
Armament:
(As built)
12 × 152mm (6 in/44cal) Obuhovsky/Canet guns (2 twin turrets and 8 single guns), 2160 rounds
12 × 75mm (3in/48cal) 11-pounder guns, singles, 3600 rounds
8 × 47mm Hotchkiss guns, single
2 × 5-barrel 37 mm guns Hotchkiss guns
6 × 17.7 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes
292 M08 Sea mines
(1917)
10x 130mm/53cal singles
12 × 75mm (3in/48cal) 11-pounder guns, single
2x 64mm landing guns
8 × 47mm Hotchkiss guns, single
2 × 5-barrel 37 mm guns Hotchkiss guns
2 x Maxim machine guns
6 × 17.7 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes
292 M08 sea mines
Armor:
Deck: 80 mm (3.1 in)
Turrets: 127 mm (5.0 in)
Casemates: 80 mm (3.1 in)
Conning tower: 140 mm (5.5 in)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Warship Wednesday, April 29, 2015: The Red Taxi of the Black Sea
Click to big up
Here we see the Svetlana-class light cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz (Red Caucasus), the pride of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet steaming on a summer day in 1940 on the eve of the Soviet Union entering World War II.
In 1906, the Imperial Russian Navy had the luxury that many fleets never do: the chance to start from scratch building their naval list with the benefit of real-world modern combat lessons under their belt. This of course was because they had lost more than 2/3 of their Navy in combat with the Imperial Japanese Navy during the late war with that country.
The Tsar’s naval planners envisioned a fleet of nine top-notch all-big-gun dreadnoughts of the Gangut, Imperatritsa Maria, and Imperator Nikolai I-class. These 25,000-ton+ bruisers needed a screen of fast destroyers to prevent torpedo boats from getting close (as the Japanese had pulled off at Port Arthur) as well as speedy light cruisers to scout over the horizon.
That is where the Svetlana’s came in. These modern cruisers went 7,400 tons when fully loaded and were 519 feet overall. They were built in Russia with extensive British help. Powered by 16 Yarrow oil boilers pushing a quartet of Parsons turbines, these ladies were fast– capable of 30 knots when needed. A battery of 15 rapid-fire 130 mm/55 B7 Obukhov (Vickers) Pattern 1913 naval guns could fire an 81.26 lbs. shell out to ranges that topped 24,000 yards. With these cruisers carrying an impressive 2200 of these shells in their magazines, they could fire all of these (theoretically) in just under 19 minutes. For protection against threats smaller than they were, the Svetlana’s were sheathed in up to 120 mm of good British armor plate.
The subject of our study, Krasnyi Kavkaz, was laid down at the Russud Dockyard, Nikolayev (currently Mykolaiv, Ukraine) on 31 October 1913, just ten months before the beginning of World War I. Her name at the time of the Tsarist Navy was to be Admiral Lazarev after Russian 19th Century explorer and fleet commander Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev. With wartime shortages in the Empire, she was only launched in the summer of 1916 and, when the Revolution came, was still fitting out.
She was captured in turn by the Germans, the Reds, the Ukrainians, the French, the Whites, and then the Reds again during the tail end of WWI and the madness of the Russian Civil War. Of course, since she was only 2/3rds complete and incapable of either sailing or fighting, all of the flag exchanges meant nothing.
Finally, the Soviets completed her on 25 January 1932 (just 19 years after she was laid down), with the brand new name of Krasnyi Kavkaz, to celebrate the geographic region added gloriously back to the worker’s paradise in 1921 after post-Tsarist secession and brief independence.
However, since her original British-designed 130mm guns were not available, Krasnyi Kavkaz was completed instead with a set of unique 180 mm/60 (7.1″) B-1-K Pattern 1931 that was relined from old 1905-era 8-inchers with the help of Italian gunnery experts (the Russians never throw anything away).
Note her forward 7.1-inch guns
Equipped with just four of these larger guns in single mounts, our oddball cruiser could only get off about 16 rounds per minute, but these rounds were 215 lbs. each in weight and could reach out to 40,000 yards, making her a light cruiser with nearly heavy cruiser armament.
As completed. She traded 15 casemated 130mm guns for 4 180mm singles.
She was also given a quartet of twin 100 mm DP guns, a dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes (the original design was for fewer 17.7-inch tubes), Brown-Boveri turbines as no fine British Parsons were available, a catapult for two KOR-1 seaplanes, and the capability to lay up to 120 M-08 naval mines.
A happy vessel during the 1930s in a Navy that was short on capital ships (out of the legion of Svetlana-class cruisers planned, the Soviets only had one other, class leader Krasnyi Krym –Red Crimea– afloat), the Krasnyi Kavkaz was extensively photographed and showboated to show off the modern Red Banner Fleet of the happy People’s Republic. She made a well-publicized 6-month Mediterranean cruise in 1933 in which she traveled over 2600 miles and made extensive stops in ports throughout the region– a rarity for a Soviet naval vessel of the era.
Sailors of the Soviet cruiser “Red Caucasus” with the ship’s pet bear
On her Med Tour, 1933
Sailor on a cruiser of the Black Sea the “Red Caucasus” in front of his 100mm flak piece
In 1933 on her Med cruise, with selected sailors going ashore at Istanbul under the close watch of comrade commisars.
A junior Red Caucasus cadet sailor
From 1936-37 she came face to face with German and Italian naval vessels in the Bay of Biscay patrolling the Spanish coastline during the Civil War in that country.
Click to big up
By the time World War II came to the Black Sea in June 1941, the Krasnyi Kavkaz spent a hard 28 months shuttling around the coasts of Rumania, the Crimea, Kerch, and Novorossiysk. In that time she sewed minefields under darkness, covered the evacuation of Odessa just ahead of the Germans, landed battalions of Naval Infantry and Red Army troops in amphibious operations under heavy Luftwaffe air attack, and provided naval gunfire support during the epic 9-month Siege of Sevastopol.
Loading troops. She shuttled thousands to and from some of the most contentious fighting on the Eastern Front
The light cruiser often carried as many as 1,800 troops on her runs across the Black Sea
In the latter, she and her sister were a vital lifeline to the port, bringing in ammunition and reinforcements and taking away the wounded and the city’s valuables.
The Red Caucasus was used extensively on shoe-string amphib landings
Notably, on January 4, 1942, she survived a close-in bombing run by Ju-87 Stukas that left her holed, nearly dead in the water, and full of over 1700 tons of seawater, pushing her to a 12,000-ton displacement. However, after a quick patch-up, she was back in action. This translated into more evacuations, amphibious landings, mine laying, and duels with Stukas and gunfire support. Continuing limited operations from Batumi and Poti in the Caucus in 1943, she was one of the last remaining operational Black Sea Fleet vessels to survive the war.
She saw lots of unsung action during the war
Post-war surveys found the ship, which had been repaired during the war in many cases with concrete, was in poor condition.
It was planned at one point to turn her and her sister into hybrid aircraft carriers in 1946 with 370-foot flight decks, but they were too badly damaged from hard wartime service
Decommissioned from fleet duty on May 12, 1947, she was retained as a dockside training ship and berthing barge.
Red Caucasus on payoff 1947
She was disarmed in 1952, her 180mm guns being transformed into railway mounts. Finally, on November 21, 1952, Krasnyi Kavkaz was sunk near Feodosia by a regiment of Tu-4 bombers testing their new SS-N-1 missiles. Her name was stricken from the Soviet Naval list in 1953.
Her only completed sister, Svetlana/Krasnyi Krym, was scrapped in 1959.
Displacement: 7,560 metric tons (7,440 long tons; 8,330 short tons) (standard)
9,030 metric tons (8,890 long tons; 9,950 short tons) (full load)
Length: 159.5 m (523 ft. 4 in)
Beam: 15.7 m (51 ft. 6 in)
Draught: 6.6 m (21 ft. 8 in)
Propulsion: Four shafts, Brown-Boveri geared turbines
16 Yarrow oil-fired boilers
55,000 shp (41,000 kW)
Speed: 29 knots (33 mph; 54 km/h)
Complement: 878
Armament: (as completed)
4 × 1 – 180 mm cal 57 guns
4 × 2 – 100 mm cal 56 AA guns
2 × 1 – 76 mm AA guns
4 × 1 – 45 mm AA guns
4 × 1 – 12.7 mm (0.50 in) AA machine guns
4 × 3 – 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes
60–120 mines
Armor: Upper and lower armored decks: 20 mm (0.79 in) each
Turrets: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Lower armor belt: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Upper armor belt: 25 mm (0.98 in)
Conning tower: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Aircraft carried 2 × KOR-1 seaplanes
Aviation facilities: 1 catapult
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
