Throughout the Cold War, the Navy of the Soviet Union of the Soviet Union
recognized that one of the greatest threats posed to the Soviet Navy was the
Carrier Battle Groups of the West. Although they belatedly started their own
carrier program, their answer to NATO carriers came in three forms. Naval Land
aviation with long range
bombers, the massive Soviet submarine fleet and the Missile Cruiser, more particularly
Rocket Cruiser RKR, as they were called in the Soviet Navy.
Designed to smother an opponent in a barrage of surface to surface missiles, the
crowning achievement of the RKR evolution was the Kirov
Class. These extraordinarily large cruisers have sometimes been
called battlecruisers. With a mixed nuclear and conventional propulsion, they
have sometimes been called atomic rocket cruisers. By whatever name you call
them, they bristle with weapons and sensors and is one of the most striking
warship designs of the Soviet Union.
There were four in the class and they all received a new name when the Soviet
Navy became the Russian Navy with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The lead
ship was the Kirov, later Admiral
Ushakov, and was easily distinguishable from the other three. At
the break of the forecastle in the bow, Kirov mounted twin SSN-14
cannisters. The others did not have that position. Instead the space was taken
up by panels for vertically launched (VLS) SA-N-9 missiles. Kirov had two single
gun 100mm gun mounts on the aft end of the ship. The other three have a single
twin 130mm gun mount instead. Kirov
apparently suffered a minor accident with her nuclear plant in 1990. She did not
set to sea from that time. On October 17, 1998 she was stricken from the fleet
with the intention of using her for cannibalization for parts for the other
three. The following year, the navy had a change of heart and sought to acquire
funds to bring her back into service. The cost of that would have been 1/2 their
budget and parts had already been removed from the ship.
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Frunze, Andropov
& Kalinin |
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The other three are Yuri Andropov,
now Petr Veliky (Peter the Great), Kalinin
now Admiral Nakhimov and Frunze
now Admiral Lazarev. These
photographs are unclassified aerial reconnaissance photographs from the
collection of Mark Meredith, who wished to share them with the readers of
SteelNavy. The sequence of photos of the Frunze
are especially illuminating for the modeler of these impressive warships.
Back to Red Banner Northern Fleet |
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