Stalin's Big Fleet Program

Stalin apparently decided to develop a navy based upon heavy ships that could operate far from home waters in December 1935. The initial plan of April 1936 called for a fleet of 15 battleships, 53 cruisers, 162 destroyers, and 412 submarines to be ready by 1947. In 1938, the navy's share of defense expenditure reached its peak, amounting to very nearly 20 per cent; thereafter the great increase in spending on the army resulted in a relative decline in the navy's fiscal position, but in absolute terms the resources devoted to the navy in 1941 were more than twice that projected in 1938.

By 1939, Stalin had become enamored of the concept of a fast and heavily armed "cruiser-killer" — that is, a battle cruiser — the construction of large numbers of which required significant reductions in battleship and cruiser building.The Soviet naval staff also insisted upon the construction of aircraft carriers in spite of Stalin's dislike of this warship type.

In August 1939, the plan of 1936 was thus altered so that the 1947 Soviet navy was projected to consist of 8 battleships, 16 battle cruisers, two aircraft carriers, 31 cruisers, 216 destroyers, and no fewer than 442 submarines. While the cruiser and especially aircraft carrier building was modest, the heavy surface unit (i.e., battleships and battle cruisers) and submarine programs exceeded those of all other naval powers.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/kritika/v004/4.2sumida.html

Because when it comes to giant fleets with no discernible purpose, you can't find a betterm man than Stalin.

Okay, let's imagine that Barbarossa never happens; I think that the Soviets would have trouble building even half of the 1939 fleet, but it never pays to underestimate the Soviet state's ability to do horrifying and yet impresive things with steel.

Hrmm. Thoughts on how the Soviets would be inclined to use such a fleet? Can they build a significant portion of it?
 

mowque

Banned
Feel free to pick this post apart.

But navies require decades of tender love and care to develop, with support every step of the way. They are among the longest term investments a nation can make. Can the USSR be this consistent with anything? Granted, the made subs work, but that is the 'weakest' part of the fleet until the nuclear age. I doubt Stalin has the high-tech ability to make the fleet fast enough to suit him, after which he gets bored and his succosser quietly closes it due to cost.
 

MrP

Banned
From McLaughlin I understand it isn't a question of willpower or money or support, but instead simple resources. Good steel simply wasn't arriving in sufficient quantity for the Russians to complete their planned battlefleet.
 
Can they build a significant portion of it?
Hmm... at the time of Barbarossa, the sovs had (IIRC) two or three Battleships and two 'Battlecruisers' (roughly comparable to S &G) under construction. According to All the World's Battlescruisers (see previous link), work on the two Battlecruisers was halted in early 1941 due to insufficient production of armour (one of the incomplete BBs and an equaly incomplete BC fell into German hands and were thoroughly trashed by the war's end). Both these projects had a fair degree of help from Italy, which suggests that the Sovs themselves would not have suffieicntent experiance to manage construction of many more ships at that stage.

On that basis, I'd expect that Stalin would probably only have a quarter of his proposed fleet in service by 1947.
 
From McLaughlin I understand it isn't a question of willpower or money or support, but instead simple resources. Good steel simply wasn't arriving in sufficient quantity for the Russians to complete their planned battlefleet.

Hmm. I'm not inordinately surprised, given the limitations of Soviet industry (though given that it'd go on to build a bomb within a decade...)

So was the entire fleet infeasible?
 
I think Mowque hit it on the head, building a physical fleet is one thing, building an effective navy is another.

To try and answer the question though, if the Soviets hadn't suffered Barbarossa I think they could have built 60%-70% of the fleet they wanted within the timeframe specified. They had enormous new production facilities under construction (including a covered facility to series produce battleships on the White Sea) and even under the strain of a shattered economy their output of armaments in WW2 is impressive.
 
I think Mowque hit it on the head, building a physical fleet is one thing, building an effective navy is another.

You know, an awesome navy with the world's most powerful battleships that's sunk by a few Swordfish is entirely okay with me.
 

Sachyriel

Banned
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/kritika/v004/4.2sumida.html

Because when it comes to giant fleets with no discernible purpose, you can't find a betterm man than Stalin.

Okay, let's imagine that Barbarossa never happens; I think that the Soviets would have trouble building even half of the 1939 fleet, but it never pays to underestimate the Soviet state's ability to do horrifying and yet impresive things with steel.

Hrmm. Thoughts on how the Soviets would be inclined to use such a fleet? Can they build a significant portion of it?

Well, you know what they say about a man with big fleet...;)

Perhaps with military power so large it has to be extended, we could see the Indian Ocean become the Private play zone of a largely Communist-leaning bloc of nations?
 

MrP

Banned
Hmm. I'm not inordinately surprised, given the limitations of Soviet industry (though given that it'd go on to build a bomb within a decade...)

So was the entire fleet infeasible?

Let me just go peer at the chapter on those big ships. Bear in mind this only covers the four Sovetskii Soiuz ships, not any cruisers and such.

p.387 said:
The production of shipbuilding steel fell short of the planned goals, and in addition substantial batches had to be rejected because they failed to meet specifications - construction had to be slowed or even halted in the spring of 1940 due to steel shortages. Matters were even worse with armor production; in 1939 10,000 tons of armor were required, but only 1,800 tons were delivered, and more than half the plate was rejected. Some improvement was seen in 1940, but production was still only about half the target figures, and neither the Izhorskii nor the Mariupolskii works had mastered the production of plate thicker than 230mm. In fact the difficulties encountered in armor manufacture were so daunting that in November 1940 it was decided to replace cemented plate with simpler face-hardened plate for thicknesses greater than 200mm. This entailed a considerable reduction in protective power, since proving ground trials showed that the noncemented plate was more brittle than the cemented plate originally specified.

He goes on to list problems acquiring the turbines. Three were ordered from abroad for the first ship, with a fourth for copying by a Russian firm; said firm never produced a single copy. A boiler was supposed to be produced for trials in September 1938, and turned up in early '41.

The list of problems could be extended almost indefinitely - fewer than half the required shipyard workers were actually available; propeller shafting had to be ordered from Holland and Germany because domestic factories were already overloaded; the turret shop in Nikolaev proved to be poorly equipped to assemble the 406-mm mountings, and so on, and so on.

By 1940 it was clear that Stalin's attempt to create a shipbuilding industry capable of the serial production of large warships was a failure. The strain of trying to build these ships as well as support an expanded programme of rearmament for the army proved to be too much for the Soviet Union's industrial resources, and therefore on 19 October 1940 a decree was issued cancelling one of the ships at Molotovsk (Sovetskaia Belorussiia). Work had been halted on this ship in mid-1940 when it was discovered that 70,000 of the rivets in her bottom plating had been made from steel of inferior quality, a fact that probably influenced the decision to cancel her.
 
Prestige, also

Aside from the possible military needs, battleships were still an important point of national presitige. No battleships declared that you were a minor, or at least a strictly continental power.

Have one or two, and you're a step up in the world. Build your own, and in quantity, and that's saying to the world, "I'm HERE--and you have to notice me." Withough a battle fleet, there's no power projection beyond gun, or at least air, range of home in time of war.

No battle fleet, and Germany can laungh amphibous attacks on Russia, yet be safe from the enemy's.

No battlefleet, and Turkey's single battlecruiser can keep Russia bottled up in the Black Sea.

Having some first rate ships that aren't leftovers from the days of the Romanov's could be quitye important politically. How many--that's another story...
 
Aside from the possible military needs, battleships were still an important point of national presitige. No battleships declared that you were a minor, or at least a strictly continental power.

This actually seems to have been a big part of Stalin's reason; he felt that the Spanish Civil War revealed the limits of Soviet power in comparison to a nation like Italy.
 
Stalin felt he needed a fleet to make Russia a player in world politics.

Aside from the problems of being unable to manufacture things like large caliber guns, turbines and armor plate the manpower requirements of this fleet would have been enormous. And I can't see turning a lot of plowboys into sailors quickly. Also, this would have absorbed a significant amount of steel production, which would mean fewer tanks. Think about that when Barbarossa comes rolling in!
 
Top