The role of a Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleship in the Soviet Navy?

CalBear

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I assume that'd be Stalin's ego? Didn't he have a fascination with big ships?


A few years ago there was a novel (The Iron Man by John Watson) about a fictional WW2 Soviet battleship (a 75,000t monstrosity with nine 56cm guns) being purchased and used for piracy after the Soviet Union fell apart.

Wait...

I could not possibly have read that correctly.

looks it up

Oh FFS!

Did anyone point out that a ship of this size get around 20 FEET per gallon of fuel (around 200 gallon to the mile) or ~$125 per mile, just for bunker fuel. Just starting it and getting the boilers on line and ready to power the ship cost $6,000 dollars (this was in 1998, Bunker is up 90-100% since then). By the time you get out of harbor the fuel will put you at least ten grand in the hole. Then it take at least 1,800 men to operate the bloody thing.
 

CalBear

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If the Soviet union decided to build a 14 inched fast battleship which might be of some good in 1938, it might be more useful in the baltic, as a short range swede scarer.

Actually the best sort of ship for the Soviets, assuming they wanted a heavyweight, would be a souped up Colorado class (600', maybe 6x16", 25 knots). Be hell on wheels in confined waters and outgun anything the Reich had in the water at the time, much less the Swedes, Finns, or Turks.
 
Actually the best sort of ship for the Soviets, assuming they wanted a heavyweight, would be a souped up Colorado class (600', maybe 6x16", 25 knots). Be hell on wheels in confined waters and outgun anything the Reich had in the water at the time, much less the Swedes, Finns, or Turks.

Am I right in assuming it would be no match for an Iowa?
 
Wait...

I could not possibly have read that correctly.

looks it up

Oh FFS!

Did anyone point out that a ship of this size get around 20 FEET per gallon of fuel (around 200 gallon to the mile) or ~$125 per mile, just for bunker fuel. Just starting it and getting the boilers on line and ready to power the ship cost $6,000 dollars (this was in 1998, Bunker is up 90-100% since then). By the time you get out of harbor the fuel will put you at least ten grand in the hole. Then it take at least 1,800 men to operate the bloody thing.
If it's the same one as I'm thinking of that I bought from a second hand book shop in Spain on holiday a couple of decades back it wasn't a piracy job, or at least that's not what the real purpose was even though it was sold as a bit of light piracy. That being said even then it wasn't the most realistic of stories, but I don't think that was really what the author was aiming for. :)
 

CalBear

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Am I right in assuming it would be no match for an Iowa?

It wouldn't be, but neither would a Soviet Soyuz. The Soviets couldn't produce armor in sufficient thickness to allow for that. What a 35,000 ton ship would be is capable of dealing with the KM Deutschland class "pocket BB" and the Scharnhorst class as built, and be an utter over-match for anything else it would encounter in the Baltic or Black Sea. The Soviets couldn't build anything to deal with either the IJN or USN in the Pacific (or the RN for that matter), and it was pointless to try.
 
Actually the best sort of ship for the Soviets, assuming they wanted a heavyweight, would be a souped up Colorado class (600', maybe 6x16", 25 knots). Be hell on wheels in confined waters and outgun anything the Reich had in the water at the time, much less the Swedes, Finns, or Turks.
Interesting What do you think of "Small Battleship"?
iOwtRf6.png


5 406mm
44,900 tons displacement
3x70,000hp
33 knots top speed

or if you prefer two 457mm with 33,000 displacement.

Also I'm sure Project 24 will give you an aneurysm:
VodVZD9.png

Stats:
3x3 406mm* main guns
8x2 130mm secondary guns
12x4 45mm AA guns
12x4 25mm AA guns
72,950 tons displacement**
4x70,000hp propulsion
speed over 30 knots
Armor:
P4xEblT.png


* 3x3 457mm guns were considered but rejected,
** 86,000 for the 457mm version.

I assume that'd be Stalin's ego? Didn't he have a fascination with big ships?
A few years ago there was a novel (The Iron Man by John Watson) about a fictional WW2 Soviet battleship (a 75,000t monstrosity with nine 56cm guns) being purchased and used for piracy after the Soviet Union fell apart.
The historical 86,000 design only had 457mm and even then they were rejected because no one in the USSR had experience with guns of such size.
 
Any Admiral proposing to send an Iowa into the Baltic or Black Sea would be shot at dawn.

Probably by his own officers.

Heh. Reminds me of how some of Winston Churchill's naval schemes for the Baltic were so outrageously impractical that Sir Dudley Pound, his First Sea Lord, probably earned the Anglican equivalent of sainthood several times over for NOT resorting to personal violence or trying to instigate a mutiny against him.
 
Actually the best sort of ship for the Soviets, assuming they wanted a heavyweight, would be a souped up Colorado class (600', maybe 6x16", 25 knots). Be hell on wheels in confined waters and outgun anything the Reich had in the water at the time, much less the Swedes, Finns, or Turks.

I support this notion, if only for the idea of seeing anything with the draft of 12 meters (or more) used by the Soviets for naval warfare in the coastal waters of the Gulf of Finland (average depth 38 meters) or the Archipelago Sea (average depth 23 meters).:p

For reference, a part of the southern Archipelago Sea between the Åland islands and the Hanko Peninsula:

40294
 
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Wait...

I could not possibly have read that correctly.

looks it up

Oh FFS!

Did anyone point out that a ship of this size get around 20 FEET per gallon of fuel (around 200 gallon to the mile) or ~$125 per mile, just for bunker fuel. Just starting it and getting the boilers on line and ready to power the ship cost $6,000 dollars (this was in 1998, Bunker is up 90-100% since then). By the time you get out of harbor the fuel will put you at least ten grand in the hole. Then it take at least 1,800 men to operate the bloody thing.

It wouldn't matter if the pirates were operating under the auspices of a oil-rich rentier state...;)
 
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