Tactical Aircraft-Carrying Cruiser
[Takticheskoi Avionosnyi Kreizer]
Heavy Aircraft-Carrying Cruiser
[Tyazholyi Avianesushyi Kreyser]
| year | tons | |||
| CVN NEWCON | CVN NEWCON | 2015 + | 40,000 | |
| 1143.7 | Orel | Ul'yanovsk | -- | 79,750 |
| 1178 | Kherson | -- | ||
| 1143.5 | Kreml | Kremlin / Kuznetsov | 1991 | 67,500 |
| 1143 | Krechyet | Kiev | 1975 | 43,500 |
| 1020 | Khalzan | -- | ||
| 1153 | Orel | -- | ||
| 1160 | Orel | 1972 | -- | |
| 1123 | Kondor | Moskva | 1967 | 14,600 |
| 85 | -- | |||
| 72 | -- | 23,700 | ||
| 71 | -- | 10,600 |
The antecedents of use of the sea and air power of the Russian fleet were the 5 hydroplane support ships used between 1910 and 1920. First it was the Volodga with 91 ms of length and 3800 ton with capacity for 4 to 5 hydroplanes, followed the Almaz with 110 ms, 3200 tn and of 3 to 4 seaplanes, the Imperator Alexander and Imperator Nikolai I of 117 ms, 9200 tn and finally the Rumyniya of 108 ms, 4500 tn and able to operate between 4 and 7 aircraft.
Several other small Russian merchant ships were taken over by the Royal Navy and converted to support the White Russians during the Russian Civil War, then given to the White Russians. Operated in the Caspian sea. The ships are believed to have been similar but not identical, with only ery minimal conversion.
The Almaz was a small ex-Russian seaplane tender given to the White Russians by the British, having been surrendered by the Germans at the end of WWI. Originally an armed yacht/small cruiser; converted by the Russians to operate seaplanes. Served with the Black Sea Fleet. Hoisting booms and servicing facilties for 4 seaplanes were fitted. Departure from Service/Disposal: Interned with the rest of the White Russian fleet, and eventually scrapped.
The Russian seaplane mothership “Orlitsa” and her aircraft were very active in the waters off of the Estonian Islands as well as in the Gulf of Riga in 1915 and 1916. This was a time when German land forces were driving the Russian armies out of Couronia (Kurland/Kurzeme) and every effort had to be taken by the Russian to neutralize the German threats.
Some sources claim that planning for building a pair of aircraft carriers began in the 1930s, but once the war began the program was abandoned in favor of more immediate needs. It is reported that towards the late 1930s, with the industrialized USSR and its economy growing, it was possible to face a program of construction of two aircraft carriers during third Five Year Plan (1938-1942) but the beginning of World War II brought about the cancellation of the project due to other much more urgent defensive needs. The Soviet Union started battlecruiser construction in the late 1930s, and two vessels were laid down in 1939. The vessels were so incomplete as of 1941 that they were unrecognizable to the invading Germans, who interpreted the absence of barbettes to mean that the ships were aircraft carriers.
At the end of the war the Soviets captured the incomplete German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelín and they towed it to 1947 in the direction of Leningrad but it never arrived there. According to the different sources the ship was struck by a mine, or sank in a storm or was used in naval exercises to acquire experience in means of sinking an aircraft carrier.
At the beginning of the 1950 there was an attempt for the second time to develope an aircraft carrier.Following the end of the war, plans were approved for the construction of a new class of aircraft carriers, to begin before 1950. The pair of Project 72 aircraft carriers were projected to have a displacement of 23,700 tons, but were never laid down. Stalin decided to build a blue water navy, but would not build aircraft carriers. In the beginning of the 1950s the military-political management of the country annually raised the question about the creation of the domestic aircraft carriers of different designation. Stalin rejected the aircraft carrier, despite evidence from the Second World War of the importance of air power at sea. Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov pleaded in vain with Stalin for aircraft carriers to cover surface forces from enemy air attack out to three hundred miles from naval bases.
No progress was made, and Stalin's death in 1953 put and end to things. The death of Stalin in 1953 and his succession by Khruschev, who was more inclined to missiles and nuclear weapons that to the conventional forces (more forces to maintain) buried the project definitively. Khrushchev's negative evaluation of conventional forces, particularly naval forces, doomed aircraft carrier plans. In the Soviet Navy the highest priority was given to submarines and surface vessels armed with cruise missiles.
In parallel with the creation of aircraft carriers it was planned to develop carrier-based fighters, attack aircraft and bombers. In OKB of Tupolev was by this time small theoretical reserve according to the design of carrier-based heavy aircraft. Deck bomber and attack aircraft were designed by the OKB of A.N. Tupolev. Tupolev developed the Tu-91 [NATO "Boot"] naval attack bomber. As early as 1950 began work along the deck torpedo bomber- bomber. The aircraft obtained designation on OKB project "509" (ninth project of 1950). The experimental aircraft of "91" was constructed at the plant #156.
The Tu-91 had a powerful turboprop in the mid fuselage behind the cockpit, with split exhausts behind the wing roots, driving a big three-bladed contra-rotating propeller on the nose. The Tu-91 had straight wings, but slightly swept tail surfaces. The operational need for the Tu-91 disappeared after Stalin's death, when the ship-building program was cut back and the carriers cancelled.
On 1 June 1953, the command of Navy aviation gave the OKB the operational requirements for the diving torpedo bomber. The Tu-91 had to carry out takeoffs and landings in the daytime and at night, also, in the adverse weather conditions from the unpaved airfields and the airfields with the limited runways. The fulfillment of combat missions was putting of torpedo and bomb attacks.
During April 1954 the aircraft was finished. In the summer of 1955 the Tu-91 was presented to N.S.Khrushchev, who quickly was drawn to the conclusion that the aircraft would not go into production. This episode became prelude to closing of works on the Tu-91. Moreover, there were more pure political troubles. There was a competing Ilyushin's project [the Il-54 BLOWLAMP], and Ilyushin's team was considered to be more skilled in this class of aircraft.
In December 1962 the first aircraft carrier of the Soviet Navy was laid down in the shipyards Nº 444 of Nikolayev, Ukraine. Project 1123 was known as the Moskva class by NATO. All the aircraft carrier Soviet, from the Moskva to the incomplete Ulyanovsk, were constructed in those shipyards located in the Black Sea. Thence they had to go to the Mediterranean through the Straits of the Dardanelles, pertaining to Turkey, and thence from the Mediterranean to move to any other place in the world. The problem was that by the convention of Montreaux of 1936 the passage of aircraft carrier by that Straits this prohibited. To avoid diverse diplomatic problems, the Soviet fleet denominateed its aircraft carrier as Aircraft Carrier Cruisers. The Kuznetsov is denominated TAKR (Tyazholiy Avionosnyy Kreyser) or Heavy Aircraft Carrying Cruiser.
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