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Komsomolets - Light Carrier

In 1925, the command of the naval forces of the Red Army issued a proposal to re-equip the unfinished cruiser "Izmail" and the battleship "Poltava" with aircraft carriers. However, for the post-war country this was beyond his means. The ship was to carry in the hangar and on the flight deck up to 42 fighters and bombers. The project remained on paper.

The Russian aircraft carrier 'Komsomolets' from 1927 was a former training ship, but her fitting out as a aircraft carrier was never realized. Displacement was 12.000 ton standaard by a length of 143.2 meter. Her maximum speed was 15 knots and she had space enough for 42 aereoplanes. Her armament consisted of 16-10.2cm guns and 10-4cm guns.

Plans to convert the training ship Komosomolets were made during the first 5-year plan. It was ultimately rejected when Red Army politics resulted in Navy budgets being repurposed, while purges simultaneously gutted the Navy of any personnel who adovacted for the construction of large warships.

The Soviet leadership had rejected more ambitious conversions in March 1926, a harbinger of the July decision to place the navy under the army's command - which meant the army would direct the navy's budget. In 1927 the Scientific Technical Committee presented the Komsomolets sketch with the explicit qualifier that it "should be viewed only as a first approach to the questions of outfitting an aircraft carrier." In other words, it was simply a study, and no one proposed actually doing such work because no one enjoyed getting purged.

Okean was a training ship with several types of boilers to familiarize recruits with various sorts of power plants. The conversion study included a new and homogeneous boiler set-up.

1927, the proposal was to convert the training vessel "Komsomolets" into a training aircraft carrier. The parameters of the future ship were to be: a displacement of 12,000 tons, a speed of 15 knots; Air group: 26 fighters and 16 ground-attack planes; Armament: eight two-hole installations with a caliber of 102 mm and two five-barrels with a caliber of 40 mm. Nevertheless, there was a confluence of international events that created support within, not only the Red Navy, but also among prominent diplomats for the continued construction of large warships for an ocean-going fleet that could project Soviet power and protect Soviet interests. The year 1929 saw the clash of Soviet and Chinese armed forces over the Chinese Eastern Railway, with no significant naval forces in the region to support Soviet operations, or bring any pressure to bare on major Chinese port cities.

In the same year, the Soviets learned of the Turkish modernization of the battlecruiser Yazuz, and the purchase of Italian built submarines; Soviet repositioning of 'heavy' ships left the Navy stretched thin. These events were followed by increasingly blatant and unrestrained Japanese aggression and military actions in the Far East which raised calls for new ships for a Soviet Pacific Fleet. The purges put an end to all such calls.

In terms of its characteristics, this project is reminiscent of the English aircraft carrier "Hermes", which came into operation in 1924, with a certain similarity in appearance. Without a doubt, Such a proposal could be implemented, even a prototype of the deck attack aircraft "SHON" was created. The lack of funds to re-equip the ship and the development of a technical project, as well as the desire to do any work in this direction, predetermined the fate of this project. He had no results. The construction of the fleet according to the concept of the "Small Fleet" precluded any possibility of building aircraft carriers. For ten years they disappear from the plans of shipbuilding. The construction of the fleet according to the concept of the "Small Fleet" precluded any possibility of building aircraft carriers. For ten years they disappear from the plans of shipbuilding. The construction of the fleet according to the concept of the "Small Fleet" precluded any possibility of building aircraft carriers. For ten years they disappear from the plans of shipbuilding.

A US Navy Intelligence report from 1943 listed Komsomolets as an "engineering training vessel" and "formerly a passenger liner".