Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleship
The Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleships were a class of battleships begun by the Soviet Union in the late 1930s but never brought into service. They were designed in response to the battleships being built by Germany. Only four hulls of the fifteen originally planned had been laid down by 1940, when the decision was made to cut the program to only three ships. These ships would have rivaled the Imperial Japanese Yamato class and America’s planned Montana class in size if any had been completed.
About Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleship in brief
The Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleships were a class of battleships begun by the Soviet Union in the late 1930s but never brought into service. They were designed in response to the battleships being built by Germany. Only four hulls of the fifteen originally planned had been laid down by 1940, when the decision was made to cut the program to only three ships. Construction of the first four ships was plagued with difficulties as the Soviet shipbuilding and related industries were not prepared to build such large ships. The failure of the Soviet armor plate industry to build cemented armor plates thicker than 230 millimeters would have negated any advantages from the Sovetskaya Soyuz class’s thicker armor in combat. These ships would have rivaled the Imperial Japanese Yamato class and America’s planned Montana class in size if any had been completed, although with significantly weaker firepower: nine 406-millimeter guns compared to the nine 460-millimeters guns of the Japanese ships and a dozen 16-inch on the Montanas. All three of the surviving hulls were scrapped in theLate 1940s. The Soviets made extensive efforts in Italy and the U.S. to purchase either drawings or the ships themselves in thelate 1930s. In 1938, 27 million rubles were spent on experimental work on the ship’s deck and torpedo protection. In the meantime, extensive testing and testing was conducted on the hull’s hull form. The Soviet Union signed the Anglo-Soviet Quantitative Naval Agreement of 1937 and agreed to follow the terms of the Second London Naval Treaty that limited battleships to a displacement of 35,560 metric tons, although they did add a proviso that allowed them to build ships of unlimited size to face the Imperial Japan Navy if they notified the British.
The design of KB-4, the surface ship design bureau of the Baltic Shipyard, was selected for further development although the lead designers were convinced that only a larger ship could fulfill the ambitious requirements. They did manage to get agreement on 22 November 1936 for a thickening of the deck armor that raised the displacement to about 47,000 tons. This forced the project to be inauspicious as the Great Purge was spreading through the ranks of the military and related industry. The original deadline for work was missed and an incomplete version was presented to the navy’s Ship Administration in October 1938. The final design was presented in November 1938, but the ship was never completed. It was never intended to be a battleship and instead served as a training ship for the Soviet Navy. The ship was scrapped in December 1941, and all three hulls have been lost to history. The only surviving hull is a replica of a ship from the 1930s that served as the base for the Russian Navy’s Sovettskaya Belorussiya battleship, which was never used for any military purposes. The hull is still in the possession of the Museum of Naval History and Science in St. Petersburg, Russia.
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This page is based on the article Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleship published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
