Shipbucket

Ρr.10200 is one of the ships Ι will use to my alternate world.Ηow many the Soviets would have built? 2-3?

While I searched the reference material for my AU Soviet Union project I came agross of dozens of kitbashed drawings of my earlier carrier drawings, made mostly for my Novgorod AU project back in the day. I'm not going to comment on the quality of those kitbash but what struck my own self-critical eyes was the quality of the original drawings which they used. Thus I decided to draw the carriers again, so that those hacks can now at least have better references to bash around


As I said in the AU thread, this time I did the OTL Soviet never-where version of the carriers as well. So here we go. Starting with couple redraws:

Project 69AV


Project 72

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Project 85



This was a light carrier proposal dating back early 1950's when Admiral Kuznetsov was returned to office after Stalins death. It was Kuznetsov's last attempt to get soviet carrier program going and work on the design started in 1954. It was planned for 5 ships to enter service between 1960 and 1965. However the project was canceled after Kuznetsovs seccond displacement in 1955. It was to carry 40 aircrafts.

Project PBIA

Under Khrushchevs "revolution of military affairs" doctrine which based heavy emphasis on missile-armed ships, need for fleet airdefence rose again after the USN itroduced Polaris SSBNs. To counter that thread a series of ASW ships (including the pr.1123 Moskva class helicopter carriers) were planned. However blue-water ASW ships needed defence against enemy air thread and the task was given to dedicated Air Defence missile ships (pr.1126). To suplement those, a small carrier with around 30 fighters and AWACS planes were planned with under the designation of "floating base for fighter aviation". Term "arcraft carrier" was avoided deliberately. However these plans never reached beoynd the design table and no offical project number were given to the design.

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Project 1160 'Orel'


Project 1160 is one of the best known carrier projects and it dates around the same time as the project 1143 Kiev class was beign build. Several variants of different sizes were planned but the definite version is 80,000t nuclear powered carrier. It's airgroup was originally ment to compose from navalized MiG-23, Su-24 and from dedicated ASW aircraft Beriev P-42. However Sukhoi OKB stated that the Su-24 was too large for carrier operations and they proposed that the new fighter project, Su-27 then under development should make up the carrier airwing. It would have carried 12 Su-27K or Su-29K (a twin-seated interceptor variant), 12 Su-28K (ground attack variant of Su-27K), 4 Su-28KRTs (EW & Recce variant) and 6 P-42 ASW variant, 4 P-42 AEW variant and 8 Ka-25 helicopters. Three ships were planned to be build by 1986.


Project 1153


Project 1153 is the other well known carrier project dating 1973. It was smaller follow-on to the project 1160 and was somewhat similar size as the pr.1143.5 Admiral Kuznetsov evenatually emerging. Project 1153 was to carry around 50 aircrafts, Su-27K is mentioned in many sources as its main aircraft type but the famous models of it shows MiG-23K and Su-25K onboard the flightdeck. The program was canceled after death of Defence minister Marshal Grechko in 1978.

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New AU project "Aravala"

Project 1143.5


This is one of the early proposals for project 11435 Admiral Kuznetsov (or Tblisi, Riga, Leonid Breznev). It features still conventional steam-catabults instead the ski-jump in the later configuration. Reasons for substituting the catabults were purely political, Defence minister Ustinov was so convinced of Yakolev's lobbying of "supersonic VSTOL plane than outperforms all existing combat aircrafts" that he insisted that it should form the base of soviet carrier aviation. Only later on it was realized that conventional Su-27k and MiG-29k could operate from the ski-jump as well.

Project 1143.4.2


This is one of the most interesting soviet carrier designs. It was to be a follow on to Baku, the so called "fifth carrier" as it was then called and alternative to the larger Project 1143.5. It's slightly enlargened version of Baku but with bow cleared for ski-jump and the Bazalt launchers moved to the side. Its airgroup would have consist from Su-27k and Yak-41 as well as Yak-44 AEW planes. It's a similar attempt to block the large carrier program as the pr. 10200 Khalzan class helicopter carrier was.

Project 1143.7 Ulyanovsk


Not much more can be said of this desing, the culmination of Soviet carrier program was to be the Ulyanovsk, nuclear powered aircraft carrier, follow on to Kuznetsov and Varyag. It was laid down in 1988 but work was still in early phase when Soviet Union collapsed.

There are still some designs which didn't make for this round, like ALV, various Moskva prototypes and some later VSTOL and Helicopter carriers. But don't worry I'll do them also in some time, next round I hope.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Awesome!
The more Soviet never-weres of all possible classes, the better!

Fantastic work on those carrier, both here and in the AU thread.

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Any help and source material is always welcome.

Can you comment on the 1160 Orel bow SSM launcher hatches? They seem IMMENSE.

Great work...always wondered what Ulyanovsk would've looked like in commission!

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

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On the 1143.7, there are structures on the starboard side of the flight deck that consist of rectangles with three lines coming out of one side. Would you mind explaining what they are?

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