Novgorod AU

9. Naval Development 1934-1941: Third and the Emergency naval construction programs.

During the early 1930's the international situation had changed dramatically into more challenging direction from Novgorod's point of view. Adolf Hitler had risen into power in Germany with his far-right fasist policies. This was great setback to Novgorods and Cominterns efforts to set up a socialistic regime in Europe. Hitler started to push revansionist and military expansionist policy and thus the detente and era of disarmament since the end of the First Wolrd War had come to an end. With the ever bolder Japan effectively colonizing China in the Asia the network against Novgorod begun to tighten.

These developments had great inpact to the naval construction program and RKKF was deemed to be able to take on any borgerous navy or their alliances. This effectively ment that RKKF had to be strongest navy in the world. This ambitious task was the main driving philosofy of the new, third naval construction program. The foundation and footprints were laid down during the seccond constrcution program but after 1934 the pace and magnitude of the shipbulding was completely in new level.

One of the major factor in the third construction program was the return of capital ship construction. The early 30's enthusiasm over carrierborne aviation had somewhat mellowed as the old battleship oriented naval-thinking returned to the discussions. The potential of carriers was not completely forgotten, but the most wildest theories where the carriers would replace battleships as navy's main striking fist had been put aside.
The earlier studies of battleship operations and doctrines were pretty much retained and the concept of the Battleship A and Battleship B was adopted. The Battleship A was intended to be the maxium capacity battleship able to defeat any current battleship in service or building. It was foremost intended to be build for the Pacific fleet where Japanese navy enjoyed superiority in battleship strenght. It eventually emerged as a project 23, the most powerfull battleship to be build sofar.

When the spesifications of the The Battleship A/pr.23 were revealed it caused some worries in the naval circles abroad. It sparked japanese to build even more massive Yamato class battleships in return and made UK to approach Novgorod in the matter of naval limitations.
Novgorod was not invited into the initial discussions over the Washington naval treaty back in the early 20's and refused to join the following first and seccond London Treaty had left it in unique position among the major naval powers. It was free from the tonnage and armament restrictions for the warships but in the same enjoyed the break of capital ship building that was apparent in the 20's and early 30's. However with the plans to build new battleships, Novgorod took knowing risk to be a catalyst for the next big dreadnought race.
The bilateral discussion with Great Britan started in 1936 and in the next year to many suprise the two powers announched that agreement was made. For Novgorod it was more of a political move to gain widespread regocnition and trying to build united front against the rising Facist powers. The RKKF and the People's Commisariat of Naval matters opposed the agreement as they felt it would harm the development of the navy.

Novgorod agreed to limit its further battleship construction according to the terms of the Seccond London naval treaty. This ment that it abided to the 35 000t displacement and 356mm main artillery caliber clauses. For othership classes, no agreement was made but the two parties agreed to continue the negotations. These came to end with the laying down the 40 000t aircraft carrier Kostromitinov. As for the battleship size reduction, these terms only abided to those battleships in service in the Northern and Baltic fleet. Novgorod was free from all limits to its battleship constrcution for those units that were directed against Japan. This was due the fact that Japan had refused to join the Seccond London Naval Treaty themselves.

Alongside with the Battleship A, another capital ship class was introduced as the Battleship B. It called 20-30 000t displacement ship with 254mm or 305mm mainguns and speed over 30kts. Its role was to fight of the enemy treaty cruisers and use its speed against more heavily armed opponents. It was similar to the so-called Cruiser-Killer concept that was sometimes studied in the western navies. The Battleship B concept was already been tought with the project 21 battleships for the baltic fleet but that design grew out to be more close to the treaty battleships than the original battleship B standard. However in 1935 the concept whas reintroduced in its original purpose. Main driving force behind the reintroducing the concept was the German pocket battleships which entered service in the 30's. Two battleship B were laid down in 1935 as a project 25. They were inteneded to the serve in the Northern Fleet. However even before the ships were complete, critizism towards their usefullness begun to rise. It was felt that the Battleship B was too large and powerfull as a cruiser but too small for proper Battleship purposes. The protection of the design was tought to be too low and it seemed that the design was to be inferior against the new Scharnhorst-class battleships beign build at the same time for Germany. Thus no further units of the Battleship B was carried on and it was decided to replace them in production with more Battleship A's.
However the bilateral naval treaty with UK changed the situation all over again. It prevented to build pr.23 class battleships for the Northern Fleet but in the meantime the need for new battleships had become paramount in europe as well. The Germans had laid down two Bismarck class battleships in 1936 and UK was planning to build the King George V class. Thus the Battleship B was took as reconsideration. It was decided to upgrade the design with improved armour and with 356mm guns in place of the 305mm in pr.25. It envolved into project 64 class battleship. It was peculiar design with size larger than the Treaty battleships but armed only with 356mm guns. These were the main factors of its malign by critics. At the same time 2 ships Battleship A/project 23 were laid up in Dalny for the Pacific fleet. Seccond pair followed in 1939-40.

The aircraft carrier construction started with two project 71 light carriers for the Pacific Fleet which were based on cruiser-hull design build at the same time. However the operational experiences with the existing carriers had showed that the small and light carriers had serious defects in succesfull operations of aircrafts specially in the high seas. The carrier-lobby argued for need of a larger carrier design similar to the German Graf Zeppelin beign laid down in 1936. Together with closing the gap of aircrafs in seas compared to other major navies a large carrier design was approved. This resulted the mighty project 73 Kostromitinov. It was 300m long giant that was build to the maxium limit of the new equally massive shipconstruction yard in Severodvinsk. The reason for its massive size were that there was no available slipyards for several smaller designs and thus the only remaining slip in Severodvinsk that was complete was put on its full maxium use.
Kostromitinov prooved out to be too big for its own good. The massive ammount of resources it required to build accompanied with its still rather new and even revolutionary use as a flagship of a pure carrier-focused battlefleet was not what the conservative naval thinkers looked keen upon. It was labeled as a coffin in the sea as it was too lightly protected and easy target due its enourmous size. Kostromitinov remained on-off design. The planned sister for Pacific fleet was canceled and instead 4 smaller and much more conventional fleet carriers of the project 72 was laid down in 1938-39 instead.

The cruiser production advanced alongside with the capital unit construction. As Novgorod was not part of the Washington Naval Treaty, it was free from the restriction for the cruiser designs that the treaty had imposed. Thus the Novgorodian designation of cruisers varied from those of the Treaty nations. Heavy cruisers were large and heavily armed, nearing the size of a WWII battlecruisers and even overlapping with the existing Battleship B concept. Light cruisers were more to the size of the treaty cruisers and to complete those there were third cathegory, Small cruiser (Malyy Kreiser) which was closer to the size and role of old scout cruisers.

The heavy cruiser construction was idle in the early years of the Third Naval construction program as the Battleship B overtook its operational role. It was however returned in table with the project 69 Heavy cruiser in 1939 which ironically was reincarnation of the Battleship B concept for the Pacific Fleets purposes. It was classfied as a cruiser merely for political reasons as the Battleship B had prompted too much critisism over its capabilitites. The project 69 was intended to perform much of the same roles as the Battleship B, specially in the Indonesian waters where it would outpower any existing japanese cruisers and force INJ to disperse its battleships in order to successfully engage it. Two units were laid down in 1939 and 1940.

Light cruisers were build from the begining of the program as project 28. It was more close to the size of heavy treaty cruisers but carried 12 152mm guns instead of 203mm as it was tought that greater number of smaller calibre guns with higher rate of fire would be superior over the 203mm. The design of the pr.28 was sold to Soviet Union which used it as their own Kirov-class cruisers armed with 9 180mm guns. For RKKF, the project 28 was followed by slightly improved project 68 cruiser with similar main armament. Alongside with the light cruisers, small project 94 scout cruisers were build with similar combined diesel-steam turbine propulsion as with the German light cruisers. The ships carried just 6 152mm guns and had very long endurance. These were followed by pr.94Bis which substituted the 152mm guns with 10 dual purpose 130mm guns in similar arragment as in British Dido- class.

Light unit production followed on to the lines of the Seccond Naval Construction plan with improved and updated designs continued the serial production. The pr.45 destroyers were continued in the two patches and replaced with pr.30 design in production after 1938. Alongside with the standard destroyer type, a large project 35 design was introduced for the Northern and Pacific fleets.
Submarine construction was continued with the pr.4 and 5 designs with addition of the large long-range project 6 submarine design.

Situation in the far-east detoriated into full scale war against Japan in 1939 after the Khalkhin Gol incidence. The war was brief and ended without any major land changes and losses as both sides were illprepeared for it and was planned by neither part. It had however huge affects on the Novgorodian naval construction program. Japanese tried to lure the Pacific fleets main forces out from Port Artur into decicive battle against the Japanese battleships but the Pacific fleet remained in port as it was still understrenght compated to the INJ. However the Battleship Petropavlovsk and its accompanied cruiser Charist and Kazan were attacked by japanese carrier group while moving south from Kamchatka Penisula. Petropavlovsk and Charist was sunk as first capital units for carrier based aircrafts. This had shocking effect for RKKF. The long downplayed and minimalized capacity of aviation abroad sea had now been painfully showed to the naval strategians. The Third Naval Construction program was stopped and instead a new emergency program was drafted.

Aircraft carriers were now given high priority as well as strenghtening of anti-aircraft weaponry onboard existing ships and to those already in construction. The large surfaceship construction was reviewed and only the seccond pr.23 battleships remained safe as their value was still persistently kept high in RKKF. The seccond pr.69 heavy cruiser as well as 5 hulls of the pr.68 light cruisers were all decided to be converted into aircraft carriers as it would have taken too much time to scrab them and free the slips for new carriers to be build from the scraths. New destroyer design project 36 with new higher effiency dual purpose guns were developted and replaced the project 30 production.

However the main lesson of the brief war was left unoticed and ironically it reminded the situation in 1905. With the huge expense and focus on the naval construction programs had once again left some critical resources from army and airforce development. This was even further confused by the relatively well performance of the Red Army on the ground which left the planners in false sense of security and belief that the performance and readiness levels of the army was adequate. This had catastrophic consequenses in the advent of German invasion in summer of 1941.

Shipbucket

Who is online