Soviet Navy
The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with the opposing superpower, the United States, during the Cold War. The Soviet Navy played a large role during the Cold War, either confronting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in western Europe or power projection to maintain its sphere of influence in eastern Europe.
The Soviet Navy was divided into four major fleets: the Northern, Pacific, Black Sea, and Baltic Fleets, in addition to the Leningrad Naval Base, which was commanded separately. It also had a smaller force, the Caspian Flotilla, which operated in the Caspian Sea and was followed by a larger fleet, the 5th Squadron, in the Mediterranean Sea. The Soviet Navy included Naval Aviation, Naval Infantry, and the Coastal Artillery.
The Soviet Navy was formed from the remnants of the Imperial Russian Navy during the Russian Civil War. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Federation inherited the largest part of the Soviet Navy and reformed it into the Russian Navy, with smaller parts becoming the basis for navies of the newly independent post-Soviet states.
Early history
Russian Civil War (1917–1922)
The Soviet Navy was based on a republican naval force formed from the remnants of the Imperial Russian Navy, which had been almost completely destroyed in the two Revolutions of 1917, during World War I, the following Russian Civil War, and the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. During the revolutionary period, Russian sailors deserted their ships at will and generally neglected their duties. The officers were dispersed and most of the sailors walked off and left their ships. Work stopped in the shipyards, where uncompleted ships deteriorated rapidly.The Black Sea Fleet fared no better than the Baltic. The Bolshevik revolution entirely disrupted its personnel, with mass murders of officers; the ships were allowed to decay to unserviceability. At the end of April 1918, Imperial German troops moved along the Black Sea coast and entered Crimea and started to advance towards the Sevastopol naval base. The more effective ships were moved from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk where, after an ultimatum from Germany, they were scuttled by Vladimir Lenin's order.
The ships remaining in Sevastopol were captured by the Germans and then, after the later Armistice of 11 November 1918 on the Western Front which ended the War, additional Russian ships were confiscated by the British. On 1 April 1919, during the ensuing Russian Civil War when Red Army forces captured Crimea, the British Royal Navy squadron had to withdraw, but before leaving they damaged all the remaining battleships and sank thirteen new submarines.
When the opposing Czarist White Army captured Crimea in 1919, it captured and reconditioned a few units. At the end of the civil war, Wrangel's fleet, a White flotilla, moved south through the Black Sea, Dardanelles straits and the Aegean Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to Bizerta in French Tunisia on the North Africa coast, where it was interned.
The first ship of the revolutionary navy could be considered the rebellious Imperial Russian cruiser, built 1900, whose crew joined the communist Bolsheviks. Sailors of the Baltic fleet supplied the fighting force of the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky during the October Revolution of November 1917 against the democratic provisional government of Alexander Kerensky established after the earlier first revolution of February against the Czar. Some imperial vessels continued to serve after the revolution, albeit with different names.
The Soviet Navy, established as the "Workers' and Peasants' Red Fleet" by a 1918 decree of the new Council of People's Commissars, installed as a temporary Russian revolutionary government, was less than service-ready during the interwar years of 1918 to 1941.
As the country's attentions were largely directed internally, the Navy did not have much funding or training. An indicator of its reputation was that the Soviets were not invited to participate in negotiations for the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921–1922, which limited the size and capabilities of the most powerful navies – British,
American, Japanese, French, Italian. The greater part of the old fleet was sold by the Soviet government to post-war Germany for scrap.
In the Baltic Sea there remained only three much-neglected battleships, two cruisers, some ten destroyers, and a few submarines. Despite this state of affairs, the Baltic Fleet remained a significant naval formation, and the Black Sea Fleet also provided a basis for expansion. There also existed some thirty minor-waterways combat flotillas.
Interwar period (1922–1941)
During the 1930s, as the industrialization of the Soviet Union proceeded, plans were made to expand the Soviet Navy into one of the most powerful in the world. Approved by the Labour and Defence Council in 1926, the Naval Shipbuilding Program included plans to construct twelve submarines; the first six were to become known as the. Beginning 4 November 1926, Technical Bureau Nº 4, under the leadership of B.M. Malinin, managed the submarine construction works at the Baltic Shipyard.In subsequent years, 133 submarines were built to designs developed during Malinin's management. Additional developments included the formation of the Pacific Fleet in 1932 and the Northern Fleet in 1933. The forces were to be built around a core of powerful s. This building program was only in its initial stages by the time the German invasion forced its suspension in 1941.
By the end of 1937, the biggest fleet was the Baltic Fleet based at Leningrad, with two battleships, one training cruiser, eight destroyers including one destroyer leader, five patrol ships, two minesweepers, and some more old minesweepers. The Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol included one battleship, three cruisers, one training cruiser, five destroyers, two patrol ships, and four minesweepers. The Northern Fleet operating from the shores of Kola Bay and Polyarny was made up of three destroyers and three patrol ships, while the Pacific Fleet had two destroyers, transferred east in 1936, and six patrol ships assembled in the Far East.
The Soviet Navy had some minor action in the Winter War against Finland in 1939–1940, on the Baltic Sea. It was limited mainly to cruisers and battleships fighting artillery duels with Finnish forts.
World War II: The Great Patriotic War (1941–1945)
Building a Soviet fleet was a national priority, but many senior officers were killed in the Great Purge in the late 1930s. The naval share of the national armaments budget fell from 11.5% in 1941 to 6.6% in 1944.When the Soviet Union entered the Second World War, during Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, initially millions of soldiers were captured, many sailors and naval guns were detached to reinforce the Red Army; these reassigned naval forces had especially significant roles on land in the battles for Odessa, Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Novorossiysk, Tuapse, and Leningrad. The Baltic fleet was blockaded in Leningrad and Kronstadt by minefields, but the submarines escaped. The surface fleet fought with the anti-aircraft defence of the city and bombarded German positions.
The composition of the Soviet fleets in 1941 included:
- 3 battleships,
- 7 cruisers
- 59 destroyers,
- 218 submarines,
- 269 torpedo boats,
- 22 patrol vessels,
- 88 minesweepers,
- 77 submarine chasers,
- and a range of other smaller vessels.
Included in the totals above are some pre-World War I ships, some modern ships built in the USSR and Europe. During the war, many of the vessels on the slips in Leningrad and Nikolayev were destroyed, but the Soviet Navy received captured Romanian destroyers and Lend-Lease small craft from the U.S., as well as the old Royal Navy battleship and the United States Navy cruiser in exchange for the Soviet part of the captured Italian navy.
File:RIAN archive 834147 Hoisting the banner in Port-Artur. WWII.jpg|thumb|right|Pacific Fleet marines of the Soviet Navy hoisting the Soviet naval ensign in Port Arthur, on 1 October 1945
In the Baltic Sea, after Tallinn's capture, surface ships were blockaded in Leningrad and Kronstadt by minefields, where they participated with the anti-aircraft defence of the city and bombarded German positions. One example of Soviet resourcefulness was the battleship, an ageing pre-World War I ship sunk at anchor in Kronstadt's harbour by German Junkers Ju 87 aircraft in 1941. For the rest of the war, the non-submerged part of the ship remained in use as a grounded battery. Submarines, although suffering great losses due to German and Finnish anti-submarine actions, had a major role in the war at sea by disrupting Axis navigation in the Baltic Sea.
In the Black Sea, many ships were damaged by minefields and Axis aviation, but they helped defend naval bases and supply them while besieged, as well as later evacuating them. Heavy naval guns and sailors helped defend port cities during long sieges by Axis armies. In the Arctic Ocean, Soviet Northern Fleet destroyers and smaller craft participated with the anti-aircraft and anti-submarine defence of Allied convoys conducting Lend-Lease cargo shipping. In the Pacific Ocean, the Soviet Union was not at war with Japan before 1945, so some destroyers were transferred to the Northern Fleet.
From the beginning of hostilities, Soviet Naval Aviation provided air support to naval and land operations involving the Soviet Navy. This service was responsible for the operation of shore-based floatplanes, long-range flying boats, catapult-launched and vessel-based planes, and land-based aircraft designated for naval use.
As post-war spoils, the Soviets received several Italian and Japanese warships and much German naval engineering and architectural documentation.