Together all three arms of the Soviet Navy, surface, subsurface, and naval aviation, would relentlessly hunt down carrier battle groups, destroying them whenever possible. The USSR assigned 120 Tu-22M “Backfire” supersonic bombers, 240 Tu-16 “Badger” bombers with AS-2, AS-5, and AS-6 missiles, and 35 Tu-22 “Blinder” bombers with gravity bombs to Soviet Naval Aviation, giving it enough punch to launch mass attacks against U.S.
Oscar submarines were plentiful enough to be assigned to both the Soviet Northern and Pacific Fleets, where they could threaten American carriers in both the Atlantic and Pacific.įinally, Soviet Naval Aviation operated a large force of bombers and maritime patrol aircraft meant to search for and then destroy carrier task forces. Also nuclear powered, the Oscar submarines each carried 24 P-700 anti-ship missiles. The Soviet Navy built 14 Oscar-class guided-missile submarines, undersea leviathans that at 14,000 tons displaced more water than a Slava-class cruiser. Soviet preparations for Anti-Carrier Warfare stretched into the submarine realm. Unlike the Slava class, the Kirovs had formidable air defenses capable of defending the ship from a carrier’s air wing. On the other hand, it carried a larger 500 nuclear warhead. Similar to the Bazalt missiles, Granit missiles had a slightly longer range of 388 miles, and carried a slightly smaller 750 kilogram (1,633 pound) high explosive warhead. The Kirovs carried 20 P-700 Granit missiles. The largest non-carrier surface combatants built by any country since World War II, the Kirov class was 827 feet long, nuclear powered, and displaced 28,000 tons fully loaded. That level of accuracy made actually hitting a 1,000-foot ship with a conventional warhead an iffy proposition, suggesting that Bazalt missiles would have been armed with nuclear warheads from the outset.Īnother major surface platform that would stalk American carriers were the Kirov-class battlecruisers. The missile had a maximum effective range of 340 miles, with a circular error probable (CEP) of 300 to 700 meters (984 to 2,296 feet). The size of a small aircraft, the P-500 flew at speeds of Mach 2.5 and carried either a 1,000 kilogram (2,200 pound) high explosive warhead or 350 kiloton nuclear warhead. The three cruisers each carried sixteen P-500 Bazalt anti-ship missiles. Soviet missile submarines, concentrated near the homeland for protection, would be hunted down and destroyed. Alternately they could attack Soviet ballistic missiles submarines operating in the so-called “bastion” in the Barents Sea. From there carriers could stage air raids against military targets across the northwestern USSR, hampering the ability of Soviet forces to dominate the North Atlantic and beyond. One of the missions the Soviets feared the most was a multi-carrier surge into the Norwegian Sea, where they could threaten Soviet air and naval bases. The carrier of 1984 fielded a diverse air wing, including the F-14 Tomcat fleet interceptor, F/A-18 Hornet multirole fighter, A-6 Intruder bomber, A-7 Corsair attack aircraft, and a variety of anti-submarine and support planes. In 1984 it operated thirteen carriers, a mix of conventional and nuclear-powered ships with air wings upwards of 85 aircraft. During the Cold War, the United States Navy maintained a large and robust carrier fleet.
0 kommentar(er)
