List of battlecruisers of Russia
After the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the Russian Naval General Staff decided that it needed a squadron of fast "armored cruisers" (Броненосный крейсер; bronenosnyy kreyser)[note 1] that could use their speed to maneuver into position to engage the head of the enemy's battle line, much as Admiral Tōgō had done during the Battle of Tsushima against the Russian fleet.
[2] The Royal Navy came to the same conclusion and developed the Queen Elizabeth-class fast battleships that could force battle on an enemy fleet and had enough protection to attack any type of ship.
[4] The Navy revived its requirement for a "cruiser-killer" during the war, but the design process was quite lengthy as questions as to its armament, speed and size were debated.
This type, classed as a "heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser" by the Soviets, eventually emerged as the largest non-aircraft carrying surface warship built since the end of the Second World War, and was termed in the West as a battlecruiser.
The four Borodino-class battlecruisers (also referred to as Izmail class) of the Imperial Russian Navy were all laid down in December 1912[note 2] at Saint Petersburg for service with the Baltic Fleet.
[9] The Navy made a serious proposal in 1925 to convert Izmail, the ship closest to completion, to an aircraft carrier, but this plan was later cancelled as a result of political maneuvering on the part of the Red Army.
[15] The Navy, however, still had a requirement for a ship capable of defeating enemy cruisers and the original concept was revived as Project 69.
The detailed design was supposed to be completed by 15 October 1941, but it was rendered moot when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June.
However, the Navy and the Shipbuilding Commissariat disagreed about the feasibility of laying down any ships of new design before 1950, so a committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Lavrentiy Beria to resolve the issue.
Initial attempts to pull it off the rocks by brute force failed, and the capsizing of the battleship Novorossiysk further delayed salvage work, so that she was not freed until mid-1956.
She served as a target for the first generation of Soviet anti-ship missiles and a wide variety of armor-piercing weapons before she was scrapped in the early 1960s, probably 1962.
This was around the same size as a First World War super-dreadnought battleship, and significantly bigger than any contemporary cruiser design, leading to commentators in the west describing them as "battlecruisers".
[38] The fourth unit, Yuri Andropov, was launched in April 1989, with plans advanced for a fifth ship, to be named Kuznetsov.
[note 4][39][33][40] However, the fall of the Soviet Union saw funding for the Navy collapse—the fourth ship, renamed as Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great), was not commissioned until 1998, while the fifth hull was cancelled, and the remaining three laid up in varying states of disrepair.
[47] However, this remained unconfirmed at the time, with instead it simply being noted that the ship was continuing to undertake operations while an assessment of its condition was being undertaken.
