When World War II ended and the USSR sought to move into the nuclear era, Josef Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union for almost two decades. In the late 1930s he had begun to construct a “balanced fleet”—
battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. This ambitious program, intended pri-marily to confront Great Britain, was halted with the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 and the ensuing Great Patriotic War.39As World War II con-cluded in Europe and the Far East in 1945, Stalin again initiated a major fleet construction program.
Lesser warships were begun in large numbers—the Skoryy-class destroyers, the Sverdlov-class light cruis-ers, and several submarine classes. Preparations were under way for building the Stalingrad-class battle cruisers and aircraft carriers.
All major naval decisions during this period had required the personal approval, or at least the acquiescence, of Stalin. Admiral Kuznetsov, Stalin’s naval commander-in-chief from 1939 to 1947 and again from 1951 to 1956, wrote in his memoirs: “I well remember the occasion when Stalin replied to a request for more anti-aircraft [guns] on ships in
the following words: ‘We are not going to fight off America’s shores.’ ”40
The additional guns were not installed.
Kuznetsov continued:
On the other hand, Stalin had a special and curious passion for heavy cruisers. I got to know this gradually. At a conference in [A. A.] Zhdanov’s office I made several criti-cal remarks on the heavy cruiser project.
Zhdanov said nothing, as if he had not heard what I said. When we left his office, one of the leading officials of the People’s Commissariat for the Shipbuilding Indus-try, A. M. Redkin, warned me:
“Watch your step, don’t insist on your objection to these ships.”
He told me in confidence that Stalin had threatened to mete out strict punishment to anyone objecting to heavy cruisers. . . .41
Opposition to Stalin’s views on naval matters was minimal. He ordered the execution of eight of the Navy’s nine flagmen (admirals) in 1938–1939 as part of his massive purge of the leadership of the Soviet armed forces.42Many lesser officers also were shot.
In his frightening fictional account of the period, Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler tells how naval hero “Michael Bogrov” was shot because he differed with “No. 1” on whether to build large, long-range submarines, or small, coastal submarines.43
On a regular basis Stalin—and his successors Nikita Khrushchev and then Leonid Brezhnev—
met with generals, marshals, and admirals to review and approve (or reject) specific military programs.
If a new design or technology was under consider-ation, the senior designers would join them or, fre-quently, the leader would meet alone with the designers of aircraft, missiles, and other weapons, including submarines. Khrushchev’s memoirs are replete with descriptions of meetings with aircraft, strategic missile, air defense, and other weapon designers, as are those of his son, Sergei, a missile guidance engineer.44
Stalin died on 5 March 1953; within days stop work orders were sent to Soviet shipyards to halt the construction of major warships. The Stalingrad-class
battle cruisers and the planned carrier programs were cancelled, and construction of the Sverdlov-class light cruisers was cut back, as were destroyer and submarine programs.
Khrushchev, who succeeded Stalin as the head of the Communist Party and of the Soviet state, in 1957 initiated a defense program that would emphasize cruise and ballistic missiles over conven-tional air, ground, and naval forces. Some Soviet officials would refer to this shift as a “revolution in military affairs.”
Further, Khrushchev believed that submarines would be the only important warship in a future conflict: “We made a decision to convert our navy primarily to submarines. We concentrated on the development of nuclear-powered submarines and soon began turning them out virtually on an assembly line.”45
He continued,
Aircraft carriers, of course, are the second most effective weapon in a modern navy.
The Americans had a mighty carrier fleet—
no one could deny that. I’ll admit I felt a nagging desire to have some in our own navy, but we couldn’t afford to build them.
They were simply beyond our means.
Besides, with a strong submarine force, we felt able to sink the American carriers if it came to war. In other words, submarines represented an effective defensive capability as well as reliable means of launching a mis-sile counterattack.46
Khrushchev sought a naval commander-in-chief who would support his views. He appointed Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov as Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy in mid-1955, and Gorshkov officially succeeded Kuznetsov as head of the Navy in January 1956.47 Khrushchev, who had worked briefly with Gorshkov in the Black Sea area during the war, described him as,
a former submarine captain. He appreciated the role which German submarines had played in World War II by sinking so much English and American shipping, and he also
appreciated the role which submarines could play for us in the event that we might have to go to war against Britain and the United States.”48
Gorshkov was not a submarine officer. Rather, he had served in surface ships and small craft dur-ing the war, becomdur-ing a rear admiral at age 32.
Khrushchev directed Gorshkov to scrap the fleet’s battleships and cruisers, and to instead build a fleet of smaller, missile-armed ships and submarines that could defend the Soviet Union against Western naval-amphibious attacks. Gorshkov was political-ly astute and would guide the Soviet Navy into the nuclear-missile era, albeit with an initial emphasis on submarine warfare. Under Khrushchev, who would hold office until October 1964, and Admiral Gorshkov, who would command the Soviet Navy until December 1985 (29 years), the USSR embarked on a massive program to produce nuclear-propelled submarines.49
The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear
“device” in 1949, four years after the United States had demonstrated a deliverable nuclear weapon.50 The Soviet Union sent its first nuclear-propelled submarine to sea less than four years after the United States did. The latter accomplishment was a remarkable achievement in view of the enor-mous bureaucratic, financial, and technological limitations of the Soviet Union. Further, by the late 1950s the Soviet missile, space, nuclear weapons, and bomber programs all had higher priorities for scarce resources than did submarines.
The Soviet K-3 was, in many respects, superior to the USS Nautilus, having significantly greater speed, operating depth, and survivability after suffering damage. Also, greater consideration was given to quieting the K-3. However, early Soviet submarines suffered major engineering prob-lems, much more serious than their American counterparts. And the U.S. nuclear submarines stressed safety considerations.
While a specialized design bureau was estab-lished to produce the first Soviet nuclear sub-marines, additional design bureaus would soon become engaged in nuclear submarine projects.
Even before the K-3 went to sea, the decision was made to undertake series production of the design, and several missile submarine designs were already under way. This was in contrast to the more measured and cautious U.S. entry into the series production of submarines. This dif-ference was a manifestation, in part, of the Sovi-et decision to concentrate on naval aviation, submarines, and anti-ship missiles, while the U.S. Navy’s missions demanded a more “bal-anced” fleet with major surface warships, air-craft carriers, and amphibious ships as well as submarines.
Two other interesting and important consider-ations of early U.S. and Soviet nuclear submarine designs were (1) the high level of government sup-port for nuclear submarines in both countries, and (2) the U.S. submarine program was being pursued in the full light of publicity, while the Soviet program was conducted with the greatest of secrecy, as was typical in that society.
TABLE5-1
Liquid-Metal Coolant Submarines
U.S. Seawolf Soviet SSN 575 Project 645
Mod. November
Operational 1957 1963
Displacement
surface 3,721 tons 3,414 tons
submerged 4,287 ton 5,078 tons (approx.) Length 337 ft 6 in 360 ft 3 in
Reactors 1 SIR/S2G 2 VT
Turbines 2 steam 2 steam
horsepower approx. 15,000 35,000
Shafts 2 2
Speed
surface 19 knots 15 knots
submerged 21.7 kts 29 kts*
Test depth 700 ft 985 ft
(213 m) (300 m)
Torpedo tubes** 6 533-mm B 8 533-mm B
Torpedoes 22 20
Complement 105 105
Notes: * A speed of 32.2 knots was achieved on acceptance trials.
** Bow.
G
ermany was the first nation to attempt to launch missiles from a submarine. During May-June 1942 the German missile test facility at Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea carried out underwater U-boat launches of short-range rockets from the U-511.Six rocket-launching rails were welded to the deck of the U-511, and waterproof cables were run from the rockets to a firing switch inside of the submarine. The only modification to the rockets was waterproofing them by sealing their nozzles with candlewax. The firing tests from a depth of some 25 feet (7.6 m) were entirely suc-cessful. About 24 rockets were launched from the U-511, and additional rounds were fired from a submerged launch frame. The slow movement of the submarine through the water had no effect on the accuracy of the rockets. The 275-pound (125-kg) projectiles had a range of five miles (8 km). The only problem encountered was an
electrical ground that caused two rockets to fire simultaneously.1
Although these were preliminary experiments, Generalmajor Walter Dornberger, the head of the Peenemünde missile facility, presented the findings to the Naval Weapons Department, contending that rocket-firing submarines could attack coastal tar-gets in the United States. The Navy predictably rejected consideration of an Army-designed weapon, the rocket rails were removed from the U-511, and in July 1942 the submarine departed on her first war patrol.
Subsequently, as the Type XXI U-boat was being developed, a rocket system was developed for attacking pursuing surface ships. The key to this weapon was a very precise passive, short-range detection system (S-Analage passir) to detect pro-peller noise from ASW ships. The submerged U-boat would then launch a rocket at the target. The echo-sounding gear performed well during trials,