Written by D-Mitch
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| Kuybyshev of Chapayev class cruisers at Sevastopol on Navy Day, 25 July 1954. On the background you can see Novorossiysk, the former Italian battleship Giulio Cesare |
The following image depicts the major surface combatants of Soviet Union some years after the end of World War II. Of the warships that are illustrated we can assume that the image presents the Soviet Union fleet in the beginning of the '50s, possibly 1950-2. Why "An unusual fleet"? Because this fleet, with the exception of some Soviet-built classes, it consists of Italian, German, Japanese and Finnish warships that were transferred to Soviet Union as war reparations! In order to describe better the situation of Soviet Navy after WWII towards the establishment of a naval superpower based on indigenous projects, I did not just upload the fleet-image as I did in the previous "Fleets" but I aimed to provide some details about the classes and the vessels of that time and especially their fate during their service under the Soviets. Thus, I have copied information related to the classes from wikipedia and I have slightly modified the text as my purpose in this article was not to make an analysis of a class or a vessel based on bibliography as I do in other naval analyses but to provide simple information about the Soviet naval vessels of the 1950s. I would like to mention also that most of the photos were obtained from the excellent forum.worldofwarships.com.
