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The Current Soviet naval organization consists of four fleets and one flotilla. The Caspian Flotilla is the sole survivor of the twelve lake, sea and river flotillas that served during World War II. During peacetime, the fleets are administrative as well as tactical organizations.

Each fleet and the Caspian Flotilla has a headquarters. Each fleet has its own naval aviation, naval infantry, coastal defense and special warfare components. The fleet’s warships are organized into brigades and divisions. When ships are formed into a specific grouping or task force, they are designated an eskadra, literally, a squadron. This grouping can be a semi-independent command, such as the Fifth Eskadra in the Mediterranean, commanded by a vice-admiral and its principal control of its operations vested in Naval Headquarters in Moscow. The Soviet naval forces in the Indian Ocean, assigned from the Pacific Fleet, form a similar eskadra.

The Red Banner Northern Fleet is the largest of the three European fleets and is the most important. It is based mainly in the Kola Peninsula and White Sea areas and has more direct access to the Atlantic than do the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets. It is responsible for wartime operations in the Atlantic and Arctic regions and provides submarines for operations in the Mediterranean Sea (The 1936 Montreux Convention imposes restrictions on submarine transists between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean).

Russia’s longest and most inhospitable coast is in the Arctic region. The waters are largely icebound in the winter, except for a 70-mile stretch of the Kola Peninsula, which includes the major ports of Perchenga and Murmansk. The region is subjected to long winter nights; in the Murmansk area the sun does not rise above the horizon from mid-November to mid-January.

During the Great Patriotic War, the Northern Fleet was the smallest of the fleets. And while it did participate in extensive combat operations against German naval forces off of northern Norway and Finland, its main use was covering the vital Anglo-British convoys carrying war material to the Soviet Union

During the initial postwar period, the Northern Fleet was considered to be of secondary importance to the Baltic and Black Seas Fleets. This situation changed in the late 1950s, when the forces that would be operating in the Atlantic were shifted to the Northern Fleet, where they would have more direct access to the open sea.

Currently, the Northern Fleet operates almost 50% of the Soviet Navy’s submarines, some 26% of its surface warships, about 27% of the naval aircraft and 26% of the naval personnel. The Northern and Pacific Fleets share all of the Navy’s nuclear submarines and ballistic missile submarines (except for the Golf-class SSBs assigned to the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets).

Northern Fleet is headquarters at Severomorsk, just north of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula.

Sources are the “4th Edition Guide to the Soviet Navy” and “Combat Fleets of the World, 1993”