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Old 07-06-2018, 04:36 AM
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StainlessSteelCynic StainlessSteelCynic is offline
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I'm pretty sure this has been mentioned before so at the risk of repeating someone else's information...

It would have been interesting if the Soviets had completed their "true" aircraft carrier projects. I'm thinking specifically about Ulyanovsk which was supposed to launch in 1995 but construction was halted and it was scrapped in 1992.
https://www.hazegray.org/navhist/car...ussia.htm#ulya
Global Security has a more informative, though poorly translated (but still generally understandable) section giving more background on the carrier: -
https://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...sia/1143_7.htm

War Is Boring has some extra info although their gushing fanboy writeup makes it seem as though these two carriers were going to be "the terror of the seas": -
http://warisboring.com/ulyanovsk-wou...-supercarrier/
Wiki has a line profile of the carrier and it can clearly be seen that the Soviet plan really was to "build like the Americans": -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet...rier_Ulyanovsk

It was one of a planned class of only two supercarrier types so I don't see them as having been any serious problem for NATO navies and specifically the US Navy (which totally outclassed every other navy in the world, let alone the Soviets, in regards to aircraft carriers - probably even every other carrier navy in the world combined!)

Considering the first of class was laid down in Nikolayev, Ukraine, the ships would probably have been bottled up in the Black Sea (unless of course they were able to pass through Turkish controlled waters during peacetime to get into the Med.) So in that regard they wouldn't likely have been a problem for the Atlantic/North Sea/Baltic Sea theatre

Last edited by StainlessSteelCynic; 07-06-2018 at 04:37 AM. Reason: spelling correction
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