In Defense of the Red Army

[raketenjagdpanzer]

The Soviets don't, and never have, understood the first thing about full-sized carrier operations except what they could observe secondhand. The Uly classes would've been fitted with ASMs, the launching of even one would've obscured the flight deck with smoke for 10 minutes. It had a ski-jump and side deck catapult launch, which means while launching aircraft it couldn't have retrieved them. Their problems with naval nuclear power are equally storied and their one operational carrier recently had to shift its air wing to land-based, and goes nowhere without a powered tug, so frequent are her breakdowns.

Even in T2k 1.0 I wouldn't bother worrying about Soviet naval air power in terms of carrier aircraft. The YAK-38 was a terrible aircraft; a Dauntless SBD could carry a greater bomb load.

I know this is a rah-rah go USSR thread but come on, you might as well talk about the Soviets having mecha as having operational carriers and useful aircraft.