Black Sea Naval Actions

[Raellus]

Great suggestion. I'm a big fan of Soviet ground-effect aircraft. There was just something about them that I found scary, as a late Cold War kid. I'll definitely include mention in my write up of Black Sea naval actions.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I didn't hear much about the Soviet ekranoplans until the the mid-1990s and the lack of information made them very mysterious which just served to make them seem very exotic.
It'll be great to see something that makes use of them and taps into the mystery surrounding them (when something gets called the "Caspian Sea Monster", it practically begs to be used in a scenario or two!).

That'll be a nice counter to the handful of people who talk about them as failures because it's a "plane that can't fly properly" (yes I have seen this type of comment on some videos, they described ekranoplans as failures because they could only fly a few metres above the ground - missing the entire point of a ground effect vehicle).

[RN7]

The narrow strait called the Bosporus and Dardanelles that links Europe with Asia, and the Black Sea with the Mediterranean Sea, is under the complete control of Turkey and NATO.

It is very hard to force the Bosporus/Dardanelles. The Byzantines held it for centuries until the Turks captured Constantinople (modern Istanbul) which straddles both sides of the Bosporus in the late 15th Century that led to the formation of the modern nation of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. The Russian have wanted to control the Dardanelles ever since but have never been able to capture it. The British Empire tried to capture it in the First World War. It led to the disaster known as the Gallipoli Campaign. Australia and New Zealand still shake their heads in dismay at the number of casualties it cost.

The Black Sea is also quite small in area compared with the Mediterranean. It can easily be dominated by airpower. The southern shore is under NATO control, the northern shore is under Soviet/Russian control. Any large naval force than enters the Black Sea would be quickly taken apart by land based air forces, but there could be some smaller naval actions with patrol boats and fast attack craft along the coasts of Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and maybe the Ukraine, Russia and Georgia.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

I didn't hear much about the Soviet ekranoplans until the the mid-1990s and the lack of information made them very mysterious which just served to make them seem very exotic.
It'll be great to see something that makes use of them and taps into the mystery surrounding them (when something gets called the "Caspian Sea Monster", it practically begs to be used in a scenario or two!).

That'll be a nice counter to the handful of people who talk about them as failures because it's a "plane that can't fly properly" (yes I have seen this type of comment on some videos, they described ekranoplans as failures because they could only fly a few metres above the ground - missing the entire point of a ground effect vehicle).

Hot off the digital press:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...on-the-caspian

And I included one in my current T2k-related project.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Nice!
For myself, once information began appearing on the internet about ekranoplans I went on a mad spree looking up everything I could find about them. This lead to wandering through a whole field of Wing In Ground-effect vehicles. While we typically hear about the Soviet WIG vehicles, there's a slew of designs in the civilian world that we rarely hear about.

China has also experimented with wing in ground effect craft but on the civilian front (some designs are however, offered for police or military maritime operations).
Where it gets interesting for us as gamers though, is that Germany also designed some small WIG craft for civilian use. The first design was produced in 1970 and the second design in 1977. Further developments were pursued up to the early 2000s but some of those designs were produced in the 1980s and early 1990s. The company behind all this, Fischer Flugmechanik, was located in Mönchengladbach in West Germany and as far as I have checked, they were still in business after 2011.

These smaller WIG craft make for some unusual vehicles for the PCs for a particular adventure or as something a little strange for the PCs to stumble across.
Some links for those who want to find out more or want to convert some of these smaller WIG types to game stats (although the early designs were typically two or four place only, they could carry approximately 200kg of cargo): -
Fischer Flugmechanik
http://fischer-flugmechanik.com/site...enu=background
https://sites.google.com/site/hoverwingwigcraft/Home
Data sheets
https://archive.is/20130927225354/ht...datasheets.htm

[Raellus]

Do any of our naval experts here happen to have a list of Soviet Black Sea Fleet vessels c. 1988 (i.e. late Cold War)? I've done a bit of internet sleuthing and haven't had much luck. Any assistance you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

And I'm just going to repost this here, as the Hurricane was, at one time, based in the Black Sea:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...uan-hydrofoils

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[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Do any of our naval experts here happen to have a list of Soviet Black Sea Fleet vessels c. 1988 (i.e. late Cold War)?

I got a copy of IISS: The Military Balance (1989) here and it lists the following (I kept the original format, put the cited text in italics, with brackets and regular text used for my notes).

BLACK SEA FLEET: (HQ Sevastopol): (97,000). [The number seems to give total personnel]
BASES: Sevastopol, Balaclava, Poti, Odessa.
SUBMARINES: 28: tactical 26: 2 SSG, 24 SS; other
roles: 2.
PRINCIPAL SURFACE COMBATANTS: 65: 10 cruisers,
18 destroyers, 37 frigates.
OTHER SURFACE SHIPS: 80 patrol and coastal
combatants, 63 mine warfare, 15 amph, some
I 50 spt and misc. ["spt" stands for support here.]
NAVAL AVIATION:
105 cbt ac; 80 cbt hel. ["cbt ac" for combat aircraft, "cbt hel" for combat helicopters.]
BOMBERS: 80: 2 regt with 40 Tu-26; I with 25
Tu-16; I with 15 Tu-22.
ASW:
AIRCRAFT: 25 Be-l2.
HELICOPTERS: 80: Ka-25, Ka-27, Mi-14.
MR/EW:
AIRCRAFT: 40: 25 Tu-I6, 10 Tu-22, 5 An-12;
HELICOPTERS: 5 Ka-25.
MCM: 5 Mi-14 hel.
TANKERS: 5 Tu-I 6.
NAVAL INFANTRY:
I bde: 5 bn: 3,000.["bde" stands for brigade, "bn" for battalion, the number is again for total personnel.]

I also have the 1990 issue, but not 1988. Unfortunately cruisers, destroyers and frigates were not differentiated. You could check for the Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Fleet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Navy) and deduce from there. The Ukrainians didn't build anything major since then and the article on the Russians has dates of commission listed. The old types today were the newish types back then. But that's as accurate as I can give you.

[Raellus]

Thanks, Ursus. That's a helpful start. I'd like to get a ship class (eg Krivak, Udaloy, etc.) breakdown, if possible. Actual ship names would be ideal, but that might be asking a bit much.

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[Mahatatain]

This may not be particularly relevant for this discussion but, regarding Turkish naval forces in the Black Sea, are you aware of Bartin Naval Base?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart%C4%B1n_Naval_Base

I suspect that any subs based there wouldn't have lasted very long against the Soviet Black Sea Fleet though.....