How Russia Ruined its Only Aircraft Carrier

This

aircraft

carrier

was stolen from Ukraine and then

ruined

by the Russian Navy. But how Russia managed to use up most of the

carrier

's lifespan without the ship even leaving the dock is not what you think. During its design phase, the newest Soviet heavy

aircraft

carrier was named "Soviet Union". In 1982, when she was deposited in Soviet Ukraine, she was named "Riga". Then, when she was launched in 1985, she became known as "Leonid Brezhnev" and, when she underwent sea trials in 1989, she became known as "Tbilisi". When Tbilisi was about to enter service, the Soviet Navy was not prepared to manage such a ship.

There were no air groups, no working groups of which Tbilisi would be a part, no air traffic control groups, without which Tbilisi could not function. But worst of all, there was no infrastructure to support such a ship, and spoiler alert, said infrastructure does not yet exist. Even the carrier's first commanding officer, Captain Viktor Yarygin, told a Soviet newspaper that the Soviet Navy was not prepared for the appearance of a ship like Tbilisi. You see, during Soviet times, most of the funds were allocated to the development and manufacturing of ships, and there was not enough money left for routine maintenance of existing ships.

As the Soviet Union was going through its final days, the Soviet Navy did not want its capital ships to be named after cities that had open opposition to the Soviet Union. They wanted to change the name of Tbilisi and her sister ship, Riga. The government relented and on 19 September 1990 it was announced that Tbilisi would be renamed "Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov" and that the sister ship under construction was renamed "Varyag". And this was a big deal, especially if you're already familiar with the list of marine superstitions. Carrying bananas on the boat brings bad luck.

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As viewers of Not What You Think, you can get priority access and skip the Masterwork waitlist. Just click the link in the description. You too can own a work of art. The Admiral Kuznetsov is truly an unfortunate ship whose adventures began when Russia secretly plotted to steal it from the newly independent Ukraine. The aircraft carrier's misfortunes began with the fall of the Soviet Union. On August 24, 1991, Ukraine declared its independence from the USSR. Tensions immediately began with Russia over what to do with the Black Sea Fleet, as most of the officers were pro-Russian. Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk proclaimed that the Admiral Kuznetsov is Ukrainian property and ordered the ship's commander to remain docked in Ukraine.

But the commander, Viktor Yarygin, did not agree. In his eyes, Ukraine did not yet exist as a country. Because the independence referendum has not yet been held. So on December 1, 1991, the same day that 92% of Ukrainians were busy voting for independence during the referendum, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov left the Black Sea under orders of the Russian Northern Fleet and headed to Murmansk. A third of the ship's crew remained on the aircraft carrier and the rest stayed in Ukraine. With construction still incomplete, Admiral Kuznetsov traveled thousands of miles from the shipbuilder and ended up in a port that lacked the proper infrastructure to accommodate such an important vessel.

Despite being unfinished, on 20 January 1991 Kuznetsov was commissioned as the flagship of the Russian Navy, but she did not receive any aircraft until two years later, and she was not even fully operational for another 3 years. The aircraft carrier's first deployment began in 1995 in the Mediterranean Sea and lasted three months. Their mission was to showcase Russia's new flagship and practice raids during favorable weather conditions in the Mediterranean. The carrier's primary role was "status projection" rather than "power projection", as Admiral Kuznetsov was retained and sustained by Russia's appearance of being a major naval power. After all, an aircraft carrier with fixed-wing aircraft is a type of capital ship that very few countries possess.

But Kuznetsov is more of a Potemkin Village, which, if you're not familiar with it, is a construct whose purpose is to provide an external façade for a country that is doing poorly, to make it appear that it is doing better than it really is. Something like Instagram, but for countries! This aircraft carrier is not the first piece of a modern fleet. Rather behind Kuznetsov is a Russian Navy desperately trying to maintain a resemblance to the once large, impressive and powerful Soviet Navy. Although the Kuznetsov may have looked powerful on the outside, during her first deployment, the 2,000 men on board were rationing water, which was

only

available for 20 minutes a day. 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon, because the ship's evaporators that distill seawater broke down.

At one point, the US Navy was willing to help the Russian flagship by providing it with fresh water. But she gets worse. Admiral Kuznetsov's propulsion system consists of 8 pressurized boilers that are extremely unreliable. As a result, on multiple occasions, including her first deployment, the carrier lost all propulsion and was left dead at sea. Although the propulsion system could frequently be repaired at sea, Kuznetsov sometimes had to be towed back to port. For this reason, during the 2016 Syrian campaign, the flagship of the Russian Navy had to be accompanied by a tugboat, Nikolay Chicker, which, in retrospect, was a good idea, because once again, Kuznetsov lost propulsion, and With the help of this powerful tug, it was towed back to port during some not-so-good weather.

Potemkin Village! According to Western sources, Russia ended up acquiring more aircraft for aircraft carriers than it managed to train qualified pilots. Which is somewhat ironic, since the opposite farce occurred during the first deployment of the Soviet aircraft carrier kyiv in the 1970s. When the first Soviet aircraft carrier was ready for its first deployment, only six Yak-aircraft had been produced and shipped on the ship. 38. So, to make kyiv appear more powerful than it really was to American intelligence services, the Soviets resorted to elaborate deception. Sailors repainted the numbers on the airframes after each sortie, to inflate the number of Yak-38 aircraft that were supposedly stored inside the carrier's hangars.

And you have to give it to him, because his deception worked. The American media reported that the Kiev aircraft carrier had embarked at least 60 aircraft, when in reality there were only 6. It must be clarified that Kuznetsov is not an aircraft carrier, at least legally speaking, it does not identify itself as an aircraft carrier, otherwise it would be trapped in the Black Sea. This is because, according to the Montreux Convention, the passage of aircraft carriers of more than 15,000 tons is prohibited through the Turkish Strait. The easy solution for the Soviets was to designate Kuznetsov and all their other aircraft carriers as heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers.

During three decades of service in the Russian Navy, Kuznetsov only made six brief deployments to the Mediterranean and Atlantic. She spent most of her service time docked in Murmansk or in shipyards for repairs. Her average seagoing time was around 15 days per year and she only saw one combat deployment to Syria in 2016. Arguably the most memorable event of the Syrian deployment was the black smoke. The black exhaust was attributed to many different causes such as use of low quality fuel, operator error from not preheating the fuel, etc. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the likely cause was simply wear and tear of the aircraft carrier's power plant.

But how could this be? During his 30-year career, Kuznetsov has only spent 450 days at sea in total. That's not enough time to wear out an aircraft carrier's power plant. Reports are emerging that four of its eight KVG-4 boilers need to be replaced during the mid-life overhaul as they are worn out. You see, the Soviet Union only bothered to create these gigantic machines, and not their permanent bases. Instead of getting electricity and hot water from shore when Kuznetsov was docked, her boilers were struck prematurely, wearing out the power plants. While she sat silently for most of her dock life, the life of her machinery was spent providing electricity and water to the crew on board.

In contrast, when Nimitz-class aircraft carriers are docked in their permanent ports, full coastal services are provided to supply electricity, water, etc. Then the nuclear reactors would be shut down. If the services are not available, the reactor that has consumed the most fuel would be shut down, while the other provides power to the ship. But wear and tear on the propulsion system and other machinery is not the only problem. Almost everything else on the carrier struggles to hold up due to its age. Particularly the arrest team. In 2016, during deployment to Syria, two fighter jets crashed while attempting to land.

An Su-33 broke the arresting cable and rolled off the deck. The pilot ejected and survived. A few days later, three planes took off, but only two were able to land on the ship. This is because two of the carrier's four arresting cables broke after the second landing. The pilot of the third plane was ordered to circle the carrier and wait until the crew fixed the arresting mechanism. An hour later, the MIG-29K ran out of fuel and the pilot had to eject. In 2017, the aircraft carrier returned to Murmansk to undergo a mid-life refit, which would extend her service life by another 25 years.

As part of the refit, the Russian flagship had to spend some time in drydock, and the only one available in northern Russia was the PD-50 floating drydock. But on October 30, 2018, the floating dock lost power from shore. When the pumps stopped pumping water from the ballast tanks, the dock tilted and slowly sank. As a result, one of the two 70-ton cranes ended up falling onto the aircraft carrier, leaving a 13-by-15-foot hole in the flight deck. The sinking of PD-50 could have been avoided if the floating dock had had emergency generators, and it did! But how good is a generator that doesn't have diesel in the fuel tank.

It later turned out that diesel fuel had never been purchased for these generators, which is not surprising at all, because the general director of the shipyard who was hired to repair Kuznetsov was later arrested and accused of stealing $650,000 of the allocated money. to repair work. After the sinking of the PD-50 floating dock, it was announced that two adjacent 650-foot-long dry docks at the Murmansk shipyard would be combined into a massive 1,300-foot dock. Thirty years after its commissioning, Russia is finally providing adequate support for its only aircraft carrier. In some ways, Admiral Kuznetsov's past misfortunes can be attributed to the Russian government's lack of investment in adequate infrastructure.

Because not having an aircraft carrier is not an option for Russia. But the real question is: once Kuznetsov completes her midlife refit and leaves drydock, would the powerful tugboat still be there for her, or not?