Soviet Battleship Sovetsky Soyuz

Sovetsky Soyuz

The Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleships were a class of battleships begun by the Soviet Union in the late 1930s but never brought into service. They were designed in response to the battleships being built by Germany. Only four hulls of the fifteen originally planned had been laid down by 1940, when the decision was made to cut the program to only three ships to divert resources to an expanded army rearmament program.

Construction of the first four ships was plagued with difficulties as the Soviet shipbuilding and related industries were not prepared to build such large ships. One battleship, Sovetskaya Belorussiya, was cancelled on 19 October 1940 after serious construction flaws were found. Construction of the other three ships was suspended shortly after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and never resumed. All three of the surviving hulls were scrapped in the late 1940s.

Sovetsky Soyuz laid down 15 July 1938 in Shipyard Nr. 189 (Ordzhonikidze) in Leningrad. When the war began she was estimated to be 21.19% complete, with 15,818 metric tons (15,568 long tons) of steel assembled on the slip. She was only lightly damaged by German air attacks and bombardments, and, as some material had been used during the Siege of Leningrad, she was estimated to be 19.5% complete after the end of the war. Some thought was given to completing her, but this was opposed as she was regarded as obsolete in light of the experience gained during the war. She was ordered to be scrapped on 29 May 1948.

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