Submarines of the
Soviet Navy were developed by numbered "projects", which were sometimes but not always given names. During the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
,
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...
nations referred to these
classes by
NATO reporting name
NATO reporting names are code names for military equipment from Russia, China, and historically, the Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union and other nations of the Warsaw Pact). They provide unambiguous and easily understood English words in a uniform man ...
s, based on intelligence data, which did not always correspond with the projects. See:
*
List of NATO reporting names for ballistic missile submarines
*
List of NATO reporting names for guided missile submarines
NATO has a system of reporting names for non-Western submarines. During the Cold War, NATO introduced a system of internal code names for classes of Soviet and Chinese submarines. This served to provide standard names where the official designatio ...
*
List of NATO reporting names for hunter-killer and experimental submarines
The NATO reporting names were based on the British (and later American) habit of naming submarines with a letter of the alphabet indicating the class, followed by a serial number of that class. The names are the radiotelephonic alphabet call sign of a letter of the alphabet. For security purposes, the "pennant numbers" of Soviet submarines were not sequential, any more than those of Soviet surface vessels were.
Most Russian (and Soviet) submarines had no "personal" name, but were only known by a number, prefixed by letters identifying the boat's type at a higher level than her class. Those letters included:
* К (K): крейсерская (''kreyserskaya'', "cruiser")
* ТК (TK): тяжелая крейсерская (''tyazholaya kreyserskaya'', "heavy cruiser")
* Б (B): большая (''bolshaya'', "large")
* С (S): средняя (''srednyaya'', "medium")
* М (M): малая (''malaya'', "small")
Any of those prefixes could have С (S) added to the end, standing for специальная (''spetsialnaya'') and meaning "designed for special missions":
* New weapon, engines and armament testing
* Submarines for long-range radio communications
* Target submarines for anti-submarine training
* Rescue service submarines
* Covert operations
Diesel-electric
Russo-Japanese War
*
*
*
* single unit/one off unit (class of its own)
[Showell, p. 22, 23, 29]
*
World War I era
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
''Narval''-class submarine
*
*
''Amerikansky Golland'' (
Holland 602GF/602L type)
*
World War II era
Post-World War II era
Attack submarines
Guided missile submarines
Ballistic missile submarines
Auxiliary submarines
Nuclear-powered
Attack submarines
First generation
Second generation
Third generation
Fourth generation
Guided missile submarines
First generation
Second generation
Third generation
Fourth generation
Ballistic missile submarines
First generation
Second generation
Third generation
Fourth generation
Auxiliary submarines
Footnotes
* Showell, Jak M. ''U-Boat Century, German Submarine Warfare 1906-2006.'' Chatham Publishing, Great Britain (2006). .
External links
Bellona
See also
*
List of Russian naval engineers
This list of Russian marine engineers includes naval engineers and inventors of the Tsardom of Russia, Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.
Alphabetical list
__NOTOC__
A
*Oleg Anikanov, supervised the construction of the ...
{{Submarines
*
*
Lists of submarines
Submarines
A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...