Submarines of the
Soviet Navy
The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...
were developed by numbered "projects", which were sometimes but not always given names. During the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
,
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
nations referred to these
classes by
NATO reporting name
NATO uses a system of code names, called reporting names, to denote military aircraft and other equipment used by post-Soviet states, former Warsaw Pact countries, China, and other countries. The system assists military communications by providi ...
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
*
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): тяжёлая 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
See also
*
List of Russian naval engineers
This list of Russian marine engineering, 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 c ...
Footnotes
* Showell, Jak M. ''U-Boat Century, German Submarine Warfare 1906-2006.'' Chatham Publishing, Great Britain (2006). .
External links
Bellona
{{Submarines
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Soviet and Russian
Submarines
A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or info ...