Russian Navy in WWII?

[Lucky13]

How good was it?
What kind of this did they have?
Fighting spirit?
Was there more than one fleet?
Etc., etc....

 

[michaelmaltby]

They had it relatively easy .... just the Baltic and the Black sea in play plus the rivers. Developed major air power with A-20's etc. IIRC.

Keep in mind that their Pacific Fleet was able to relax because of the 1939 Russo-Japan Peace Agreement (Kulgin Gol settlement). Seattle to Vlasisvlostok was a major supply route that the Japanese could have/should have made costly to use ..... but they let everything with a Soviet registration through .... including the Sherman's etc. that would attack them in August, 1945.

MM

 

[Juha]

Not very effective
From battleships to patrol boats, lot of subs and MTBs, shooting of BBs Marat and Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya was very good, Russian (it was Tsarist Russian design) 12" gun was very accurate.
At least MTB crews had good fighting spirit and infantry units formed from sailors had a reputation of having very good fighting spirit, even fanatical.
At least Northern, Baltic, Black Sea, Kaspian Sea and Pacific Fleets, several river flotillas.

Juha

 

[Freebird]

Not very effective
From battleships to patrol boats, lot of subs and MTBs, shooting of BBs Marat and Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya was very good, Russian (it was Tsarist Russian design) 12" gun was very accurate.Juha

Actually more effective than is generally known.
Baltic Sea fleet was bottled up in Leningrad, but ship's guns were used as heavy artillery.

Black Sea fleet was quite active, from amphibious landings in the Crimea in 1941, support (supply) of the defenders in Sevastopol.
Since the Turks would not let Axis into the Black Sea the Soviet naval forces were superior, and kept the Axis from threatening Black Sea coastal areas

 

[Juha]

Actually more effective than is generally known.
Baltic Sea fleet was bottled up in Leningrad, but ship's guns were used as heavy artillery.

Black Sea fleet was quite active, from amphibious landings in the Crimea in 1941, support (supply) of the defenders in Sevastopol.
Since the Turks would not let Axis into the Black Sea the Soviet naval forces were superior, and kept the Axis from threatening Black Sea coastal areas

And Northern Fleet made landings along Barents Sea coast, yes but if you look the number of e.g. subs and what they achieved, IMHO not very effective, same to Black Sea Fleet, they had superior numbers but were unable to cut German supply trafic in Black Sea area, even during 44 evacuation of Sevastopol/Kherson, naval aviation with army aviation achieved much more against the evacuation fleet than the naval vessels. Even in Baltic there were some successes, a big KM fleet torpedo boat and a Finnish minelayer were sunk by Soviet MTBs and they also damaged badly one KM DD and usually attacked daringly, 3 big ships were sunk by Soviet subs during evacuation of East Prussia in 45 etc but still IMHO results were meager to resources available.

Juha

 

[subkraft]

.....there's an interesting book titled "Red Star Under the Baltic" that deals the experiences
of a Russian submarine crew operating out of Leningrad during the siege.

What struck me in comparison to British, German, American WW2 accounts is the constant
improvised repairing that is going while at sea. There's as much time spent on marathon
repairs and rebuilds as anything else. They seemed to have done well on very limited
resources.
Typically Russian?

 

[R Pope]

The Brits lent the Royal Sovereign (AKA Arkhangelsk) to Russia, who used her on convoy duty and returned her some years after the war was over. When she arrived back in Blighty, all the guns were still loaded, from the main armament all the way down to the rifles in the cabinets! One report I have read states that the decks were covered in human excrement and other crap. Weird or what?????