Guide to the Soviet Navy
Siegfried Breyer. Annapolis, Md.: U. S. Naval Institute, 1970. 353 pp. Illus. $10.00.
Reviewed by Captain Sumner Shapiro, U. S. Navy
(Captain Shapiro has served in both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets, as well as in various staff assignments in Washington, London, and Japan. He is a Russian linguist and a graduate of the U. S. Army Institute of Advanced Soviet and Eastern European Studies. He has travelled extensively behind the Iron Curtain, and was stationed in the U.S.S.R. as Assistant U. S. Naval Attaché from 1963 to 1965. He attended the Naval War College in 1965-66 and holds a Master's degree in International Affairs from George Washington University. He is currently Commanding Officer of the Naval Intelligence Processing System Support Activity in Washington.)
With typical Teutonic efficiency, Siegfried Breyer has managed to shoehorn between the covers of this handy reference book an amazing amount of information of interest and relevance to either the dedicated or casual student of maritime affairs. Quite properly, Breyer has not confined himself to a study of the Soviet Navy, as the title implies, but has extended his coverage to include the total maritime interests and resources of both the U.S.S.R. and the Eastern European countries as they impact on Soviet naval capabilities. Originally published in German in 1964, the English language version of the guide has been updated so that it reflects technological advances and events of significance which have taken place in the intervening years. He has based his research on a very impressive bibliography of Russian, German, and English language publications, from which he appears to have borrowed heavily for technical data and illustrative material. In so doing, he has performed a very creditable research function for his reader. He has been most selective about the information which he chooses to present, and he has packaged it in a highly usable and palatable form. The result is the sort of authoritative guide that is likely to find its way into the wardroom, to be broken out to help settle a discussion on some disputed point about the Soviet or Eastern European maritime establishment.
Quite obviously, no book this size could come close to answering all questions on a subject as complex and broad in scope as this one. The principal value of Breyer’s Guide is that it brings together, in a single, authoritative publication, sufficient background information to provide the reader with a good basic understanding of the who, what, how, and why of the Soviet Navy. It probably comes as close to covering all facets of that navy as any book available in Western book stalls today, and while it seems to focus undue attention on hardware at the expense of the human factors, it is not unlike most books and articles on the Soviet Navy in that respect. As may be expected, it contains in-depth treatment of such "bread-and-butter” subjects as: Order of Battle—the numbers and types of ships and aircraft, the main bases, organizational structure, and the number of assigned personnel in each of the four Soviet Fleets, as well as the navies of the Warsaw Pact countries, plus Albania and Yugoslavia; Ships and Aircraft—profiles of each class of Soviet warship or naval aircraft of any consequence, accompanied in each case by a summary of significant data as to numbers built, characteristics, capabilities, and type of employment; Weapons and Equipment—sketches and tabulated performance data on everything from the 25-mm. semi-automatic machine gun installed on their patrol craft to their latest submarine-launched ballistic missile. Breyer also provides the reader with something of a bonus by including such interesting, but rarely cataloged information as: Personalities—the names, ranks, and titles of leading personages of the Moscow Naval Headquarters and the four Fleets; Naval Visits—a chronology beginning with the modest call at Bulgarian and Romanian ports in October 1953, ballooning to a total of 12 major flag-waving visits by groups of Soviet warships to various European, African, Asian, and Latin American countries during 1969; Naval Aid—a listing of the warships transferred by the Soviets to the navies of 19 countries, 15 of which are outside the Warsaw Pact. It can be seen from this sampling, that while all the answers may not be there, many of them are—accompanied by some excellent illustrative material, and well-organized and indexed to permit easy reference.
While Breyer’s Guide to the Soviet Navy is likely to receive most of its use as a combination recognition guide and quick reference manual, its value to the student of Soviet maritime developments is by no means that restrictive. As indicated in the preface, the author’s main purpose is to “. . . examine the military equipment and capabilities of the world’s second greatest sea power . . .” and in so doing, Breyer very effectively traces the evolution of the Soviet Navy from its early coastal defense role to the blue water fleet that it is today. Since his forte is obviously in the field of ship construction, it is from this standpoint that he addresses in greatest detail the development of Soviet seapower. The extent to which geography has influenced Russian/Soviet ship design and construction, and thus maritime development, is clearly shown. He also demonstrates the great degree to which the Russians exploited foreign talent in the development of their Navy, as they have done in other sectors of their defense establishment, government, and economy. He takes care to note, however, that the Russians themselves were at the same time innovators of considerable stature, a factor which many casual observers of Russian/Soviet history frequently fail to appreciate. The point is particularly relevant with regard to the early history of Russian undersea warfare, of which Breyer gives a fascinating account. He highlights the early emphasis that the Russians placed on both the submarine and the mine at the turn of the century, an interest that has continued to this day. Not only did the Tsars encourage submarine construction at home—a Russian by the name of Bubnov built the first Russian submarine, the Del’fin, in 1903—but they also encouraged such foreign builders as the American Simon Lake and the German Alfried Krupp, both of whom had better luck selling submarines to the Russians than to their own governments. It was only natural that the Russian affinity toward both submarine and mine warfare would lead to their combining the two. The result was the world’s first submarine minelayer, the Krab, which was built in 1908 and which penetrated the Bosporus twice during World War I, raising havoc among Turkish ships in the Black Sea.
Russian proclivity toward undersea warfare continued under the Soviets, and when Stalin commenced reconstruction of the Navy after the devastating Revolution and civil war, it was mainly a submarine force that he concentrated upon. This emphasis on submarine construction continued throughout the 1930s, and the Soviets entered World War II with the world’s largest submarine force of 200 boats, almost five times the number in the German inventory at that time. With most of them destroyed or bottled up in the Baltic and Black Seas, or out of the action in the Pacific, Soviet submarines played a significant wartime role only in the Arctic. Even Breyer admits that they gave a good accounting of themselves there against the Germans, despite lack of coordination and proper direction from an Army-oriented headquarters ashore. After the war, the Soviets again concentrated on rebuilding their submarine force as the first order of naval business, and once again they have the world’s largest submarine force. The big difference is that they are not likely to be bottled up in the Baltic and Black Seas the next time.
In his treatment of Soviet surface combatant construction, Breyer observes that every country building its own warships develops a “national look” which indicates the degree of independence from foreign technical influence. The Russian/Soviet Navy, he notes, did not achieve that distinction until after World War II. Italian and German influence had dominated Russian ship design before the Revolution, and Italian influence continued afterwards. Thus, even the cruisers and destroyers built by the Soviets starting in the mid-1950s tended to sacrifice fuel capacity and endurance for high speed, as a reflection of the confined waters in which both the Italian and Soviet navies operated at that time. The break came in the mid-1950s, with Soviet ships beginning to show the “new Russian trend” toward endurance and seaworthiness. Breyer carries this thesis through in describing the development of all current ship types in the Soviet Navy, highlighting the juncture in their evolution at which the “Russian look” appeared and there occurred that shift in emphasis toward a blue water capability. The currency of Breyer’s coverage is indicated by the inclusion of a very detailed description of the Moskva-class helicopter carrier and the latest Soviet guided missile cruisers and destroyers. Characteristics and performance data are accompanied by several excellent photographs of these late ship types.
One cannot help but come away from a reading of Breyer’s Guide to the Soviet Navy with a good appreciation for the formidable threat, both military and political, that the Soviets have quite suddenly developed at sea. As Breyer states, the Soviets have finally produced the means to take offensive action at sea, and they accomplished this by and large during the 1960s. The challenge that they present is in the form of a combined submarine threat and “hit and run” cruiser warfare that could reduce the offensive power of the Western allies by forcing them to commit far greater forces to defense of the sea lanes than the Soviets would have to commit to the attack. As Breyer clearly illustrates throughout his Guide, it is indeed a serious challenge, and those of us who have an interest in maritime affairs had best learn all we can about the men, ships, and aircraft behind it.
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Compiled by Robert A. Lambert, Associate Editor
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