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By A. D. Baker III, Editor; Combat Fleets of the World
The image of the semi-submersible heavy-lift ship American Cormorant off Portsmouth, England, is not an optical illusion. She appears here preparing to load U.S. Army floating equipment for return to the United States. On cradles near the bow is the U.S. Navy’s new guided-missile patrol boat, the former German Navy Hiddensee, commissioned in April 1985 as the Soviet-built Tarantul-I-class Rudolf Egelhofer of the East German Navy. After German unification, the newly renamed Hiddensee became the only one of five of the boats to be commissioned into Federal German service; she
was decommissioned in July 1991. Now the property of the Naval Sea Systems Command, the ship is being used for comparative trials. Tarantul-Is have been exported to
Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and India, the latter of which is also building the class at two shipyards. The other four ex-Volksmarine units are for sale—minus armament.
In March 1992, the Soviet press •Sported that it might not be possible In keep the four A'l'ei'-class carriers in service much longer because of a lack °f access to their building yard in Ukraine for major overhauls. Shortly thereafter, the Pacific Ocean Fleet’s 1978-vintage Minsk was reported to be for sale for scrap—along with the eight-year-old Udaloy-class guided- •nissile destroyer Admiral Zakharov, "hich had suffered an apparently jliastrous fire at sea on 17 February. The Minsk sits out of service here at Vladivostok in 1990. Also reported to “e available for the scrap yards is the "lack Sea Fleet’s 14,590-ton Moskva- elass “aviation cruiser” Leningrad tbottom), which was decommissioned ast year. Although several hundred °rmer Soviet Navy surface combatants and submarines have been ‘‘fitred or sold abroad for scrap since 988 (and some 100 surface ships and an alleged 79 discarded nuclear submarines await scrapping), none has een sold for further use, and, with a y'* exceptions like the Admiral Qkharov, all are two decades old or uer. Regardless of the recent major in its strength, the navy of the uuimonwealth of Independent States ul almost certainly still be the °nd’s second most powerful fleet at e end of the century.
’“Ted
■ngs/June 1992
109