Abandoned Military Projects of the Soviet Union: Soviet Aircraft Carrier Varyag, Stalingrad Class Battlecruiser

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 26. Chapters: Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag, Stalingrad class battlecruiser, Sovetsky Soyuz class battleship, Kronshtadt class battlecruiser, Anti-tank dog, Object 187, Antonov A-40, Object 279, T-43 tank, Soviet aircraft carrier Ulyanovsk, T-100 tank, SU-100Y Self-Propelled Gun, SMK tank, Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, Object 785, Global Rocket 1, Project 1153 OREL, Object 292, SU-14, R-46, Project 1178. Excerpt: The Stalingrad-class battlecruiser, also known in the Soviet Union as Project 82 (Russian: ), was intended to be built for the Soviet Navy after World War II. Three ships were ordered, but none were ever completed. A heavy cruiser was designed before the Second World War as an intermediate between the light cruiser Kirov and Chapayev classes and the Kronshtadt-class battlecruisers. The specification, or OTZ in Russian, was issued in May 1941, but plans were shelved with the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany. Construction was proposed again in 1943. After a lengthy design period, which Premier Joseph Stalin-a major supporter of the project-often had a hand in, keels for two ships were laid at the Marti South Shipyard in Nikolayev (1951) and the Baltic Works in Leningrad (1952) and a third ship was planned for the shipyard in Severodvinsk. The Project 82 design which was ordered would have been much larger than the original intermediate design, so much so that they were considered the successors to the Kronshtadts, which had been canceled at the outbreak of World War II. As envisioned by Stalin, the Stalingrad battlecruisers' role would be to disrupt and break up an enemy's light cruisers when they approached the Soviet coast. However, after his death in March 1953, the ships were canceled by the Ministry of Transport and Heavy Machinery. Only the incomplete hull of Stalingrad was launched; used as a floati...