When did Russian Navy overtake RN?

[INVINCIBLE]

After World War II the Royal Navy was far greater than the Russian Navy but slowly their relative positions were reversed and the Russian Navy overtook the Royal Navy. At the end of WW II the RN had 8,940 ships and vessels of all types in commission and 864,000 people in uniform. When I joined the RN in the 60s we were starting to get really worried about the latest Soviet warships brisling with surface-to-surface missiles and wondering whether we would be able to take them on. Does anybody know roughly when the Russian Navy overtook the RN?

[astraltrader]

I dont know whether you are talking about size or quality of fleet but I would have thought probably by the late 1960`s and definitely by the 1970`s if related to size.

[alanbenn]

I can't remember the documentary name but it was first aired in the late 70's shortly after I left the RN, it was about the build up of Russian power.
At that stage they had more submarines in service than our entire naval fleet of ships, they were building the equivalent to our Air-force every 3 months. Of course we were reducing our capacity at that time.

It was estimated that if the entire British Army was to go to the Western Front of previous conflicts assuming a totally conventional war took place we would hold out for approx 10 days.....

The GMD's county class destroyers at that stage were among our most potent ships, I was on one....estimated life span in conflict 16 minutes.

Frightening really.......probably worse now.

Some 30 odd years later how would we fare?

Regards
Alan

[Don Boyer]

alan:

I think you would fare better than expected if not overwhelmed by sheer numbers. A lot of that produced over east of you hasn't been much to speak of...looks good, but rotten. This is from posts somewhere else in the Russian ships section I think ...

I know we'll always be around to be helpful...:D

Regards,

[steve roberts]

Hi All. The Soviet Navy may have well have had overwhelming numbers,but speaking from experience of covert ops against them the following was obvious.Their submarines until quite recently were extremely noisy underwater and easily track-able,even at low speed(This included their SSBN@s) and were invariably picked up by SOSUS and tracked where ever they went.In home waters(Barents and White Sea's) their ASW tactics were poor and easily(In most cases) avoidable.Their Major surface ships may have bristled with Missiles,but most were one shot wonders,carrying no replacement missiles.I don't know how well NATO ships were in anti-missile warfare,but unguided in comings will pick on the largest target and of a squadron of say 6 ships,there would have been a few survivors.Whether or not they could then chase the fleeing major ships is another question entirely.! Regards Steve.

[INVINCIBLE]

Many thanks Terry, Alan, Don & Steve for your wise inputs. I am sure you are right that we are looking at the end of the 60s/early70s. I well remember comparing our Type 12s (I spent two and half years in one) at the time with the formidable looking new Soviet surface ships. Of course it was in NATO's interest to talk up Soviet capabilities to encourage more resouces being provided for Western Defence. Dan Van Der Vat, in his good book "Standard of Power", states: "...The period from 1946 to 1999 brought much pain and humiliation to the Royal Navy, twice saviour of the nation in its greatest wars, because those involved saw only cuts and more cuts and found it hard to live with the post war fact that as a fleet it was by a large margin only third in the world with the French Navy hot on its heels...". I remember that we were starting to be shadowed by their surface units and in "Okean 75" the Soviets deployed 220 ships worlwide, which made many of us sit up. I wonder if any member has any pictures of "Okean 75" or any of their similar deployments?