The Ship Model Forum

Quite the pictorial reference you have provided there, Neptune... There's a couple of interesting things from that shot of Kalinin - Osa + Kashtan launchers, she's Kalinin.

Black anti-skid over the main deck, up to the end of the superstructure. From what I've read, they seem to lay that out when they go out on operations, probably to maximize the benefit of its service life, and to avoid the risk of it wearing out on deployment.

The Green on the forward section is indeed Very interesting - if you look, the raised section where the Granit launchers are is Not green, but standard Red. The level of snow cover obscures, but it suggests that the Rif deck is green as well. If you look Very closely, the Forecastle, Deck Only, seems similarly to be green. The Helipad being the only part in green I find interesting as well, that they only did the octagon, not the whole deck, like with almost any ship where they do the green helipad. It's meant to be there, since they did the lines on it already, so it's intriguing. I might just do my other SA-N-9 hull with that used for reference. Thanks, Neptune!

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On a complete aside note.. I showed the picture to a buddy of mine, and we discussed, and think the Inside submarine is actually K-222, the Papa Class. It shows a lot of the characteristics. Outside seems to be an Akula, with a protective box around her towed sonar.

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Die Panzerschiffe - Putting the Heavy in Heavy Cruiser since 1940.

It's not Overkill, it's Insurance.

If you think my plastic is crazy, check out my Line Art!
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The first photo is Admiral Nakhimov. The other ones are of Pyotr Veliky

Is there any significant difference in the equipment fit of the 4 Slava class cruisers?

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Define "significant"...

As far as I know the main issue would be the Fregat air search radar on 2 (I think Varyag and Ukraina, but I could be mistaken) of the units opposed to the older big radar on the other 2.
Furthermore the Varyag is equiped with P-1000 Vulkan rather than the old P-500, but externally that's not visible.
Later upgrades have given each unit more different equipment as well. I remember some of them have the new communication domes on each side of the mast (certainly Ustinov, I think also Varyag received them by now), the same dome(s) are also found on Peter the Great.

Structurally they should be same, but you can never tell with Russian ships as very often when looking further into detail on each unit even the structure can be different with different boxes etc. around the superstructure.

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The merchant shipyard

I was wondering if later units of Slava had same or similar changes as seen on the contemporary Kirov class, such as kashtan CIWS, replacement of SA-N-4 with SA-N-9, elimination of the big ECM(?) domes on the sides of the superstructure?

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So far, I can only find one picture of a Slava without her Side Globe (the eight big domes on the mast below Top Sail) and that is the Ukrayina, who has the same box and dome systems we see on the Sovremenny and later Kirov class members.

Note on top of the Bridge Mast, there's Top Plate. Beside the stack section, you can still see two AK-630 positions. Below and Beside the Top Dome, sits what looks like a Pop Group. So to summarize your questions, the Ukrayina demonstrates the replacement of Top Dome, but still seems to have Rum Tub, AK-630 and SA-N-4 systems intact. 2010 picture of Varyag visiting San Fran, shows installation of Top Plate, but no replacement of Side Globe. Similarly, Pop Group remains in place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%9 ... %D0%B0.JPG

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Die Panzerschiffe - Putting the Heavy in Heavy Cruiser since 1940.

It's not Overkill, it's Insurance.

If you think my plastic is crazy, check out my Line Art!
http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e58/S ... %20Images/

Thanks.


Another question, are there any photos showing the stern door open and horsetail towed sonar array on the kirovs and udaloy s deployed, I am debating whether to scratch build stern sonar compartment on the PV, depending on whether I can get details how the door works, what the towed array looks like and what the compartment housing it looks like.

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if you want i have the same foto at better resolution but you have to send me your mail address pm
ciao peppe

Udaloy is considerably different, although the hatch mechanism is more more less the same. On Krivak there is also two small hatches on both sides of the lower edge that close once the sonar is in, I guess they prevent water ingress to a certain degree when the main hatch is open. In the end I haven't seen any of the Kirov class itself, so I'm not sure how that arrangement is.



Board doesn't seem to verify the size of this pic, so I'll give you a direct link:
Udaloy in dry dock, with the hatch open and seen from below. There seems to be a wheel to guide the wire connected near the top edge of the hatch. There are more pics of Udaloys with VDS operational or ready to operate. Don't have them at hand though. They aren't too hard to come by.

http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac145/Sevmash/_1_1_zpsecfb60b7.jpg

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The merchant shipyard

Krivak seem to have a different towed sonar than Kirov (NATO name Oxtail vs Horsetail). But Udaloy I seem to have the same towed sonar as Kirov. With the soviets you never know, but at least it is possible the VDA compartment and deployment mechansim on the Kirov would be the same as the Udaloy.

Anyway, the deployment mechanism in the VDA compartment seems to be quite complex. I had hoped to replicate the articulations the deployment frame and pulley system, but that may not be possible unless I can get good photos of what it looks like when it is in the deployed position.

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There are ridges that runs part of the war around the hull of the Kirov, both above and below waterline. These look like degaussing cables on WWII ships. Since no other modern warships have external degaussing cables, I am guessing these are not degaussing cables either. Does anyone know what these are?

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I would say reinforcements for the hull. They are also present on some other Soviet/Russian ships. One of them is the Marshal Krylov class electronic surveillance ship, she's conventionally powered, yet also over 200m in length.
In addition to that, if you look at Kirov's structure, they seem to extend more or less exactly (certainly the lower one) underneath the big empty space of the SAM launchers, those missiles almost the height of the hull. The hull is pretty empty in that compartment, which means not so much strength, yet it carries some weight and has buoyancy (big forces acting on it). Seen such "steel fenders" on some merchant ships as well, typically ships with big empty spaces inside. In most of the merchant ships the reinforcement, strength is placed inside, yet on warships the inside volume is already at premium.
It also seems to extend midships towards the bilgekeel, where it seems to transform in a thicker plating.

I have the feeling that the knuckle in the hull on Peter the Great forward also corresponds to the placing of the SAM battery and may therefore be a consequence of that SAM installation.

These are however just guesses from my side. They may house something as well, or just be real "steel fenders" (although I sincerely doubt that).

As for Udaloy, such deployed VDS pics are available, I'll have a look if I can dig some up for you.

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The merchant shipyard

Do the big missile silos in the fore parts of the ship penetrate seveal continuous decks like old gun turret barbettes, or do they exist in a sort of big empty hold similar to bulk carrier's holds? I would think as a warship with flood and fire control considerations, the designers wouldn't just create large open interior spaces for the missile silos without horizontal and vertical partitions. So it would surprise me if the hull needs to be reinforced from the outside like a bulk carrier's hull.

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Actually they do... There are no continuous decks inside, there is just one big empty hold.
The reload arrangement is placed forward of the missile launchers on both sides. The missiles are entered into a hatch with a conveyor, once down they are placed in a sort of chariot and driven on tracks to the launcher where they are needed. Since they are pretty high (about 7m from the top of my head), that means there are no decks over such a height (include the chariot and height between bottom of launchers and bottom of compartment and you'll end up at about 9-10m of free space).
Aft of that is the pretty massive launch installation for the Granit, which, like on subs is reportedly filled with water before launch. That means there is a pretty big downward force there, together with the main buoyancy force of the compartment in front of it, this creates a rather big shear force on the hull.

Again, an assumption based on what we know about this ship and its systems. The actual figures and the necessity or non-necessasity of strengthening remains a question... I think it just rather big coincidence that they sort of stop where the empty space stops...

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The merchant shipyard

For your reference:


Not entirely sure if this is Slava or Kirov, seen both, both are same from the inside, yet Kirov has a rectangular cover over the round launchers and of course an additional bank. Not sure if she has a centreline bulkhead between the two systems (8 on one side, 4 on the other) since both have a reloading hatch (which then again, could of course be accessible to both sides in order to be able to reload from one side without a centre bulkhead). From the pics I saw of the Kirov system it appeared that she didn't have a centre bulkhead (picture was taken from a rather long distance from the launchers, so unless the photographer was standing against that bulkhead....)
Always thought that was kind of a big weakness of these ships, if that part got hit, it would take quite some weight on water in, perhaps even breaking the forward part of (which happens on bulkcarriers from time to time).

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The merchant shipyard

Just a peripheral thought/observation in regard to your commentary on the S-300 launcher section, I would say that is probably a good reason why the Forward CIWS systems are mounted real close to that area, to put work towards stopping incoming threats to that area as best as possible...

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Die Panzerschiffe - Putting the Heavy in Heavy Cruiser since 1940.

It's not Overkill, it's Insurance.

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This seems to be a odd arrangement. It would seem to me to make much more sense design the missile launch hatch to also be the missile loading hatch. To load the missile one simply line up the empty slot in a rotoary launcher with launch hatch, and the missile would be loaded straight down the hatch into its intended position in the rotory launcher. That would save the complexity and space requirements of having to move the missiles inside the ship.

The only reason I can think of for the space hogging arrangement actually used is if the rotory launchers were unreliable, and the designers wanted the ship to have the option to shift the missiles from one launcher to another while the ship is underway.

It appears the Russian rotory launcher arrangement for S-300 is far more space intensive than western 1 missile per silo hot launch arrangement, and is also more complex and less reliable, and hence is a far inferior arrangement.

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I'm not entirely sure, but if I am not mistaken, the S-300F stores a few rounds to a launch container, in the neighbourhood of three to a container if I recall, plus, of course, the cold launch equipment. I think it's a redundancy setup that they have that hold as it is - if something damages the core systems of one launcher, you can shift containers off that launcher to another one, allowing the missiles to not be entirely lost. Similarly, in some way, it's a pretty secure design with the stored containers, since if one container detonated, in that area, it would not detonate the entire magazine, owing to the law of conservation of energy directing the blast into the empty space of the hold. Additionally, consider that they developed the S-300F as an extension of the S-300, and thus probably aimed to retain as much operational/mechanical similarities to the land-based launchers, thus retaining the protective containers around the actual missiles, since the system was already like that, rather than go all out and cost more on the system development.

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Die Panzerschiffe - Putting the Heavy in Heavy Cruiser since 1940.

It's not Overkill, it's Insurance.

If you think my plastic is crazy, check out my Line Art!
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I believe each s-300 round is stored in a sealed container. On slava and probably kirov, 8 such containers are loaded into each carousel. When firing, the carousel revolve to align the containing containing the selected round with the launch hatch and cold gas ejection mechanism. The cold gas ejector the shoots the round out through the top of the container and out the launch hatch.

It makes more sense to me to put each carousel in its own splinter plated silo, and load the missile container down the launch hatch, then to load the missile elsewhere and move it into a carousel inside the ship.

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