Soviet Aircraft Carriers Were AMAZING

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The Soviet Union had a rather unusual approach to aircraft carriers. Instead of building dedicated floating airbases like the United States, the Soviets developed enormous hybrid warships that combined aircraft carriers with heavily armed missile cruisers. The result was a fascinating collection of ships that were unlike anything else in the world.

But why did the Soviet Union develop these strange aircraft-carrying cruisers, and what happened to them after the collapse of the USSR?

The story begins long before the Cold War. Soviet naval ambitions can be traced back to the interwar years, when Joseph Stalin envisioned a powerful fleet capable of challenging the great naval powers of the world. The Soviets even explored the idea of combining battleships and aircraft carriers into a single vessel. Although these projects never materialized, the idea of hybrid warships would remain an important part of Soviet naval thinking.

During the Cold War, this philosophy evolved into the Moskva and Kiev classes. Rather than focusing entirely on aviation, these ships carried enormous anti-ship missile batteries alongside their aircraft. The Kiev-class aircraft-carrying cruisers were designed to support the Soviet fleet, hunt submarines, and threaten Western carrier groups. Their aircraft were important, but they were never the sole purpose of the ships.

Eventually, the Soviets moved toward something closer to a conventional aircraft carrier with the Admiral Kuznetsov class. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union left several of these ambitious projects unfinished or in uncertain condition.

Three ships would go on to have particularly interesting futures.

The former Baku became India's INS Vikramaditya after an enormous and expensive reconstruction. The unfinished Varyag was purchased by China under the rather unusual premise of becoming a floating casino, eventually emerging as the Liaoning, China's first operational aircraft carrier. And then there was Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia's own troubled flagship, whose career has been plagued by fires, accidents, maintenance problems, and seemingly endless refits.

In this video, we'll explore the history of Soviet naval aviation, the strange design philosophy behind its aircraft-carrying cruisers, and what happened to these ships after the Soviet Union collapsed. We'll also examine why China and India managed to turn former Soviet vessels into functioning aircraft carriers, while Russia has struggled to keep its own carrier operational.

From Cold War experiments to modern Chinese and Indian naval power, this is the strange story of Soviet aircraft carriers.

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