While the struggle over the future of Russian carrier aviation (in the form of OREL) was taking place, an interim carrier design aimed at providing an "evolutionary" seagoing fixed-wing capability was undergoing development. This was a 40,000-ton conventionally-powered ship that carried both helicopters and vertical take-off and landing aircraft. The air wing was small, consisting of a dozen Yak-38 "Forger" VTOL fighters and perhaps twenty more helicopters. The performance of the Forgers was reported to be rather disappointing, and their small numbers were insufficient to provide round-the-clock combat air patrols; nevertheless, the Kievs for the first time provided the Soviet Fleet with organic fighter cover. This class of carriers also carried significant missile capability forward of the superstructure. This took the form of SS-N-12 antiship missiles, SA-N-3 surface-to-air missiles, and SA-N-4/SA-N-9 (depending on the specific vessel) SAMs. For antisubmarine work, there was an SUW-N-1 FRAS launcher, along with a pair of RBU-6000 ASW mortars.

The first unit, Kiev, was launched in late 1972 and commissioned in mid 1975. She was followed by Minsk (launched 1975, commissioned 1978) and Novorossiysk (launched 1978, commissioned 1982). The second and third units were assigned to the Pacific Fleet, which raised concerns about Soviet naval expansion in the early 1980s.

The fourth and last unit, Baku, was launched in 1982; she was used as a development platform for a variety of command-and-control technologies, and this work delayed her final commissioning a full five years until 1987. Central to the Baku's new command-and-control suite was the "Sky Watch" 3D planar array radar system, which eventually was to go into the Kuznetsov. Unfortunately, Sky Watch was unable to overcome its considerable technical problems and never achieved its full potential (which included a highly integrated air-battle management system). Later in her career, Baku was renamed Admiral Gorshkov for political reasons, and served as the test platform for the next-generation Yak-141 "Freestyle" supersonic VTOL fighter.

Well, that's the Russian Aircraft Carrier Kiev, in 1/700 scale. I've bought it about 1995 because I found it as a unique model, as no other manufacturers produced it. There were a Lindberg Edition in a strange scale and detail level. At the time when I built it I haven't heard too much about Photo Etched parts, and scratchbuilding, I built this kit Out of the Box in 100%. Of course today I'd build it in much better quality.

Construction was very straight forward, and the detail level is acceptable except the antennas and some weapon systems. Weathering was done using a photo, where the whole ship was full of rust and dust, so I tried to replicate it

Photos and text © 2005 by Gabor Sebestyen

April 03, 2005

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