The Soviet Navy in the Great Patriotic War (60th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War).

On May 9 of this year, our country celebrates the glorious and significant jubilee, the 60th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. In our history, the Great Patriotic War stands apart. But the main result of this war is immutable: We won; our country made the decisive contribution to the common victory over the enemy. We are proud and will be proud of this victory by the right of the direct heirs and successors of our fathers and grandfathers. Remaining invariable are our pride for our people and a profound respect for all its sons and daughters, who bore the full brunt of incredible hardships and privations, and paid in blood--and many with their life itself--to enable us in this day and age to live and build the present and the future of this country.

One needs distance to see big. As I am firmly convinced, the feat of valor achieved by the servicemen in the army and navy and the workers on the home front will never lose its high significance. In turn, regard for the military experience of the Great Patriotic War is certainly indisputable and mandatory in decision-making on organizational development of the Armed Forces and further advancement of methods of their operational-strategic employment as well as methods of military science. Yet, as is absolutely clear, it would be wrong to use a considerable portion of lessons, conclusions and recommendations derived from the Great Patriotic War experience without their appropriate modification and adjustment to the current stage in the organizational development of the army and navy and advancement of their employment methods.

At the same time, an objective analysis of the results of organizational development and operational-strategic employment of the Armed Forces, including the Navy, during the Great Patriotic War is still extremely necessary for the correct understanding of objective conditions and requirements in the further strengthening of this country's military might with account taken of its existing geopolitical situation, and modern trends in the progress of all types of weapons and military science. Let us consider these matters as applied to the Navy.

The war proved a harsh test for official military-political, military-theoretical and military-technical decisions, in accordance with which the Fleet of the Soviet Union had been organized and prepared for the defense of Motherland. In prewar years, the fleet command was clearly aware that the Navy's organizational development should be based on views on its role and place in the system of the state's Armed Forces, on its tasks in naval warfare, and on the tasking designation of its component services, as determined by the national leadership. Moreover, for different naval theaters of operations such component services had to be given a priority in development as were capable of addressing the main tasks facing the fleet with most efficiency. As is to be regretted, no clear and definite tasks of this kind were posed to the Navy.

In turn, it was possible to determine the navy's quantitative and qualitative composition at the building stage only on the basis of a deep-going scientific analysis of the tasks set and all the prerequisites objectively influencing the construction trend. That is why all attempts to make alterations in the program of building "a big oceanic fleet" the government accepted in 1938 were unsuccessful. In all evidence, it was the main discrepancy between the combat fleet forces and the tasks addressed, which discrepancy later affected the efficiency of naval combat operations.

Before the Great Patriotic War, the theory of Soviet military strategy said that both independent operations and operations in coordination with the land forces might be required for the navy to perform tasks assigned to it in each naval theater of operations in accordance with the general war plan. Published before the war, Manual of Naval Operations (MNO-40) formulated general operational-strategic tasks of the Navy as follows:

* destruction or paralyzation of the enemy fleet, performed directly or piecemeal depending on enemy strength, character of the theater and general situation;

* struggle for maritime communications securing the supply of our state and its Armed Forces and on the contrary disrupting the enemy supply;

* struggle for air supremacy in the naval theater, one securing the system of basing and deployment of our fleet and freedom of its maneuver, and disrupting the basing of the enemy fleet in order to paralyze its deployment and maneuver;

* struggle for the coast, which directly secures the inviolability of the state's maritime borders, friendly bases and ports, stability of land forces' flank projecting into the sea, as well as advance and entrenchment of land forces on the enemy coast.

Thus, pushed to the fore were the tasks that the fleet would address independently. Forces were trained and employment plans were drawn up in accordance with these attitudes. But matters related to naval support for the Land Forces were weakly developed in theory and particularly so in practice. This was the consequence of the top army leadership disbelieving that the fleet was capable of tackling operational-strategic tasks.

Years later, N.G. Kuznetsov wrote this in his memoirs as he estimated the prewar state of the theory of naval art: "Regrettably, the army circles attached little importance to war on the seas and in coastal areas. The classical land theories of war predominated, and the General Staff sought to dissociate itself from all naval issues in the belief that they were something of no great importance. In a word, we had no clear-cut military doctrine before the war, and therefore there could be no clearly formulated tasks for the navy, nor was its role in the system of the Armed Forces defined. Lacking this, however, there was no question of drafting concrete assignments to the fleets."

The tasks set to the fleets by February 27, 1939 directive of the People's Commissariat of Defense, tasks which remained in force, with insignificant amendments, till the start of the war, were of highly general nature. The following is their brief recapitulation.

To the Northern Fleet: Destroy enemy fleet as it appears in the Barents and White seas; in the case where Finland comes out on the side of the enemy, in coordination with 104th rifle division capture the Pechenga area and the western part of Sredny Peninsula, and hold fast the Murmansk area and the coast of the Kola Peninsula; do not allow enemy landing or the passage of enemy ships to the White Sea, perform cruiser submarine operations on enemy sea lines of communication off the western coast of Norway and in Skagerrak straits.

To the Baltic Fleet: Inflict a decisive defeat on the enemy fleet; do not allow landing of amphibious assault forces on the Baltic coast, Esel and Dago islands, nor penetration of enemy ships to Gulf of Riga; assist the Land Forces on Hanko Peninsula; be ready to secure redeployment of one rifle division from the coast of Estonia to that peninsula; by creating minefields and with the help of submarines hamper the basing of enemy fleets on the theater of operations and the delivery of troops and combat equipment to ports; assist forces of Leningrad Military District, supporting their flanks and destroying enemy coast defenses.

To the Black Sea Fleet: Ensure supremacy on the theater of operations; prevent the passage of enemy fleets through Bosporus; disrupt delivery of troops and combat equipment to ports in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey; seal solidly the Danube entrance against possible attempts by German ships to sail down the river to the Black Sea; in the case where Rumania and Bulgaria come out against the Soviet Union, destroy their fleets, demolish the military ports (Constantsa and Varna) and disrupt sea lines of communication of these states; do not allow landing of amphibious assault forces on the Black Sea coast in the Crimea and the Caucasus; assist the Red Army's left flank during its crossing of the river Danube and its further movement along the Black Sea coast.

One cannot but note that many tasks were strategic in scale and impossible to carry out. Variants of unfavorable developments in coastal sectors were not considered at all, and therefore no defensive tasks were assigned to the navy.

For the Soviet Union, the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 was on the whole of continental nature. The rapid German advance in the territory of our country and the threat of capture which emerged before the main naval bases were the factors that mostly predetermined the thrust of combat activities of our fleets. The events in the early period of the Great Patriotic War upset all prewar concepts and plans, particularly those related to strategic naval warfare in sea zones.

At the same time, it should be pointed out that the Navy faced the enemy in an organized manner and managed to avoid losses from first enemy air attacks. Black Sea Fleet commander Vice-Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky telephoned the Main Naval Staff at 03:15 in the morning on June 22, reporting about the first air attack on Sevastopol. As early as 05:17, the Staff had officially informed all fleets and flotillas about the German invasion, with People's Commissar of the Navy N.G. Kuznetsov ordering them to repel it by force of arms. As of first hours of the war, the Northern Fleet (NF), the Baltic Fleet (BF), the Black Sea Fleet (BSF), as well as the Danube and Pinsk flotillas became active. A system of states of combat readiness accepted in the navy and drilled on the regular basis was a crucial factor in this.

In the first days of the war, the fleets received this order: "You shall immediately start laying defensive and active minefields in accordance with defense plans." BSF aircraft attacked Constantsa, while submarines of the Northern and Baltic fleets started operations on enemy lines of communication. Between August 8 and September 4, BF aircraft delivered attacks against Berlin. It is with regard for the situation that took shape in the early period of the war that the People's Commissariat of the Navy developed and formulated the main aims and tasks for the forces and troops of the fleets and flotillas, which remained practically unchanged throughout the war.

In order to generalize the experience of naval warfare in the war, let us analyze how tasks were addressed rather than operations of separate fleets. As I see it, this approach will be more graphic and clear for a broad readership in different services and combat arms of the Armed Forces.

We emphasize that the majority of tasks tackled by the Navy were mostly directed at supporting the Land Forces in coastal sectors. These tasks were the following.

First task. Assistance to the Land Forces in defensive and offensive operations in coastal sectors, as well as in areas of lake and river basins adjacent to the front.

In first and second periods of the war (before December 31, 1943), the navy, while participating in the army's defensive operations in coastal sectors, covered the fronts' coastal flanks against enemy maritime attacks and provided artillery and air support to defending troops. The artillery support came from surface gunfiring ships of all classes from battleship to motor gunboat, as well as naval shore batteries, both fixed and rail-based, actually since the first days of the war.

As early as June 22, 1941, the 67th division of the Land Forces and the Baltic Fleet's Libava base determined the main positions and drew up a plan using antiaircraft and shore artillery to support division units during their defense of the city. On June 22, the Libava naval base commander deployed on sea approaches to Libava three small (M-79, M-81 and M-83) and one large (L-3) submarines, which were due to patrol the area and defend the flank of the Land Forces against attacks from the sea.

Escorted by two small hunter-killers, Kuibyshev and Uritsky, two NF destroyers, sailed to Motovsky Gulf on June 29, and for three hours shelled German troops in the isthmus area on Sredny Peninsula, thus disrupting an attack that was in preparation.

The first experience of broad-scale use of shipboard artillery against coastal targets was obtained during the defense of the naval base of Tallinn in August 1941. The situation near Tallinn, which took shape by late July 1941, was characterized by the enemy seeking to capture the city and the base by land assault, while making no serious attempts to attack from the sea. This kind of situation required a comprehensive use of all fleet forces for the direct defense of the city in the land sector. While defending Tallinn along with Red Army units, the Baltic Fleet was due to delay the enemy as long as possible, divert his considerable forces and thus slow down the German attack in the main sector. Used to enhance stability of defense, shipboard artillery was mostly to give fire support to units of the Land Forces, which defended the city on the land. It is this experience of employment of shipboard artillery that was later used during the defense of Odessa, Sevastopol, Kerch, Novorossisk, and particularly Leningrad.

Apart from operations on the seas, naval aviation was used on a broad scale against the enemy's forces and weapons on land fronts. Quite often, the operational situation called for the use of naval air force in support of army aircraft. In the first period of the war (before November 19, 1942), naval aviation of the fleets attacked enemy tanks, artillery and forces pushing to reach the heart of the country. It participated in battles in a number of main lines in defensive operations conducted by coastal fronts, and subsequently in the major offensive operations of those fronts. Naval aviation of all fleets performed a total of 82,000 sorties in the interests of land fronts.

The experience obtained in the first and second periods of the war was put at the base of employment of fleet forces in strategic offensive operations during the 1944 campaign. And it was precisely the 1944 campaign and the joint actions with the Land Forces in eight out of ten strategic offensive operations that saw the Navy demonstrate the whole amount of its combat capabilities. Let us consider the most important ones that enable an estimate of naval operations.

The first operation which was later called "Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive Operation" was an instructive and highly effective one. It was mounted by the forces of Leningrad, Volkhov, and 2nd Baltic fronts and the Baltic Fleet from January 14 to March 1, 1944. At the preparatory stage, the fleet forces secretly redeployed 2nd assault army from Leningrad and Lisiy Nos to Oranienbaum bridgehead. As a result, it became possible to create decisive superiority in forces and weapons on the main axis of advance. The friendly forces had three times as many infantry and guns and six times as many tanks as the enemy. That enabled them rapidly to break through his in-depth defense on the main axis of advance. During the operation, shipboard artillery performed over one thousand firings in support of the front forces, using upwards of 20,000 shells of 100-406 mm caliber. In an overwhelming majority of cases, enemy batteries, owing to high accuracy of firing and the destructive force of projectiles, had time enough to fire one or two salvos before they were straddled with friendly gunfire and went silent. That achieved fire supremacy over the enemy in the zone of advance of friendly forces and, naturally, helped to step up the rate of advance.

The Black Sea Fleet's participation in the Crimean Offensive Operation was no less successful. Considering high importance of disrupting enemy evacuation from the Crimea, the Black Sea Fleet was withdrawn from operational command of the front and subordinated directly to Supreme High Command. The Crimean Operation being described in sufficient detail in domestic historiography, we will dwell on its results alone.

The enemy losses on the land during the operation itself added up to around 20,000 killed and 24,000 taken prisoner. The irrecoverable losses of the 4th Ukrainian Front and Independent Coastal Army were 17,754 officers and men, and those of the Black Sea Fleet a mere 226 persons, with the main losses inflicted on the German forces precisely in the course of the naval part of the operation. This points to the important role of the fleet in the operation. The weakening of the enemy Black Sea force made it possible to carry out Iasy-Kishinev strategic operation with small losses, the operation including a successful attack by the fleet, which destroyed Constantsa-based enemy fleet forces.

From October 7 to 29, 1944, the strategic Petsamo-Kirkiness operation took place on the northern flank of the Soviet-German front, where an important or even decisive role belonged to Northern Fleet forces. The operation plan envisaged powerful fire support, for which 236 aircraft and 170 guns were set aside. As is evident from an analysis of the Northern Fleet's actions in the Petsamo-Kirkiness operation, it was precisely in that period that such a category of naval art as fleet operation actually formed. Within the framework of a strategic offensive in the coastal sector, the Northern Fleet, based on a unified concept and plan, pursued independent combat operations, which assisted in attaining a major operational-strategic objective. In this operation, the naval aviation used the method of massed strikes at convoys, single transports and ports. Overall, it made more than 6,000 sorties, of which almost 3,000 were directed at disrupting the enemy sea lines of communication. The naval aviation managed to sink 19 ships and vessels, including the Pelagos, a tanker whose tonnage exceeded 12,000 grt, which made it the biggest ship sunk in the Polar Regions.

River and lake flotillas--Azov, Pinsk, Chudskoye, Ladoga, Onega, Volga, Lake Ilmen squadron--were used on deep rivers and lakes. Ladoga naval flotilla secured lines of communication across Lake Ladoga and to the besieged Leningrad. The Volga naval flotilla made a huge contribution to the defense of Stalingrad and to securing crucial Volga transportation. The Dnieper naval flotilla was restored in 1943, and the Danube naval flotilla the next year. Redeployed to the Oder basin, ships of the Dnieper naval flotilla took part in the Berlin operation. The Danube naval flotilla participated in the liberation of Belgrade, Budapest and Vienna.

Apart from that, fleet landing operations carried out on coastal flanks of fronts were one of the main types of assistance to the Land Forces. During the war, more than 250,000 troops with weapons and military equipment (nearly 30 rifle divisions) were shipped to their destination in 123 operational and tactical landings. The fleets landed one assault force every two weeks on average. More than 300 combatant ships and vessels secured the landing of assault forces, and as many as 10,000 sorties were performed by aircraft.

Second task. Defense of friendly bases against enemy naval and air attacks.

In the prewar period, the main task of fleet forces during the defense of bases was seen as repelling enemy attempts to attack them from the sea and the air. That the enemy might come by land in order to capture a naval base, thus necessitating the making of land defensive positions, was practically thought unlikely. This underestimation of possible enemy actions led to a situation where by the start of the war our naval bases lacked land defense lines organized in the engineering respect (with the exception of Hanko Peninsula), whereas they had to be defended mostly from enemy land forces. Naval bases also experienced an acute need for air defense weapons and forces. In addition, some of them lacked sufficient stocks capable of securing protracted defense in the face of a siege.

Following the start of the war, the main task of BSF and BF forces was to defend naval bases and separate areas (BSF: Odessa, Sevastopol, Novorossisk; BF: Tallinn, Moonsund Islands, Hanko Peninsula, Leningrad). The fleet's defense of bases was mostly reduced to rendering systematic support for defending troops by shipboard artillery fire, providing air cover with the help of land-based air defenses and naval aviation forces and protecting seaward approaches to bases, as well as performing all types of transportation and supply jobs.

While defending land approaches to naval bases, shipboard artillery engaged enemy guns, neutralized important and extra-strong structures deep in the enemy's defenses as well as his defended points, pockets of resistance and depots, and annihilated enemy manpower and equipment. A case in point is active participation of shipboard artillery in repelling massive enemy tank attacks practically on all crucial enemy axes of advance. Besides, naval infantry units that remained under the command of fleets and flotillas, units counting a total of about 100,000 troops, held land defense positions before naval bases and on islands, and participated in amphibious landing operations.

Let us dwell briefly on the heroic defense of Leningrad, Odessa and Sevastopol. The stable defense of Leningrad, particularly at the start of its blockade, was due to a considerable extent to vigorous actions of the Baltic Fleet, which managed to keep the Oranienbaum bridgehead throughout the war and diverted major enemy forces. The Baltic Fleet sent more than 110,000 sailors, petty officers and officers to fight the enemy on the land. There was not a single division near Leningrad, which wouldn't have Baltic sailors among its combatants.

One also cannot underestimate the role of the Black Sea Fleet in defending crucial naval bases and ports, and in conveying stability to the southern flank of the land front. Successful and protracted resistance deep in the enemy rear mounted by Odessa Defensive Area, whose garrison was mostly made up of sailors and headed by naval base commander Rear-Admiral G.V. Zhukov, only became possible due to continuous sea-based assistance from combatant ships and an uninterrupted delivery of necessities to the besieged city. The heroic defense of Odessa, which contained for more than two months almost the entire heavily decimated Rumanian army, delayed the advance of the southern flank of the South Group of Armies and interfered seriously with German strategic plans.

The fleet command was ordered to direct the defense of both Odessa and Sevastopol, which was the only correct decision under the existing circumstances. It was the fleet that prepared, organized and secured the defense of Sevastopol, which was directly headed by Black Sea Fleet commander Vice-Admiral F.S. Oktyabrsky. Unprecedented in history for heroism and duration, the epic defense of Sevastopol pinned down a 300,000-strong enemy force for eight months, preventing it from joining an offensive in the south. Apart from that, the retention of Sevastopol thwarted the use of the sea route leading to the Sea of Azov for purposes of supplying the enemy's southern group of armies and incapacitated a German breakthrough to ports in the Northern Caucasus.

In its June 12, 1942 cable to defenders of Sevastopol, the Supreme High Command gave this estimate to actions by forces that defended Sevastopol: "The selfless struggle of Sevastopollers serves as an example of heroism for the whole Red Army and the Soviet people." A Soviet Informburo report of July 4, 1942 said this in connection with abandonment of Sevastopol: "By containing a big number of German-Rumanian forces, the defenders of the city upset and wrecked their plans. The iron-clad tenacity of Sevastopollers was one of the crucial reasons that disrupted the notorious German 'spring offensive.' The Hitler forces lost time and momentum, and sustained huge casualties. Sevastopol was left by the Soviet troops, but the defense of Sevastopol will go down in history of the Patriotic War of the Soviet Union as one of its most glorious pages. The selfless courage, fury in the struggle with the enemy, and self-denial of the defenders of Sevastopol are inspiring the Soviet patriots to further heroic exploits in the fight against the hateful invaders."

Providing air defense for fleet bases with air defense forces and weapons and naval aircraft was one of the main tasks throughout the war. The perfect organization of fleet air defenses, practical skills of AA battery crews, as well as combined employment of air defense forces and naval fighter aviation prevented German aircraft from causing considerable damage to naval facilities. The enemy sought to launch an active air war against the navy's basing system. During the war he performed 74,300 sorties for attacks on Soviet naval basing facilities. In turn, friendly naval aircraft made over 95,000 sorties to provide air defense of bases and the coast. Everyone in this country knows, for example, about air engagements fought by NF naval aviation pilots: a fight between seven friendly fighter planes and 52 German aircraft in fall 1941, when 19 enemy planes were downed with no losses on our side; a fight in spring 1942 between eight friendly fighter planes and 40 enemy aircraft, three of which were shot down and no less than four seriously damaged. Our navy remembers martial exploits of Black Sea pilots, who selflessly defended Odessa, Sevastopol, and Novorossiisk. No less well-known are the battles fought by BF pilots, who beat back a concentrated enemy air offensive on Kronstadt and Leningrad. The operations by naval aircraft graphically showed that air defense of bases was founded primarily on stable air supremacy, maneuver of aircraft during engagements with the enemy, and fighting qualities of pilots.

Almost all WWII students noticed that the German command had practically abstained from sending major ships to the operational zone of our fleets, something that had predetermined the specifics of actions by friendly fleet forces in the sea zone while defending the basing system and the coast. Those actions were mostly limited to the laying of defensive minefields. As is to be regretted, the laying rates proved not only low for 1941 conditions but even incomparable with the rates in 1941. In addition, the laying proved sufficiently belated. An instance of such belated and ill-organized actions was the laying of minefields by the Baltic Fleet. For example, protected by the cruiser Maksim Gorky and three advanced class 7 destroyers, two mine-layers and five destroyers started laying a minefield, in the night of June 23, 1941, in the area where the enemy had already planted a minefield of his own ("Apoldi"). No preliminary mine reconnaissance had been performed. The presence of enemy mines was discovered only at the moment when an explosion wrecked the destroyer Gnevny and 40 minutes later the cruiser's bow was blown off. The first mine layings in the area of Sevastopol had considerable defects as well. The negative experience forced a revision in the organization. Subsequently, if the moment of appearance of big enemy surface ships and vessels failed to be detected, only the farthest seaward lines of minefields were laid pending clarification in the situation.

The success in defending naval bases was greatly assisted by sea troop and freight movements, which reinforced garrisons, delivered the necessary equipment and cargoes, and evacuated the wounded, civilians and industrial equipment.

Third task. Actions on enemy sea lines of communication.

Actions on enemy sea lines of communication required much naval effort. These actions were pursued systematically, involving comprehensive employment of all component services of the navy. Possibly not a single day passed without successes in this matter. Even when BF submarines had to come to the high seas via mine-strewn Gulf of Finland that was barred in many places with antisubmarine barriers, the enemy could constantly feel the might of our naval strikes.

The Northern Fleet incessantly attacked German transports which were delivering reinforcements to German forces in Norway and North Finland and exporting nickel ore from Petsamo. Hitler himself had to recognize sensitivity of NF strikes at German lines of communication. His directive No. 36 of September 22, 1941 said that "the enemy disruption of our coastal lines of communication in the Polar Regions limited to an even greater extent the capacities of the mountain rifle corps to reach Murmansk before the end of this year as planned." BSF forces, too, inflicted heavy losses on the enemy on sea lines of communication. The BSF naval aviation scored the greatest successes in this sense, accounting as it did for 80% of the sunk enemy tonnage. The accumulated experience of combat naval activities enabled the fleet command to go over to a specialized operation aimed at disrupting enemy sea lines of communication in the course of the Crimean Operation in 1944. Between May 3 and 13, alone, the enemy lost 37,000 German and 5,000 Rumanian officers and men during sea passage. In the night of May 11, only the command and the staff of 17th German army could be saved in lieu of the planned evacuation of the entire force. By the most conservative estimates, the enemy lost at sea around 70,000 troops overall during the period of the operation. Wehrmacht investigators probed into reasons of failed Crimean evacuation till November 1944.

A convincing idea about enemy losses caused by the Soviet Navy in the course of the Great Patriotic War can be derived from the following table based on bilateral confirmed data, German data included. As is evident from the table, the Navy inflicted quite perceptible losses on the enemy in the course of the Great Patriotic War.

Summing up fleet actions on enemy sea lines of communication, one may say with confidence that the destruction of combatant ships and sea transports substantially reduced combat capability of German forces in ground theaters of operations.

Fourth task. Protection of own sea lines of communication, as well as lake and river communications in areas adjacent to the front.

Protection of military transport movements carried out in the interests of coastal fronts was of no less importance in the navy's combat activities throughout the war. These acquired particular significance in the North after the enemy cut the Murmansk railway. A case in point are transport movements in the period of preparations for Petsamo-Kirkiness operations, which included transportation across the Kola Gulf of forces and weapons designed to reinforce the 14th army, as well as delivery of army cargos for units of the coastal flank and the Northern Defensive Area. Overall, 5,719 troops, 96 tanks, 19 self-propelled guns, 3 armored vehicles, 153 guns, 137 tractors, 197 motor vehicles, etc., were taken across the Gulf from October 6 to 17. During the operation itself, the fleet secured transportation by sea of 15,860 troops and over 15,000 tons of cargoes. At the same time, the Northern Fleet performed its particularly important tasks securing pilotage of allied northern convoys, which made a big contribution to our victory in the war.

It was vital to use sea lines of communication for transportation in the Black Sea during the defense of Odessa, Sevastopol, and the Northern Caucasus, as well as in the course of the Kerch-Feodosiya operation; the same in the Baltic Sea during the defense of Tallinn, Hanko Peninsula and Moosund Islands and evacuation of their defenders, as well as for reinforcement of forces in the Oranienbaum bridgehead and subsequently when the time came to liberate the Baltic republics.

An exceptionally responsible task was the one tackled by the flotillas, which secured army and economic transport movements in waterways near the front, particularly so in Lake Ladoga when the situation in Leningrad turned grave, and in the Volga.

More than 110 million metric tons of different cargoes--much of them oil, oil products and food--was delivered to all our theaters of operations by sea routes. The fleet forces secured transportation of millions of tons of freight via external lines of communication. That meant thousands of ship cruises and aircraft flights, many hundred combat engagements with enemy surface ships and submarines, repulsion of enemy air attacks, and negotiation of dense minefields.

"The Fleet performed its duty to the Soviet Motherland to the end," was how the Supreme Commander estimated the Navy's contribution to common victory. A brief phrase that said so much about the martial exploit of hundreds of thousands of military sailors!

But this martial exploit exacted a high price. Irrevocably lost (percentages of effective strength as it stood on June 22, 1941) were one in every three battleships (33%), two in every seven cruisers (14%), 34 leaders and destroyers out of 42 (80%), 86 submarines out of 157 (54%), as well as 24 escort ships, 15 gunboats, 76 minesweepers, hundreds of combatant boats and thousands of aircraft. Manpower losses amounted to 153,741 persons.

The Great Patriotic War will forever remain one of the most glorious and tragic pages in the history of our country. The Soviet people and its Armed Forces had to suffer many hardships and deprivations. But the four years of fierce struggles against the fascist invaders were crowned with our full Victory. Moreover, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war and made the decisive contribution to the liberation of European nations and to victory over Nazi Germany.

In conclusion, let us briefly consider the impact which the experience, results and lessons of naval warfare that the Soviet Navy gained in the Great Patriotic War and foreign navies in World War II had on postwar organizational development and advancement of our navy and naval science.

The influence of this experience on the Navy's organizational development and training proved controversial. Certainly, war experience and lessons gave an impetus in the search for new methods of naval warfare and impelled a critical survey of its existing forms. During the first postwar decade, war-enriched achievements of our naval art were enshrined in new formal regulatory documents: 1945 Combat Naval Regulations and MNO-51. Major research projects were accomplished and new technical solutions to a number of problems found, something that paved the way to large-batch construction of combatant ships and auxiliary vessels and laid the foundations for a transition to a qualitatively new stage, the construction of a nuclear missile oceanic fleet.

There were differing views on forces afloat, however. Though the naval command, the heads of the Main Naval Staff and the majority of naval theorists saw clearly the need for building aircraft carriers and developing carrier aviation, their opinion was not taken into consideration, and we wasted decades arguing the obvious: a great naval power's fleet will never be balanced unless it has aircraft carriers.

The war experience demonstrated inexpedience of mass-scale construction of small torpedo boats, which couldn't have been used for their direct purpose in our theaters of operations. This notwithstanding, nearly 500 of them were built before the mid-1950s. It was also an obvious mistake to engage in big-batch construction of small submarines, which showed their low efficiency during the war. That led to unnecessary expenditures of financial and material resources. Moreover, radical views appeared at an early stage in the construction of nuclear missile oceanic fleet to the effect that the experience of the Great Patriotic War lost all of its importance in a new epoch and the sooner it was forgotten the better for the navy.

At this point we must note the exceptionally important role of Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Sergei G. Gorshkov, who held in check the supporters of those views. But the danger was quite real: suffice it to recall the easiness with which were rejected all things that failed to fit in with Khrushchev's doctrine or to agree with his simplistic, purely personal and incompetent approach to crucial matters pertaining to the organizational development of the Armed Forces and the Navy.

It goes to his credit that as a combat admiral and outstanding military theorist he not only understood but also proved that war experience required profound scientific rationalization rather than its letter-by-letter repetition. Owing to that, our naval science managed to develop a new system of naval operations, and fleet forces managed to practice it in the course of operational training and combat service. It should be pointed out nevertheless that a number of problems that used to affect negatively the USSR Navy's capacity to address tasks in the Great Patriotic War are not yet definitively solved even today.

As I see it, the most critical and vital problem where the navy or rather the state is concerned is the problem of naval construction based on long-term planning. This war lesson has been forgotten.

In addition, the creation of the People's Commissariat of the Navy, formerly a division of the People's Commissariat of Defense, though giving the fleet a measure of independence, only enhanced the incomprehension by the heads of the Defense Ministry and governmental and Party echelons of the place and role of the Navy in a future war. Government members in charge of the Navy neither paid attention to its problems nor upheld its interests. Occasionally it so happened that the People's Commissariat for Shipbuilding prevailed over the Navy command when it came to substantiating requirements for a fleet corresponding to the character of a future war, and it was its arguments that were taken into account. Thus it was intended to build a navy tailored to industrial capability, not to views on its employment. As is to be regretted, this approach to the navy in certain measure persisted when the first postwar naval construction program was put into shape, and the same goes for subsequent programs as well.

One should recognize as a crucial war lesson the sad fact that we didn't have enough time to build and duly prepare a navy for the war (the prewar program that envisaged the building of a "grand fleet" was actually curtailed by 1940).

After the war it became clear that the country needed a powerful oceangoing fleet, and an oceanic nuclear missile fleet was created after all. For many years the Soviet Navy assured national security in oceanic and sea sectors and was a factor of stability in the world.

Russia always needed a navy in the past and will always need it in the future. Events that will require its employment may arise unexpectedly. We will always be late if we wait for them to come and only then start building a navy.

On the whole, however, one may say this: Russia needs a navy primarily in order to rule out war as such and to use it as a powerful peacetime lever for foreign policy pressure; should military conflicts arise, it must be used to gain victory in them.

In Russia, there should always be a powerful Navy worthy of its status as a great naval power.

Adm. of the Fleet V.I. KUROYEDOV

Commander-in-Chief of the RF Navy

Doctor of Political Sciences

Vladimir Ivanovich KUROYEDOV was born at the station of Bamburovo, Khasan District, Maritime Territory, on September 5, 1944. He graduated from Pacific Higher Naval School (1967), Naval Academy (1978), and General Staff Academy (1989).

He served with the Pacific Fleet (1967-1993, 1996-1997) and the Baltic Fleet (1993-1996). Rose through the ranks from commander of navigator's department of an escort ship to chief of staff--first deputy fleet commander. From July to November 1997, Chief of Main Staff--First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Since November 1997, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy.

Ships and Vessels Lost by Germany and its Allies

                     Number of                    Full Displacement
Component            Sunk Ships                   Number of   of Sunk
Service of           and Auxiliary    Sunk        Transports,
the USSR Navy        Vessels          Transports  reg. tons

Aviation             407/428          371/369       800,269/870,550
Submarines            33/54           157/165       462,313/476,100
Surface ships         53/106           24/60         451,97/138,400
Mines                103/18           110/24        250,101/58,000
Shore artillery       18/25            14/13         28,646/19,000
Total combat losses  614/631          676/631     1,586,553/1,562,050
Losses for unknown    94/2            115/3         251,666/7,800
reasons
Total war losses     708/633          791/634     1,838,219/1,569,350

Note: The numerator shows the number of ships and transports whose
sinking is confirmed by bilateral data; the denominator shows an
additional number of ships and transports whose sinking is not confirmed
by data other than ours.