TBT…

From back in the day…

Hard to believe this was 30+ years ago! Usually we chased submarines, but sometimes we ‘stumbled’ across other things of interest…

Looking at the sea state, it was probably a ‘tad’ bumpy that day, and 200 feet wasn’t a lot of fun. One of our ‘spare’ folks took these with his personal camera without a zoom lens! Bonus points if your recce is good enough to ‘remember’ what these were…

h/t JimD

If you’re curious, the answers are below the fold.

Kilden

Krivak

Kiev class carrier (Minsk if I remember correctly)

Comments

TBT… — 24 Comments

  1. Hey Old NFO;

    Those are cooool pics, and I recognized a couple of the silhouettes from my “Red Storm Rising” series I did a while back….Back in the day when the world made sense, at least according to me.

  2. 1.5/3; thought the second one looked like a Krivak class, before going below the fold. Last was definitely a Kiev class aviation cruiser, because we all know that no carriers would violate the Montreux Treaty (*couch*).

    At least they were polite enough to not train all the AAA on you.

    Brings back memories, but more of my images and silhouettes were GCV of different types.

  3. Most of the time my viewpoint of those interesting things looked exactly like the interior bulkheads of the Navy’s engineering spaces!

    Those are some great photos.

  4. No. 1 is a Kashin class destroyer. 4 gas turbine stacks and a very recognizable “mountain” silhouette.

    • Winner!

      And with the No. 1 gun mount trained at the P-3; how Cold Warish of Comrade Captain Ivan.

  5. In the photo’s they look like very well done models. Note the lack of any people on the weather decks and the absence of any rust. Things just look too clean.

  6. I found it interesting that the Krivak has more of its deck guns on the back than the front.

  7. I don’t recall the Krivak Class mounting a weenie pack forward, but my sometime time gets the best of me in this regard.

  8. Decidedly confused, the Army medic stationed safely inland in Europe misread the last line of the OP as

    “Bonus points if your niece is good enough to ‘remember’ what these were…”

    Why in the wide world of sports would my NIECE know soviet-era ships? And why would OldNFO CARE about that.

    Wait…I don’t HAVE a niece. Double check: nope, just two nephews.
    Hmmm…

    • Yep. If I played a modern game, it had to be something naval. Ground was just too close to day job at the time.

      If I remember from the notes sections, the Krivak class was designed primarily for ASW and limited anti-surface work. Very limited AA. Those were for other destroyer or cruiser classes. Yes, confirmed this on Infogalactic – local memory had not completely failed yet 🙂

  9. How do you get that close to a pocket carrier in a Orion?

  10. Very cool pictures!! I had no clue so I looked below the fold.:) I did wonder about the orange decks, and why I didn’t see any planes on deck…

  11. I got the Kiev-class, at least; I was more concerned at the time about Mi24s and Su25s, not to mention T72s…

  12. All- Thanks for the comments. They were just coming out of port, hence the ‘new’ look. It was a good SS4, so not surprised the decks were clear. And yeah, the Kilden wasn’t happy with us. Gregg, trust me, they weren’t ‘models’. LL- It was an ‘updated’ Krivak.

    Posted from my iPhone.

  13. About the ships looking like models… I’ve got photos from Exercise Bright Star ’83 the Egyptians would not have been pleased to know about, and many of the Egyptian aircraft “look like models”. But they were real.
    I Corps G2 ( and probably higher) borrowed them for a week or two, and made copies.
    Yes, I got them all back.

  14. Biggest clue that they’re NOT models? The water. You can’t get water in model scales to “whitewater” like that. And I’ve never seen modeled water (painted plaster or putty, etc.) come anywhere close to looking like that.

    Don’t know how, but I recognized the ships as Russian right off the bat. And the carrier I recognized, maybe from a Time magazine photo back when Time was still worth reading. Not the name or class, just that it was a Russian carrier.

  15. I got the Kiev, missed the others. I’ll have to dig thru some boxes back to about 72 or 73. We (I was on the Chicago then) were up near Diego Garcia, getting ready to head down to Oz country when the Carrier group caught wind of a russky task force refueling. They hadn’t figured out how to do that underway yet, (may not now, don’t know..) so they anchored and their oiler went bow to bow with each ship to refuel. We were with and nuke carrier and a destroyer I don’t remember and we took off at flank speed and ran for about ten hours over to where the russians were refueling and caught them still at anchor. I have a couple of rolls of pics from that languishing somewhere, LOL. Mine are from a lot lower altitude!
    Good times!