AU Russian Aircraft Carriers

They don't look real. Especially the navalized Mig-21 looking aircraft. I think delta wing is not a good choice for naval aircraft. The superstructures looks too modern for 1960's not to mention the split bridge superstructure.
 
Well member @gollevainen is the original artist of these so he can probably best tell you how authentic they are to any real Soviet project - but from memory I think these were altered for one of his alternative universe works.
 
Tzoli said:
They don't look real. Especially the navalized Mig-21 looking aircraft. I think delta wing is not a good choice for naval aircraft. The superstructures looks too modern for 1960's not to mention the split bridge superstructure.
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Those are from alternate history site. Based on real projects, but not real themselves.
 
Tzoli said:
They don't look real. Especially the navalized Mig-21 looking aircraft. I think delta wing is not a good choice for naval aircraft. The superstructures looks too modern for 1960's not to mention the split bridge superstructure.
Click to expand...
Dassault (Rafale) & Douglas (A-4 Skyhawk) would strongly disagree with the claim that delta wings don't work out well for navy aircraft. But I will agree that they're not very common...
 
It's just a fantasy. It is unlikely that we will ever have new aircraft carriers. Practice shows that their time has expired. As when the huge battleships disappeared. Now the aircraft carrier is a second-line backup weapon.
 
The Soviet Union faced a number of issues with carriers which the UK, France and US did not have.
Murmansk and Vladivostock had ice issues (pre Global Warming)
Turkey controlled the Straits so carriers had to be name "anti submarine cruisers".
As a result the nuclear submarine and long range aircraft took on the main strike role plus Kynda Kresta1 Slava and Kirov with carrier killer missiles.
The main US/UK carrier role was to ensure US reinforcements could reach Europe or Korea/Japan. But they were also useful mobile airfields in limited wars.
USSR relied on allies like Ethiopia, Somalia and Syria to provide airbases.
 
The first aircraft carriers ..... However, not the first. Our first aircraft carrier "Русь" was built in 1904, back in the days of РИ. It was designed to base balloons that served as reconnaissance and spotters for long-range firing of battleships. As for the СССР, the first aircraft carriers of пр.1123 and пр.1123M were indeed anti-submarine cruisers. Their entirety air group consisted only of anti-submarine helicopters (and a small number of attack and transport helicopters). Then the Як-38 vertical take-off/landing aircraft appeared, but they did not reclassify the ships. Soviet ideology considered the classic aircraft carrier a weapon of imperialism. Ships пр.1143.5 were already full-fledged strike aircraft carriers with an air group of Су-33 carrier-based fighters. But they were also called aircraft-carrying cruisers because in addition to the air group, the ship carried a full set of missile weapons corresponding to a missile cruiser.
 
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In some ways the "imperialist" tag does fit. the three main aircraft carrier users. France, UK and US all used their carriers in limited wars overseas. Suez and Vietnam perhaps the best examples.
 

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