Soviet Navy Now World’s Greatest

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32395, 7 September 1970, Page 15

Soviet Navy Now World’s Greatest

The Soviet Navy had in recent years eclipsfed by far all other navies of the world, according to a United States Navy film shown to the annual meeting of the Canterbury branch of the Navy League of New Zealand.

The meeting was to have heard an outline of the Royal Navy of the next decade by

the British Defence Liaison Staff Officer in New Zealand (Lieutenant-Commander L. Campbell), but he was called urgently back to London on Sunday. The film “The Rise of the Soviet Navy” was shown by staff of the United States Navy Antarctic Support Force. It traced the development of the Soviet Navy from its Czarist days, through the Second World War—when its fleet of 200 submarines were blockaded in the Baltic and its surface fleet never saw action—to the present-das' guided missile cruisers and sophisticated weapons systems backed by a large, efficient, merchant marine. From a small naval force designed initially for home defence after World War IL the Russians created an armed force balanced with one of the world’s greatest merchant fleets. In both arms of the service, few ships were more than 10 years old, the film said.

It said that, both in modernity and in numbers, the Russian Navy was superior to all others. Its surface battle fleet had no equal, and the U.S.S.R. was quickly closing the gap with the United States in nuclear submarines. Many submarines were equipped with underwaterlaunched ballistic missiles, and the Naval Air Arm—which included long-range bombers and fighters—had air-to-surface guided missiles of nuclear capacity.

With its merchant marine and battle fleets Russia could operate off any coast in the world, and deal with any situation. This was evidenced by its recent Mediterranean operations, the film said.