The Ship Model Forum

Just out of curiosity how many other guys are building this kit, Kirov or others in the class?
I have both Kirov and Peter the Great and will build later. At the moment just looking through the posts and understanding what needs to change when I get that far. Also taking measurements for maybe one day to construct a larger model. hmm maybe 1/72.

One other question, has anybody seen a larger version of the KIROV CLASS type ship? What did you think of what you saw? Any pictures or links? I would like to see what others have made of their interpretation of this ship. I've heard of one in Germany scale 1/144.

There is one mentioned in Dave Wooley's book, with a picture. It "represents" a Kirov, so it's not extremely accurate or detailed. However, I do think it has some age and was built before internet and many pictures, let alone dry dock pictures, were available, so for its time, I think it was quite advanced.

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Patience of a saint, such patience and skill!

these shacks actually have weathertight doors, they are just the way to get from inside to the boat deck.

The "tanks" are probably not tanks. If you have good pictures, please share, since I don't have any real close ups available at the moment.
They are probably fenders, to use when other ships come alongside or when you are in lesser equiped ports, Russian Navy ports aren't really highly equiped after all. They are lifted on the deck by the boat crane on that small piece of extended deck, likely put on a wheeled chart and moved to a place on that deck, that also explains their different number and placement.



We have rubbing tyres on them as these operations happen a lot at high seas, with associated motion of both ships, but if you look beyond the tyres they look very much shaped like these "tanks". I'd need better pictures of Kirov's "tanks" to be certain though.

PS: I just figured out why I always assumed they were fenders. The Chilikin class has these tyreless fenders on deck too. I have close up pictures of those, I'll upload this evening.

Here it is.
This will probably confirm my thoughts when you compare it with your pictures.

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In our case here things are different. We have four big ones and two baby fenders. The babies are on the bow and stern, a few meters above waterlevel. The number of fenders depends on what they have to do and what your parallel body length is. In our case, the parallel body is quite large, and the job they have to perform is quite heavy, given that they are seperating two 60,000t ships from each other, at sea.
A Kirov has less parallel body length and when used in port, the conditions and forces are very moderate. At sea, if used with a replenisher, like Chilikin, they'll use the fenders from Chilikin, any other vessel coming alongside a Kirov is likely to be much smaller than her and hence will have less parallel body length. That is probably why you thought there were more of them in our case too. The reason why we have four of them is simply because the parallel body just stops forward of the first one and aft of the aft one.
The distance between the forward and aft pair is quite large, as it's not necessary to support the ships there. Putting them too close to each other and more centralised causes the ships to hinge around them and collide (had that once, was more than enough). That is also the function of the babies, they are further aft and forward, and a little higher, as the parallel body on the waterline is shorter than on the main deck. So the babies are still on a part of the parallel body, yet not in the water, in case of hinging around the big ones, they have to cushion the "collision".
When we have a smaller ship, a regular LPG of say 180m alongside, we also reduce the distance between the fenders to match her parallel body, although arguably we might as well deploy three of them instead of four. The other mothervessel in our vicinity is often using up to six (smaller than ours) fenders and two babies. It all depends on which ships and in which environment they are to be used. On Kirov they aren't likely to be used much either. Perhaps on a deployment where they foresee it, they place three of them.
They aren't likely to be as large as your tanks I think.
You can approximately estimate the length from the beam of the Kirov or assume they are the same as on the Chilikins, in that case you can try to estimate the size from onboard objects on the picture above.

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Fenders this size we referred to as sea cushions in the US Navy. They have multiple uses - replenishment at sea (while anchored), mooring alongside a quay or pier, and bringing lighterage alongside. We used ones of similar size for USS ENTERPRISE. Given the reduced infrastructure of the Soviet/Russian Navy, it makes sense that the class, with its available deck space, would carry fenders. Three would do a good job fendering Kirov.

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Just for reference, ours are 6.6m long and 3.5m diameter (and they weigh 7.5t each, in case you want to go this far for scaling on your model ). The ones on the Chilikin class, look like about 4m length and 2-2.5m diameter.

We often refer to them as "Yokohama's" as that's the main manufacturer. The tyres are old truck tyres, with steel inside the rubber. Pretty solid stuff.


That's ours in stowage position, they take quite some place, not sure if the ones on Kirov are the same size, they look slightly smaller. The No 3 fender you've marked, looks smaller than the others too, but it could be due to the shadows and lighting.

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Bob, I owned them and I am struggling to remember. We did not carry the really big ones, they were maintained by port operations or rented overseas. We had smaller ones for lighterage alongside. I think that we kept them on the fantail and sponson 5 (the one forward of ACEL 3). They were not noticeable on purpose, I had a enough junk to deal with.

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Guys, found a couple of photographs showing the fenders "deployed" over the side.

I was looking through the latest batch of P.V. pics on Navsource, when I noticed that many of the fittings, particularly ones where ropes are wrapped around, on the forecastle are black: http://www.navsource.narod.ru/photos/02 ... 168071.jpg

Just thought you might want to see if it's the same on Kirov herself.

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The caption for the photo I posted indicates 2010, so it's about as recent as you'll get!

Also of interest, PV is scheduled for another 6-month deployment this year, so let's hope for more pictures

Any idea where she is going Timmy? If by some strange chance she comes into Norfolk I'll see about getting some photos.