I'll help with a question to occupy your mind overnight: Yos Stalin was possibly a class of 4, russian, 350 feet long and 92 feet wide, with 6 x 4" guns, displacing around 11000 tons standard, launched before WWII. What type of ship was it and why is it on the IRCWCC Shiplist? This had me stumped for a good hour and a half.
Boat's easy enough to ID: Yos Stalin, gunboat. Why that class of ship is on the shiplist is beyond me....
Nope. Shiplist is wrong about class name and ship type, and other things. At 11,000 tons it is definitely not a gunboat.
Nobody built one to my knowledge. (Well maybe Larry or Curly in Port Polar Bear) I'm not accepting an abbreviated name. Hint: Most of the values in the shiplist entry are fiction. Hullbusters June 1989 If you find real information on this entry, I want to see it.
The Iosif Stalin (Different name, but it was as close as I could get) was a passenger liner before the Second World War. In 1941, she and her sister were acquired by the Russian Navy. She was used as a transport ship, but she still had a magazine. She was a transport/troop ship, and she is on the ship list because she had a magazine!
Sorry Jackson, the earlier Icebreaker guess was correct for the type. It is not a passenger liner or a gunboat. Wikipedia is not much help using the name given on the shiplist.
Sibir? but why its on the shiplist I have no idea, even after half reading the Hullbusters article. (In fact, I'm more confused after skimming the shiplist table in it..)
Yosif Stalin was renamed Sibir in 1956. The shiplist entry is abbreviated YOS STALIN due to the limitations of spreadsheets in 1988. This website comes closest to matching the shiplist entry. It lists the armament as 2 13 inch and 4 7.6 inch. (Probably bull, try 2 13mm and 4 76mm (3in) as a more likely armament). States there were 4 ships in class but doesn't name any of them. This is a picture of one reference (Jane’s Fighting ships of World War II) given on that website: I cannot yet confirm that any of these ships other than the Josef (Yosif) Stalin actually existed. Note there are 6 ships of appropriate size and date listed, the shiplist says 4. I assume Dan Hamilton used a combination of this source (Janes) and Conways and maybe some other source to hash up the entry. I have no idea where he got the figures of 4 ships in class, 350ft. loa, 92ft. beam, 6 X 4" gun armament. 11000 standard tonnage / 15000 full tonnage. Obviously in 1989 there were few reliable sources on any Russian ships. The reason they are on the shiplist is that Dan attempted to include everything interesting with a displacement greater than 1000 long tons and an armament greater than 3 inches. There are also a couple of other fleet tenders and submarine tenders in minor navies that snuck their way onto the shiplist as gunboats / escorts, but for the most part these types of auxilaries were left off the list even if they participated in combat, because they were not proper warships. If anybody finds more information let me know. Beaver, you are back up for the question since I posted out of order.
2 shaft, other sources say 3, was able to confirm names match the Russian Icebreakers list on Wikipedia but dates differ. Must be comissioned dates on wikipedia. (No individual articles except a stub on Sibir) 2 4 inch gun reference is only 4 guns short of the shiplist. Obviously Dan pulled the length and width info from Conways, I believe it is incorrect, the ship would be hard to steer at that length/width ratio. Also doesn't explain where he got the 15000 tons full displacement. Neither Conways or Janes are very good sources, they suffer from being published too close to the dates the ships were launched, when the nations were still interested in keeping the details secret.
If anybody has a question on hand, go ahead. I don't have one ready, and I don't have the time to look.
