The Soviet Navy's Project 611 (

NATO reporting name NATO reporting names are code names for military equipment from Russia, China, and historically, the Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union and other nations of the Warsaw Pact). They provide unambiguous and easily understood English words in a uniform man ...

: Zulu class) were one of the first Soviet post-war

attack submarine An attack submarine or hunter-killer submarine is a submarine specifically designed for the purpose of attacking and sinking other submarines, surface combatants and merchant vessels. In the Soviet and Russian navies they were and are called ...

s. They were roughly as capable as the American

GUPPY The guppy (), also known as millionfish and rainbow fish, is one of the world's most widely distributed tropical fish and one of the most popular freshwater aquarium fish species. It is a member of the family Poeciliidae and, like almost all ...

fleet-boat conversions.Norman Polamr and K. J. Moore, 'Cold War Submarines,' They were a contemporary of the

Whiskey-class submarine Whiskey-class submarines (known in the Soviet Union as Projects 613, 640, 644, and 665) are a class of diesel-electric attack submarines that the Soviet Union built in the early Cold War period. Design The initial design was developed in th ...

s and shared a similar sonar arrangement. Like most conventional submarines designed 1946-1960, their design was influenced by the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Type XXI U-boat Type XXI submarines were a class of German diesel–electric '' Elektroboot'' (German: "electric boat") submarines designed during the Second World War. One hundred and eighteen were completed, with four being combat-ready. During the war only t ...

of the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

era. The first few boats of the class were equipped with twin 57mm and twin 25mm anti-aircraft guns and no snorkels, although the guns were removed and snorkels added soon after the boats entered service.Gardiner, p. 398 Six were converted in 1956 to become the world's first

ballistic missile submarine A ballistic missile submarine is a submarine capable of deploying submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with nuclear warheads. The United States Navy's hull classification symbols for ballistic missile submarines are SSB and SSBN � ...

s, one armed with a single

R-11FM The R-11 Zemlya, GRAU index 8A61 was a Soviet tactical ballistic missile. It is also known by its NATO reporting name SS-1b Scud-A. It was the first of several similar Soviet missiles to be given the reporting name Scud. Variant R-11M was accep ...

Scud missile A Scud missile is one of a series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was exported widely to both Second and Third World countries. The term comes from the NATO reporting name attached to the m ...

and five others with two Scuds each. They were designated as Project AV 611 and received the NATO reporting name of Zulu V. The missiles were too long to be contained in the boat's hull, and extended into the enlarged sail. To be fired, the submarine had to surface and raise the missile out of the sail.

Soviet submarine B-67 The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

successfully launched a missile on 16 September 1955. The Zulus were the basis for the very successful

Foxtrot-class submarine The Foxtrot class was the NATO reporting name of a class of diesel-electric patrol submarines that were built in the Soviet Union. The Soviet designation of this class was Project 641. The Foxtrot class was designed to replace the earlier Zulu cl ...

, which lent their hull to the Golf class of ballistic missile submarine. Twenty-six boats were built overall, entering service from 1952 to 1957, 8 of them in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

and 18 in

Severodvinsk Severodvinsk ( rus, Северодвинск, p=sʲɪvʲɪrɐdˈvʲinsk) is a city in the north of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located in the delta of the Northern Dvina, west of Arkhangelsk, the administrative center of the oblast. As of the ...

. Their names were initially ''B-61'' through ''B-82'' and ''B-88'' through ''B-91'', with most renamed in the 1970s or 1980s. The class received the

s Zulu I through Zulu V, the last referring to the five converted missile-firing submarines (excluding the prototype). It is unclear from references how many of each subclass were built. Most were converted to non-combat uses and eventually scrapped.

References

* Gardiner, Robert and Chumbley, Stephen, ''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1947–1995'', Naval Institute Press, 1996. .

External links

Globalsecurity.org article

{{Soviet and Russian submarines after 1945 Russian and Soviet navy submarine classes Ballistic missile submarines