WesWorld

A new Caspian Sea Monster? ^^

Perhaps. But it's not on my build plan yet, and I'm still weighing several options.

Part of my issue at present (and the reason I haven't posted any of my 1945 reports yet) is that I have a small sum of tonnage for the year that I can use for a project. What I really need for Russia, however, is a big chunk of tonnage so I can replace a bunch of destroyers and light cruisers. In case it's been missed in the reports, Russia has discarded fourteen cruisers over the course of 1944, and only built six Smolensk-class torpedo cruisers to make up the shortfall. Two Avroras will be laid down in 1945, but that's only marginally closer to making up the shortfall. I'd given a lot of consideration to refitting the Saratov-class light cruisers - I had the money to do that - but Bruce got me to reconsider that plan. As a result, I started looking at other uses for the funding, and a replacement for Caspianskiy came to mind.

The Russian Caspian Flotilla isn't that bad off at the moment: there's the flagship destroyer Armeniya (6x130mm), light destroyer Caspianskiy (3x130mm), ten old Lilya-class corvettes, ten Project 71 "Gematit" minesweepers, and ten Project 61 "Gostinitsa" patrol boats. The Lilyas are really the weakest link in that force, and so replacing them with... something... should probably be a higher priority than replacing the relatively modern (by comparison) Caspianskiy.

I will shortly have twelve of the Project 73 "Obsidian" guardships on the Black Sea, and if it ever became necessary, all of them could switch over to the Caspian. With that in mind, I'm starting to lean more toward not throwing any cash at the Caspian Flotilla for the moment (perhaps the destroyers need a quickie refit). Now I'm not really sure what I want to do, since I only have about 10,000 tons flexible budget for the remainder of 1945 and 1946, and that won't go very far considering the scope of the projects I need to accomplish.