The industrial branch of the military ship repair service was formed by an order of the USSR Council of Ministers on April 8 of 1954. It is necessary to recognize the amazing vitality of the Navy shipyards established after this. They continued to function even in the extremely difficult conditions of economic oppression after the cessation of the existence of the USSR. The production process did not stop until the moment of the physical destruction of most of the capacity.
In 1954, the new industry included four ship repair yards (SRZ) - the Kronstadt Marine Plant, SRZ No. 29 in Liepaja, SRZ No. 13 in Sevastopol and SRZ No. 35 in the village of Rosta in Murmansk, as well as 22 ship repair workshops (SRM) of the merchant fleet, fishing industry and the Navy. All of them were technically backward, poorly equipped enterprises with old machine-tool, power and hoisting-and-transport equipment, which did not allow repairing modern warships.
Evolutionary process
Navy shipyards were created, expanded, reconstructed according to the experience of industrial enterprises with a shop-like structure, the development of specialized sections for the repair of a specific range of ship products and the brigade form of work organization. Capacities developed exclusively for the quantitative and qualitative composition of the naval and naval forces of the border troops at the place of their deployment.
As part of the Navy were more than 300 projects of ships and vessels. The specialization of the SRZ on a territorial basis made it possible to limit the mastering of repairs at one plant to several dozen ship projects and vessels of several fleet formations by dislocation. One could only dream of deep specialization.Fleet officers with engineering education, experience on ships, retrained in special courses at naval schools and academies were appointed to senior positions. This allowed without special complications to respond to the current needs of the fleet for repairs.
In the General Directorate of shipyards the leading place was occupied by the production department. As a rule, he was staffed by naval officers from among the leading experts with experience in managing ship repair production. Employees of the department were the curators of the enterprises. Each was run by one or two shipyards by fleet. In essence and content, the department was an analytical center consisting of line managers. Their main function is to identify bottlenecks in the production and economic activities of the plant. With the involvement of specialists from the functional departments of the central board, the identified deviations or violations were safely resolved.
In all areas of production and economic activity of SRH, industry standards were developed and implemented. This served as a scientific substantiation of the creative approach to the identification of internal reserves for the growth of labor productivity in factories.
Ship repair factories and workshops of the established industry each worked according to the established technology and according to their labor standards. To improve the quality of production and products, reduce its cost, increase the level of operational preparation for repair, it was decided to develop and implement standard repair and process documentation for ships of serial construction (TRT). Typical technological processes led to the norms of time, operations and stages, common to all plants in the industry. The introduction of TRTD into ship repair production has become an evolutionary course in the development of the industry.
In 1988, it included 23 shipyards. Based on comparable statistical indicators 1954 and 1988, the total production area increased due to the capital construction of stands, sites, test shops more than 10 times. The construction of production facilities was carried out not only on the title allocation of capital construction, but also at the expense of factories in an economic way with the subsequent restoration of working capital to the standard from the sources of financing of the Navy.
The main production assets reached 1 billion 395 million 643 thousand rubles in 1982 prices of the year, including the machine park grew from 293 units in 1954-m to more than 10 thousand in 1988-m. The length of the mooring front of shipyards in running meters, equipped with modern lifting and transport equipment, increased by more than seven times.
The capacity of shipyards to docking ships and vessels of the Navy of all classes and projects has increased significantly. The factories gave the 21 a floating dock with a carrying capacity from one to 80 thousand tons (PD-50 in Roslyakovo, PD-41 in Chazhma bay).
The total gross output of all Navy shipyards exceeded 560 million rubles in 1982 prices with a relatively small increase in the average annual number of production workers compared to 1954 year: about 32 thousand people in 1954-m and about 55 thousand in 1988-m.
It should be noted the enormous efforts and expenditures of the forces and means of the Navy for the development and improvement of the industrial sector of military ship repair in all aspects of the infrastructure of the Navy through Voentorg, medical service, capital construction, aligning the need for repairs and the ship repair base of the Navy. But many plans and plans after the destruction of the USSR remained either on paper or in work in progress.
In standby mode
In 1960, the Navy introduced the concept of "constant combat readiness" instead of the concept of "operational combat readiness." The standards for the maintenance of forces and assets in constant combat readiness have been established. At least 65 percent of missile and nuclear submarines, at least 60 percent of ships of the remaining classes, 70 percent of naval and raid ships, and at least 90 percent of naval aircraft should be in constant readiness as part of the Navy aviation, 100 percent of coastal missile and artillery wax, communications troops, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, rear and technical support. From the industrial branch of military ship repair, this required increasing production volumes for navigational, inter-naval, dock, current and medium repairs of the naval fleet.
In the Main Directorate of the Navy's shipyards, the only right direction was determined to increase production volumes due to the annual growth of labor productivity. Plants were directed to develop and implement annual and five-year plans for improving production efficiency (PEP plans) in order to achieve a given increase in labor productivity.
Also in 1960, the USSR Council of Ministers decided on the specialization of the naval shipyards for the repair of nuclear submarines. Plans have been developed and approved for the preparation of production for the repair of ships with a nuclear power plant (NPI). Fire plans had to be adjusted in the direction of tightening due to identified manufacturing defects of the steam generators of nuclear power plants.
In 1963, the country's military-political leadership decided to transfer the Navy to combat service by ships in ocean and maritime theaters of military operations in order to prevent sudden nuclear strikes on our territory from ships of unfriendly countries. In essence, combat service and combat duty became the main activity of the Navy in peacetime and the highest form of maintaining the combat readiness of naval forces, which excluded the possibility of a sudden attack by the aggressor. Up to this point, individual ships went to autonomous navigation with a specific task. Starting with 1965, such campaigns are consolidated into the combat service system. During the period from 1965 to 2000, domestic submarines made about 3800 trips to combat service.
From the middle of 1969, diesel-electric submarines of the Northern Fleet as part of a brigade with a duration of seven to thirteen months began to enter service in the Mediterranean. Before 1975, diesel submarines were the main forces in combat service, then the nuclear submarines of strategic purpose (SSBN) and atomic multi-purpose submarines intercepted the palm. If we assume that the average duration of a 90 combat service of a day, then the total presence of submarine crews at sea is as many as 950 years.
In 1976, 38 submarines with ballistic missiles, 30 nuclear multi-purpose submarines, 60 diesel torpedo submarines and 111 submarines, more than 100 units of auxiliary fleet were in combat service. They were contenders for extraordinary technical support, attracting the naval ship repair base as a queuing system.
The increase in operating voltage ratio
In 1967, a system of cyclical use of ships in the small and large cycle is introduced. It turned out that the production capacity of the military ship repair industry is not enough. The decision is made to deploy certain projects for ship repair to ship repair enterprises of the Ministry of Shipbuilding Industry, including nuclear submarines at Zvezda and Zvezdochka enterprises. From that moment, a good and not very competitive competition began between the branch of the military ship repair and the shipbuilders.
There is no objective assessment based on state statistical reporting on the contribution of industries to the combat readiness of the Navy in terms of repairs. Subjective opinions of representatives of the fleet technical services differ. In the Baltic, for example, preference is given to the Ministry of Shipbuilding. The most difficult situation with ship repair was in the Northern and Pacific fleets. Military ship repair plants worked in excess of production capacity by 30 – 40 percent.
The amount of money to pay for the implementation of repair work on 49 and 35-th budget allocations from year to year, the costs were the same. In terms of the number of ships and vessels handed over to the fleet after performing dock, current and medium repairs, the industry accounts for 70 – 80 percent.
During this period, the complex repair of shipboard armament and equipment on a single schedule for all warheads with a reduction in the number of counterparties acquires great importance. The repair of navigation and firing systems, communications, radio equipment, hydroacoustics, and electronic warfare equipment is being mastered. Specialized areas are being created, new buildings of workshops for the repair of technical weapons are being built, and are being saturated with modern equipment. In 1989, factories for the repair of technical weapons were transferred to the industry, previously subordinated to the central directorates of the Navy: 195, 50, and 69 — for repairing missile and artillery weapons; 365, 44, 813-th - for the repair of radio equipment.
Some analysis of the information in the open press according to the coefficient of operational voltage in a large cycle indicates that it has steadily increased since the 1967 year, but it began to decline rapidly from the 1987. The authors of the information on this phenomenon called the cause of the overstrain of forces or low rates of development of the infrastructure of the Navy with an enviable stable dynamics of the arrival in the fleet of a large number of modern ships and ships of many projects. For sailors, the cold war was not so cool. On the ocean and sea expanses, full-scale sea operations were carried out in direct contact with the opposing side and their counteraction with all the forces and means of warfare with the exception of the use of shock weapons to destroy each other. After five or six years of intensive exploitation, the unique houses of the new buildings were queued up for repair in the Navy and SMEs SRH. But the root cause of the sharp drop in the values of the coefficient of operating voltage was not this.
May 29 The so-called defensive doctrine appeared in the Soviet Union in 1987, which instructed not to have the means to deploy offensive operations at all. With its adoption, the combat capability and combat readiness of the Navy significantly decreased, and after the destruction of the USSR, it served as the theoretical justification for the consistent elimination of the ocean, nuclear missile and Navy.
Waiting for a change
During the period of perestroika and publicity, the ship repair factories of the industry worked by inertia as before. The degradation consequence of the military doctrine, unrecognized by the majority, gradually penetrated into all areas of the Navy’s activities. If earlier general control of ship repair was carried out and specific measures were taken by the center, then subsequently the responsibility of the naval authorities was reduced. Disruption of delivery and shortage of spare parts for repair by customers, preparation of ship crews for launching sea trials, difficulties in identifying landfills and providing sea trials for fleets led to non-compliance of shipyards' plans, non-payment of repairs to the plant’s financial and economic activities. .
There was no reduction in the budget allocation for the repair of weapons and military equipment of the Navy. The introduction of two forms of economic calculation did not affect the existing production process at the plants. The indicators of production activity and paper forms of state statistical reporting have changed. The unprincipled, meaningless replica, the election of the first managers of enterprises and organizations did not affect the industry. The directors' corps remained unshakable, still the officers of the fleet were appointed by the orders of their superiors.
In 1988, the decision was unexpectedly made to assign several battalions of servicemen called up for military service to 10 thousand for shipbuilding plants of the Navy. The solution is far from new. In 1954, when creating the industry, the factories were 8684 troops from the 31 891 production worker. But then the duration of conscription service in the Navy was five years instead of two for the newly formed ship repair battalions.
Over time, the number of conscripts in the SRH decreased, by 1988, in some factories, ship repair companies remained as production workers. Ship repair units at the factories were kept on cost accounting. With the addition of additional battalions, the plans of shipyards on production volumes increased in proportion to the growth of the number. However, the 4 machine operator, who was hired by the ship repair plant from a machine-building enterprise, had been learning for a long time and did not fulfill technically sound time standards. At a machine-building plant in mass production, he performed on the machine one or two technological operations for metal processing. At the ship repair, he is forced to carry out the entire cycle of technological operations for the production of a tight-fitting bolt with rolled threads of round steel. A bolt is needed just now and immediately.
Brigades in the shops completely refused to take additional parasites. Constantly there were difficulties in the arrangement of military units, the observance of military and labor discipline. When dashing days came, the services of the ship repair battalions had to be abandoned.
It is impossible to describe everything that ship repairmen had to endure during the collapse of the state. Reformers, specialists from the economy, simultaneously zeroed the working capital of factories, pushing them onto a lifeline. The Navy did not pay for the invoices for repairs. No other paying customers could be found. The debt of the factories for the consumed electricity, fuel, materials, raw materials, components increased exponentially with respect to fines and penalties. The debt of the customer remained incommensurable with the debt of the plants. For several months, the ship repairmen did not receive wages.
The revival of the Navy of the Russian Federation, the restoration of the honor and dignity of military sailors, the re-establishment of a military ship repair will all come to pass, but now the rudder stock is jammed to starboard and the ship is moving in constant circulation.