Russian Cruiser 'Azov' in the South Atlantic. The first ship in the world with a Vertical Launching System.
While most of the world in the 1970s believed the German navy to be the strongest on Earth, it was only a front of the Imperial Ministry of propaganda. Far from the elite fighting force of the Great War Era, the Kaiserliche Marine was growing obsolete and soft. While the quality of sailor was still unmatched anywhere in the world, the ships used had barely changed. Germany still possessed the largest fleet on earth by number and tonnage, but it was largely ships that would have been cutting edge twenty years before their christening.
Meanwhile, in the police state of Russia, naval technology no longer took a backseat. With Germany on one side, Japan on the other, and both American states possessing much greater shipbuilding capacity of their own, the Russians began looking to even the playing field. They lacked the natural ports and colonial holdings that the others did, and so focused on building medium-sized ships, capable of fitting in any port, and centered around larger cruisers with massive batteries of missiles. Radar, fire-control, and large anti-shipping missiles were prioritized for ships, to act independently and in open water. With the Greenland-Iceland-Britain gap split between the Internationale and the Reichspakt, the Russians didn't worry about getting their ships through, as it would be as simple as taking the opposing route in case of war with one or the other.
Because of their neutrality in the Cold War, totalitarian government, and immense heavy industry, they were quickly able to build a large, modern navy with a focus on destroying large groups of enemy capital vessels from long range. A fleet of anti submarine destroyers, aircraft-carrying cruisers, and modern submarines was developed, largely in secret thanks to the efforts of the GUR, the Russian intelligence gathering organization.
By 1975, the buildup was no longer able to be kept secret, whether from German high-altitude reconnaissance, or the infiltration of Vladivostok by the Kempeitai, but the knowledge that Russia had a major navy was out there. At first, it was dismissed in the Reichspakt, as Russia did not traditionally possess a powerful navy, it's own pitiful flotilla being demolished during the Second Weltkrieg. However, with the Russian mission to Argentina in October of 1975 being comprised of twenty vessels, including two modern aircraft carriers, it spurred massive uproar in Germany. The Kaiserliche Marine's recent naval expansion was underwhelming, with the primary focus being on fleet carriers for aerial superiority, their ultimate goal being to secure air dominance over contested regions. The Russians, who had no delusions of air superiority, developed their naval-air doctrine to involve low strikes by supersonic aircraft, early warning and detection, and area denial of enemy bombers. They employed massive anti-air missiles with much better kinematic performance and targeting systems than the Germans, with an extremely long range for the time.
By 1978, Russian and German fleets in the Mediterranean and South Atlantic regularly crossed each other, waiting for someone to shoot. It only took one incident.
January 5th, 1979. Rio de la Plata. Russian cruiser
Azov, on exercise with the Argentinian navy, picks up a mysterious encrypted signal west of her, about twenty kilometers off the cost of Uruguay, a German ally. The signal, clearly an encrypted radio transmission, is located just fifty-kilometers from the flotilla's current position and within Radar range.
The
Azov, equipped with the Metel anti-ship missile complex, the P-120 Malachit, and the brand-new S-300F SAM, it is more advanced than any other ship in South America. It is escorted by two Project-670-II class submarines,
K-503 and
K-508. Both carry the P-120 Malachit anti-ship missile as well, a missile built to guide on datalink from a radar, which the
Azov provides.
Unknown to them, their opponent is the German super-battleship
Großadmiral Raeder, the largest military vessel in the world and the largest ever built or put into service. An H-44M class of vessel, it sported sixteen 480mm guns, with two dozen heat-seeking surface-to-air missile systems, seventy-two cannon AAA, and half-a-dozen 533mm long-range, magnetically guided torpedoes. A deadweight tonnage of 131,000 tons, it it more than seven times the combined weight of the Russian flotilla. It carries more than a meter of armor in it's most sensitive areas. The refit-Yamato Class was taken out of service only three years prior, making it the only nuclear-powered vessel of it's kind anywhere in the world. In fact, other than the
Saratov-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the planning stages at this time, it was the only ship in the world weighing over 100,000 tons with a nuclear reactor.
However, it is mostly obsolete.
More than half the deck-surface of the s is blocked by the gargantuan gun turrets, which, while capable of firing 4,000kg nuclear-tipped shells out to seventy-kilometers, is massively outranged by the Russian Anti-ship missiles, capable of hitting out to more than one-hundred kilometers, and with far greater accuracy. Even worse, the
Großadmiral Raeder has no anti-missile armament which can reliably hit the supersonic anti-ship missiles of the Russians. The surface-to-air missiles, of which there are two arm-launchers, are not rated for the speed and size of a small anti-ship missile. Primarily for hitting aircraft too fast for the guns, the German navy has not caught on to missile warfare yet.
At 12:11 PM, the
Azov detects the
Großadmiral Raeder on its radar. The Azov is a newer ship, with a newer radar than the German vessel. However, it is not as tall or as wide-angle, and therefore does not have quite the definition of the
Raeder. However, that is not needed. The proximity of the vessels means that both ships can see each other clearly with their search radar.
At 12:15PM, the
Großadmiral Raeder paints the
Azov on its fire control radar. It is within range, and the German captain believes that he can overwhelm the Russians in a massive "alpha-strike" of firepower. However, he does not want to provoke a nuclear war, and so does not load the nuclear-tipped shells, a gun-type bomb with a yield of Ten Kilotons. He gives the order to fire a broadside. The German Captain believes the Russian ship to be on a course to intercept his own, and will not tolerate the "Lesser Russians" to destroy his ship preemptively with "deceptive means".
12:21PM. The Russian sensor operator notices that the German ship has turned broadside, based on it's radar return. He alerts the captain, who raises the alarm. Immediately,
Azov detects the shells in the air, moving towards them at a rapid 1,100 m/s. The Russian cruiser reacts immediately, opening the vertical launch tubes, and firing upon the shells. Unfortunately for the
Raeder, the shells it fires are so massive that they can be clearly seen on radar. The S-300F missile, the first of it's kind mounted to ships, has the capability to hit shells exactly like it, and it has forty-eight, plus shorter-range 4K33 Osa-M surface-to-air missiles as well, of which the
Azov has forty-four. Even still, the
Azov is equipped with four AK-630 multi-barrel cannons for point-defense.
Despite being about one-fifteenth the weight of the gigantic German, it is far more capable of defending itself. The fire-control radar immediately locks on to the German battleship, launching four P-120 missiles, followed up by four Metel anti-ship torpedoes. The Metel, a radar-homing torpedo carried on a missile, can penetrate the torpedo belt of the German battleship and cause flooding. Now, both of the Submarines have launched their missiles, another eight P-120 missiles.
However, one shell gets through. An astounding lucky shot, the only shell that survived the firestorm of the
Azov's air defense was the only shell on a trajectory to impact the
Azov. It was all that was needed.
The Azov split in half from the blast, lifting the ship out of the water and slamming it back down, with anyone on the deck or in the superstructure dead in seconds. Both submarines, having fired their missiles and believing there could be no survivors, dove immediately and began slinking away to report their battle. Soon, it would be world news.
But it wasn't any better for the
Raeder. The second salvo of missiles, that had not had full guidance in, did miss. However, the first salvo, comprising of four P-120s and two torpedoes, struck the
Raeder nearly in unison. The P-120s had gone high, while the torpedoes hit half a minute later to devastating effect. The P-120s, being radar-guided, hit the part of the ship with the largest radar return. That would have been the lower belt. Equipped with an enormous, 840kg shaped charge warhead, the P-120 had more than enough penetration to blow four gigantic holes only a short distance above the waterline. However, the swell was high enough that it could get in, and the ship began to slowly take on water.
Only four hits would not be enough to sink the titan though. Two more hits below the waterline by torpedoes rocked the ship again, and further missile strikes, guided only by inertia, struck the rear of the ship on the rear turret. This was the killing blow. Blasting through the side armor, a P-120 missile rocketed in during the reloading process, causing an explosion of the ammunition in the rearmost turret of the
Raeder. This immediately destroyed much of the aft-end of the ship and blew out the propulsion, leaving it a sitting duck. Meanwhile, the reactor was breached and began to leak hazardous gasses and radiation, while the breach also meant a loss of power. The Captain uses the emergency backup power to restore long-range communication, exclaiming that the
Raeder was attacked and that it was damaged. Calling for help from the nearest German Base at Luanda, which receives his message and dispatches a fleet of destroyers and U-boats to investigate. Meanwhile, the Soviet submarines get in contact with the Russian airbase at La Plata, which is the newest foreign base of the Russian military.
Beriev A-50 at La Plata Airfield. The Argentinian base was the second base to receive the new A-50.
Scrambling an A-50 AWACs from their base in Argentina, escorted by fighters, they found both the
Azov and the
Raeder quickly, and pieced together what happened. Bombers with torpedoes, bombs, and anti-ship missiles were then launched from Argentina, where they finished off the
Raeder by 21:25PM that night. No survivors were ever found from the
Azov, and although it enraged both countries, the superiority of missiles in combat gave the Russians enough of an edge that when the German's put together the battle piece by piece from the survivors of the
Raeder, they began developing newer ships that were much more useful in combat. This was an indirect of the diffusion of German ships across the world, to navies that otherwise would have little material or shipbuilding capability, they were able to buy pre-built, more modern capital vessels than they could have otherwise.
