Soviet Union Archives

Aerospace & Defense

Russia Built a Titanium Hulled ‘Golden Fish’ Nuclear Submarine That Could Hit 44 Knots That Had 2 Reactors. The Goal Was to Hunt US Navy Aircraft Carriers

Ordinary pressure hulls were steel. Project 661 (also known as the Papa-Class or the K-222 submarine) used titanium alloy, which meant the Soviet Union...

Harrison Kass2 hours ago

SR-71 Blackbird over the Earth Creative Commons Photo

Aerospace & Defense

To Fly the US Air Force SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3 and 85,000 Feet You Needed an Astronaut’s Body, Iron Nerves, and the Stomach to Outrun Soviet Missiles

The Air Force never advertised. A board met at Beale roughly every six months to fill seats opening seven to nine months later, working...

Harry J. Kazianis4 hours ago

Aerospace & Defense

The United States Did Not Have Enough High-Grade Titanium to Build the SR-71 Blackbird, So the CIA Bought It From the Soviet Union Through Shell Companies in Neutral Countries. The Airframe Was 85 to 90 Percent Titanium, and Much of the Ore Came Out of Soviet Ukraine.

Cadmium-plated steel tools embrittled titanium on contact, so Lockheed had to build new tools out of titanium for the SR-71 Blackbird. Parts washed in...

Harry J. Kazianis18 hours ago

Varyag under tow in Istanbul. Mainland China purchased the former Soviet carrier, Varyag, from the Ukraine in 1998 for about $20 million dollars (US). The Varyag was the newer, sister ship to the Russian Kuznetsov. But the Ukrainian government had never finished the carrier after the fall of the Soviet Union and had tried to sell it to various concerns. As a result, the carrier fell into a state of disrepair. The Chinese bought the carrier and indicated that the holding company that had purchased it planned to tow it to Red China and make it a floating casino.

Aerospace & Defense

China’s First Aircraft Carrier Was Bought from Ukraine By a Travel Agency for $20,000,000 in 1998 Under a Plan to Make It a Floating Casino in Macau. It Was Commissioned Into the People’s Liberation Army Navy as the Liaoning.

The Varyag aircraft carrier had no propulsion and no crew, so it had to be dragged. Turkey refused passage through the Bosphorus for sixteen...

Harrison Kass20 hours ago

Typhoon-Class Submarine SSBN Soviet Navy

Aerospace & Defense

The Soviet Typhoon-Class Submarine Displaced 48,000 Tons, Carried Up to 200 Nuclear Warheads, and Had a Swimming Pool and a Sauna. It Could Stay Under the Arctic Ice for 120 Days.

Inside one outer casing sat five separate pressure hulls: two complete parallel main hulls side by side like a catamaran, plus three more for...

Harry J. Kazianis1 day ago

Aerospace & Defense

Congress Spent $100,000,000 Bringing Just 2 SR-71 Blackbirds Back from Retirement in 1995 and Another $30,000,000 in 1997. By 1998 the Program Was Dead Again.

Across its whole service life the SR-71 Blackbird accumulated 53,490 flight hours, 11,675 of them above Mach 3, over 17,300 sorties. By the late...

Brandon Weichert2 days ago

Vega Space Probe 19FortyFive Photo From Smithsonian Taken on June 30 2026

Space and Technology

In June 1985 Russia Flew 2 Balloons Through the Sulfuric Acid Clouds of Venus. They Rode 150-Mile-an-Hour Winds for 46 Hours and 11,600 Kilometers, and No Balloon Has Flown on Another Planet Since.

In June 1985 the Soviet Union released 2 balloons into the clouds of Venus. Each was 3.4 meters across, hung a 7-kilogram gondola from...

Harry J. Kazianis4 days ago

Aerospace & Defense

The US Navy Built 188 Lockheed S-3 Viking Aircraft to Hunt and Kill Soviet Submarines from Aircraft Carriers. Not 1 of Them Ever Sank a Submarine. They Destroyed Iraqi Missile Sites and Coastal Radars Instead.

Lockheed built 188 S-3 Vikings for one job: finding and killing Soviet submarines from the deck of an aircraft carrier. The Soviet Union collapsed...

Christian D. Orr4 days ago

Space and Technology

A Russian spacecraft built in 1972 to land on Venus finally made its landing 53 years later, on 10 May 2025 — except it came down on Earth, carried through a fiery reentry intact by the same titanium shell its engineers had built to survive the hottest planet in the solar system.

At around one in the morning on April 3, 1972, four red-hot titanium spheres fell out of the sky onto farmland near Ashburton on...

Harry J. Kazianis5 days ago

Aerospace & Defense

China Built Its First Army Tank From a Russian Copy in 1959. Its Newest One Has an Empty Turret and a Smaller Gun — From the Same Factory

On October 1, 1959, Chinese-built copies of the Soviet T-54A crossed Tiananmen Square at the parade marking the People's Republic's tenth anniversary. They came...

Harry J. Kazianis6 days ago

19FortyFive

All posts tagged "Soviet Union"

Aerospace & Defense

Russia Built a Titanium Hulled ‘Golden Fish’ Nuclear Submarine That Could Hit 44 Knots That Had 2 Reactors. The Goal Was to Hunt US Navy Aircraft Carriers

Aerospace & Defense

To Fly the US Air Force SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3 and 85,000 Feet You Needed an Astronaut’s Body, Iron Nerves, and the Stomach to Outrun Soviet Missiles

Aerospace & Defense

The United States Did Not Have Enough High-Grade Titanium to Build the SR-71 Blackbird, So the CIA Bought It From the Soviet Union Through Shell Companies in Neutral Countries. The Airframe Was 85 to 90 Percent Titanium, and Much of the Ore Came Out of Soviet Ukraine.

Aerospace & Defense

China’s First Aircraft Carrier Was Bought from Ukraine By a Travel Agency for $20,000,000 in 1998 Under a Plan to Make It a Floating Casino in Macau. It Was Commissioned Into the People’s Liberation Army Navy as the Liaoning.

Aerospace & Defense

The Soviet Typhoon-Class Submarine Displaced 48,000 Tons, Carried Up to 200 Nuclear Warheads, and Had a Swimming Pool and a Sauna. It Could Stay Under the Arctic Ice for 120 Days.

Aerospace & Defense

Congress Spent $100,000,000 Bringing Just 2 SR-71 Blackbirds Back from Retirement in 1995 and Another $30,000,000 in 1997. By 1998 the Program Was Dead Again.

Space and Technology

In June 1985 Russia Flew 2 Balloons Through the Sulfuric Acid Clouds of Venus. They Rode 150-Mile-an-Hour Winds for 46 Hours and 11,600 Kilometers, and No Balloon Has Flown on Another Planet Since.

Aerospace & Defense

The US Navy Built 188 Lockheed S-3 Viking Aircraft to Hunt and Kill Soviet Submarines from Aircraft Carriers. Not 1 of Them Ever Sank a Submarine. They Destroyed Iraqi Missile Sites and Coastal Radars Instead.

Space and Technology

A Russian spacecraft built in 1972 to land on Venus finally made its landing 53 years later, on 10 May 2025 — except it came down on Earth, carried through a fiery reentry intact by the same titanium shell its engineers had built to survive the hottest planet in the solar system.

Aerospace & Defense

China Built Its First Army Tank From a Russian Copy in 1959. Its Newest One Has an Empty Turret and a Smaller Gun — From the Same Factory

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