Thanks to Casemate Publishing and IPMSUSA for the review copy!

The Moskvawas specifically designed to be a US Polaris submarine hunter/killer in the Arctic Ocean, along with her* sister ship Leningradin 1962, and operational in 1967. Their primary weapon was helicopter-launched torpedoes and depth charges assisted with sonobuoys, although the ships themselves carried missiles and torpedoes. Their reason for being evaporated when the US switched to longer range Poseidon ICBMs, meaning the boomers did not need to be in the Arctic Sea anymore. Since survival of the Moskvain open waters was problematic, as was finding boomers in time before launches, these two ships were transferred to the Black Sea fleet. Moskvaspent her remaining time shuttling to and from the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Seas until being withdrawn from service in 1996 and sent to India for scrapping in 1998.

Kagero Publishing’s latest installment of its Top Drawings series – 55 – is a softbound European A4 size with both English and Polish languages. The Top Drawings series of books are designed for modelers to have a reference for detailed appearances of individual ships. The information is detailed enough for scratch-builders, accurizers, and modifiers for building the Moskva in any scale. You get two pages of a brief history of the ship, 17 pages of black & white (B&W) line drawings of the various aspects of the ship (cutaways, decks, fittings, weapons, helicopters), and one page of other Top Drawing titles. There is no text or explanations after the history.

You also get a large, A2 size foldout of the Moskva in her early 1969 sub-hunter version with full-color drawings of profiles (starboard full hull and port waterline and top view) of the entire ship in 1/400 scale. The opposite side has the profiles, but are B&W line drawings. Another large foldout shows the Moskva in her final appearance (~1991) as 1/400 scale B&W line drawings of starboard full hull, port waterline and top views. The opposite side has a profile view showing the external and internal helicopter arrangements, and numbered “Crucial equipment” – identifying weapons, radars and other features.

Summary

Although this book is small it is intensely focused on modeler’s needs for building this ship in any scale. Two time periods (early and final appearances) are detailed, along with the helicopters shipped. Building the Moskva’ssistership, theLeningrad, would also benefit from this book. Drawings of the details, especially radars and weapons, would be useful for other post-1960 Soviet & Russian surface warships, making this book more than a one-ship must-have. Recommended highly for building any Cold War and later Soviet/Russian surface warship.

* Russian and Soviet ships had gender naming dependent on whether the word they were named after had a consonant (male) or vowel (feminine) at the end, and also whether the word was a noun or an adjective. There were many exceptions, too. Thus, to echo what most English-language writers have done, I have decided to use English convention, which means military warships are referred to as ‘she’ or ‘her’ in this review.