Kara
I have another photo from 1975. A picture from RVAH 7 flying off the USS Forrestal (CV 59) during a 1975 Mediterranean deployment. Again several years before my time in the squadron. The picture is of a similar nature to the one I put up last year. One Ra5c flying over a notable place or object, taking a picture of another Ra5c (no. 156631) to form a unified whole. Pictures like these were commodities of exchange, carefully achieved. I actually have a 22" by 18" version of this one which is very sharp and detailed, but which was too big to fit on the scanner. The 8 x 10" didn't scan very well the tiff was bad and I could only coax a low-res jpeg out of it. This is a candidate to be rescanned on a better scanner and replaced here. I do not remember either of these two officers, Lt. Flaherty and Turner, and can only guess they were long gone from the squadron by the time I got there. The other metadata information in the frisket indicates this picture was taken in the Gulf of Hammamet near Tunisia. It places the spot where the ship is anchored a few nautical miles off a nice beach, five miles from the small town, Harqalah, about 20 miles from the city Sousse: Gulf of Hammamet - Google Maps. 
A Soviet Kara Class Cruiser in the Mediterranean 1975
The ship in the photograph is a Kara class cruiser. What the Soviets called the Project 1134.2 Berkut B's which apparently translates to Golden Eagle. The Soviets did not consider these ships to be cruisers, referring to them as large anti-submarine patrol ships. They are still longer larger and heavier than the U S Arleigh Burke destroyers, which seem to be slowly evolving into a cruiser class vessel. The Karas were, in fact, all outfitted as flagships, meaning they contained living and working spaces for an Admiral and staff as well as the necessary command and control functions. This one has hull number 539. While the Soviets did not regard hull numbers the same way western navy's did, I looked at enough other pictures of a Kara with that hull number to lead me to believe it is the Ochakov. Looking over the larger print I can also see that Ochakov is painted in cyrillic on the hull just forward of the helo deck. The Ochakov along with the Kersh still seem active with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, 35 years later. The Ochakov may even be the current flagship. These two were the first two Karas built. They were an incremental design step up from the Kresta II's but with a new gas turbine propulsion system. Initial problems with this system led to their getting fewer deployments than the rest of the class which now have all been retired laid-up or scrapped. Their parts keeping these two going. The Christian Science Monitor had a column out just before the election Will US naval power sink? - CSMonitor.com. Naval power it said was like gravity, an unseen phenomenon out of sight but always there holding everything down. The next century, or say quarter century will be a period when keeping trade routes open and defending against force projection over the oceans will be more important than any period since the 1970's. Even before the cold war ended, the U S Navy moved toward a more littoral and patrolling focus. This commitment continues, but a blue water component will begin to reenter. The Arleigh Burke's have evolved into a major surface combatant, with a price tag to match. The next generation DDGs were so expensive they are no longer spoken of. Leaving the Navy the critical need to build and deploy thirty or forty of the newer Littoral Combat Ships to replace a fleet of retiring frigates worn down by a generation of constant duty. Aircraft Carriers suck a lot of oxygen out of a Navy's budget BBC News - Tears as last Harrier jets leave Ark Royal.
CS Monitor article stated that the political party that is truly concerned with reducing debt, is the right and best party. Only a reduction in debt will allow us to build the blue water Navy we need. The author was not so gauche as to name a party. Ironically the Debt Reduction Commission [National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform] indicates strongly that cuts across all government programs will be needed including deep cuts to military spending. This will be an obligation that will sit along the entire spectrum of political parties. Unless debt reduction was not what this about all along.
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