Project 1171 (Tapir) class landing ship (NATO reporting name: Alligator) is a class of Soviet / Russian general purpose, beachable amphibious transport docks (Soviet classification: Large landing ship, Russian: БДК, большой десантный корабль).
Design of Project 1171 was initiated in 1959 by the Navy, while a similar dual-purpose Project 1173 was ordered by the civilian Ministry of Shipping. Eventually both designs were merged under Project 1171 umbrella, and the resulting ship was a compromise between military (speed, survivability) and civil (fuel economy) objectives. Design team produced four different configurations of the ship. The Navy selected the most powerful and fastest option, which was also least fuel-efficient, and the civil Ministry withdrew from the project completely. All production ships were made for the Navy and never operated on shipping lines.
A total of 14 vessels were completed between 1964 and 1975; all were retired in 1992–1995. As at September, 2008, two vessels, currently named Orsk and Saratov are in active service with the 179-th brigade of Russian Black Sea Fleet. An unidentified number remains in reserve.
Saratov (БДК-65) was launched in July 1964, commissioned in 1966 as Voronezhsky Komsomolets. As a leader ship of a formation, it lacked the habitable troops compartments installed on other ships of the class. Saratov was stationed in Donuzlav (Black Sea Fleet) until the Union collapsed and then remained mothballed in Odessa until 1994. The ship was reported in active operations in 2000 and later.
Orsk (БДК-69) was launched and commissioned in 1968 as Nikolay Obekov. It served a total of 11 campaigns in Indian and Atlantic oceans and the Mediterranean. Later, under Russian flag, it carried peacekeeping troops and materials to Yugoslavia, Adjaria and Abkhazia.
Some vessels were used in the 2008 South Ossetia war.
Famous quotes containing the words alligator, class, landing and/or ship:
“‘Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado on lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alligator dies in his mail, and the swordfish never surrenders. To expire, mild-eyed, in one’s bed, transcends the death of Epaminondas.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“I have been amazed by the Anglo-Saxon’s lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions of the Negroes, and for that matter, any non-Anglo-Saxon peoples within our borders, above the class of unskilled labor.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn’t prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C)