Hello again, everyone!
Apologies for the late update. Tuesday night was rather eventful in terms of global geopolitics. But we're here now.
Today's gonna be something of a mini-highlight, with the first civilian ship to enter the roster: The Maria Yermolova-class passenger ship. Without weapon or aviation facilities, though, there's not as much to go over, hence the "mini" part of the "mini-highlight".
These ships really got around, being used for regional, arctic, and even antarctic cruises. They were used for both Soviet and foreign tourists. Eight of these were produced between 1974-78 as Project 1454, and about half remain in operation today.
Some sources claim they had a top speed of 12 knots, but more claim their top speed was 17-17.2 knots, depending on the ship. For Blue Water, they will be modeled with a top speed of 17 knots.
The ship could provide quarters for 206 souls, with all passenger spaces being air conditioned and ten cabins even having folding children's beds. The upper aft deck had a restaurant that could seat 100, and the ship had an additional bar, cafe-cinema, music room with a bar, dance floor and bandstand.
In addition to the deck space for lounging, there were indoor spaces with large windows to serve the function of deck space when sailing in very cold weather.
One of these ships, the MV Lyubov Orlova was being towed to be scrapped in 2012, when the tow line broke sending it adrift. It became subject to some rumors of becoming infested with cannibal rats, but those were ultimately debunked.
There are photos of them sporting different paint schemes, though with the lack of (correctly) dated photographs it's hard to ascertain exactly which ships sported what paint jobs when.
Civilian traffic poses complications - a radar contact may be a hostile ship or a cruise liner. Even for leadership who disregard the appalling collateral damage, sending an antiship missile salvo at a civilian ship would prove catastrophic, as the number of antiship missiles your task force carries will be limited compared to the enemy's interception, point-defense and decoy capabilities, meaning that not only for moral but also for tactical reasons, getting a VID on the target is absolutely essential.
That's all for now. Thanks for joining us, please feel free to discuss and comment below. We'll hope to be on-time and have more to show off next week. Until then, clear sailing.