Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *Preview* The Kuznetsov, Russia's Cursed Aircraft Carrier

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

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Hey everyone, what you're about to listen to is a preview of a bonus episode that is available on our Patreon. If you like this clip, you can grab the whole episode as well as years of other bonus content at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. There is still ships that definitely burn in mazoot and mazoot like substances out there. They're all very, very old or they are very old ships that are still in use by shipping companies that will flag them out of, say, Liberia to escape any kind of laws. No modern shipping company in a place that has to follow any kind of environmental concerns

or even safety concerns is still using it. And by 1982, you're talking about like modern, was this already kind of out of date by 1982? It was out of date by like at least a decade. Yeah. Fuck. By time of construction, it was out of date. But remember, it's very, very cheap.

They have tons of it laying around and the Soviets pretty much all use Mazoot burning engines already. So they have the expertise required to build them. And it's the 80s in the Soviet Union. They don't exactly have the money, the expertise or the materials to suddenly start putting modern technology in the Navy. And also the Soviet Navy was always kind of an afterthought. So it always got like as things trickled down through the budgetary concerns of like the Ministry of Defense, the Navy was kind of what like the US Coast Guard is when they're like hoping for like catch what comes down at the end of the tunnel there.

Like can please can I have some COPEX? You know? I realize we phased out the Mizzou powered strategic bomber squadron, so could we maybe have some of their supply of Mizzou? Just imagining a plane just pumping out black smoke. I mean, that's kind of like the- Yeah, they get the B minus grade.

We could really use some of that, please, sir. They get some of the Mizzou you have stuck at the bottom of your shoes. See, the Soviets actually invented a time machine and they saw dudes from the Midwest rolling coal everywhere. And they're like, what if we built this into an aircraft carrier? I've told this story so many times on other shows,

but I once saw a kid in Lawrence County, Indiana, rolling coal in a Volkswagen Passat diesel that he had a smokestack cut a hole through his front hood to put it basically obstructing his line of sight as the driver But he could roll coal from his front from the front hood. I was like that's that's that's dedication I don't rock parentheses derogatory. Yeah, I mean, it's not a wise decision Yeah, it's just one of those things where We love man yearns to burn

Combustion fuels man learns me and yearns to make a huge cloud of smoke in his wake. Hell yeah. I don't know why. It's just a thing we do. Now, Mazoot may sound like a dumb cheap fuel, therefore making it easy to use, but it's not. First, the ship goo must be preheated because it's kind of like a glop. It's a goo-like substance.

It's not like... The ideal mazute should pass the DQ blizzard test, but they flip it upside down for you. That's actually what the, after sanctions, that's what the local Moscow DQ has to serve. So it's a complex and mercurial goo when it comes to being used as a combustion agent. It reminds me of that old SNL bit,

back when SNL was funny of like- Oh, you mean never, you mean the impossible land of the past. Okay, every once in a while they had a solid bit where they had like this bouncing ball that was made out of like a mysterious substance that fell from space, so like it was called happy fun ball.

Like do not look directly at happy fun ball, if happy fun ball begins to glow and shake violently sheek shelter immediately SNL actually has some funny bits But the problem is is that every bit goes on ten minutes too long because they have to fill two hours every week I see see that's unfair because once upon a time they had Steven Seagal host and and it's the The best version of anti comedy that has ever existed on accident because he actually thinks he is doing Solid fucking yucks out there. It's perfect And there's a reason why he was never invited back one time they had Rudy Giuliani on when he was mayor of New York City

And he did a bunch of acts in drag and you could tell he fucking loves it Like that means a freak not I'm not I'm not trying to like oh It's bad when someone questions their gender identity. It's just more along the lines, like, you can tell, it's like 1996, Rudy Giuliani is in drag and he is having the time of his life. I mean, famously he did a bit in drag with Donald Trump in the 80s. The pattern occurs.

It's either the 80s or the early 90s, but yeah, I mean, that man loves drag. I mean, that witch is the only good thing I could say about Rudy Giuliani. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, Rudy Giuliani loves yelling at people if their cell phones go off, so I suppose that's one thing I can admire about him, but other than that, yeah, piece of shit. Now, first, this mazute goo must be preheated to a very certain temperature before being pumped into a complicated system of pipes and valves through a series of

boilers. Only then can it be used for propulsion. Now remember how I talked about the corners the Soviets cut on piping and boilers and pumps? Well, in order for this Mazoot process to work correctly, the ship would need high quality pumps and valves and pipes able to achieve this preheating and pressure system required for the sludge to turn into gojuice. This ship did not have these. Through a series of fucked up events, Mazoot is pumped into the Kuznetsov engines via a

series of busted pipes, broken boilers, like the heating element not heating it to the correct temperature like it should be, leading it to it only being partially burnt and the rest being pumped out as choking black smoke through the top of the ship through such a volume it can literally be seen from space. Yup. Now, if you're pumping out that much unburnt disgusting mazute smoke, a certain amount of it is going to be backfed into the ship itself.

And because of the eternal air purification systems never working like they should in the first place, a solid percentage of that smoke ends up flooding the ship's compartments at all times whenever it's in motion. All right, well, at least it's all of the compartments. At least it's not like the captain gets a nice air filter. Everyone is experiencing like the Soviet hotbox machine? Yeah, the privilege of... The Russian Navy is just developing new chemicals to coat your lungs with.

The privilege of Rank is that as the captain, you do get a Soviet-made Glade plug-in. It weighs 70 pounds. Nuclear-powered. The smell that it emits is she, the cabbage soup. However, you do at least have that to potentially make the smell of your quarters a little better than the back blowing smoke. Captain Yuri, we have given you Glade plugin. It smells like farts and cabbage. It is better than the mazute that is now filling your insides with the glory of the worker's

paradise. You want it to smell good when Tim Curry comes into your room and you have to break his neck because you're a rogue Soviet captain, an Estonian, an untrustable Baltic. Other than the comical appearance of the ship that always looks like it's on the verge of exploding has a direct feedback loop into its power plant. Because remember, the reason why there's so much smoke is because it's not burning fuel correctly, meaning it's not moving like it should.

Unburnt Mazoot constantly bogs down the ship's boilers and causes them to routinely break down. Now, none of these things really snuck up on the Soviets and there were known issues at the time of building the fucking thing and but they just figured we'll figure it out. But another known issue to the Soviets was the Montreux Convention of the Turkish Straits that said aircraft carriers would not be able to pass through. Now obviously that is a problem for an aircraft carrier that was meant to be the jewel of the Soviet Navy and also being built in Ukraine. It would have to pass through the Straits unless

they were spending all this time and money and sweet luscious nutritious mazute on a ship that would never be able to leave the Black Sea. So the Soviets began slapping dozens upon dozens of cruise missiles onto the fucking thing and declared it a heavy aircraft carrying cruiser on account of all the missiles and thus got around the convention. Boom. Lawyered. Wait, so it's a missile cruiser that just so happens to have a couple of planes on it? That's right.

No. Checking those boxes. I gotta be real with you. I don't really know the difference, but I can understand that. It's because there isn't one. It's just the aircraft carrier that has missiles now. Okay, cool. I mean, that conventions like this are made to be broken.

Oh, a specific aircraft carrier cannot pass through the straits. Okay, well, I say it's not an aircraft carrier, and prove me wrong. Well, it carries aircraft, well it also carries Marines. So it's an amphibious warfare vessel. What happens if you have a container ship and it just happens to have containers full of helicopters that have been disassembled?

I mean that's carrying aircraft, right? I mean it's the same thing that the Japanese do. It's not an aircraft carrier. We have signed a treaty that forbid those, so we have helicopter carriers. Then yes, they can be easily converted to launch aircraft, but it's not an aircraft carrier. Don't say it's an aircraft carrier. It's not a plane. It's got anime on it. It's a mobile advertisement. It does have a significant number of munitions systems on it, but it's also an advertisement for anime. So that's

its primary purpose. If they say, if the Japanese self-defense navy or whatever the hell it, self-defense maritime force, which I think is what they call their navy, if they say the words aircraft carrier, an angel from Evangelion will emerge from the sea and snap it in half over its knee, like, you know, happens in the show. Now, yeah yeah the music starts playing and everything is fucked up yeah now this is also Soviet doctrine for a long long time in short I mean the missiles not the Gillians not the anime plane that's actually not a real plane yeah exactly

in short the Soviets loved cruise missiles and ICBMs in general because they thought that they would cover a lot of the Soviet military's weaknesses however building that many missiles actually further weakened the Soviet military and the Navy specifically because like I said the Navy was kind of at the bottom of the Soviet military hierarchy when it came to funding.