The Baltic Fleet was expanding with a substantial number of French-built ships while its crews were still learning unfamiliar systems. Direct French-to-Russian translation did not always produce usable technical manuals because grammar and technical expression differed as well as vocabulary. Some instructions were therefore translated first into English and then into Russian. That awkward route illustrates the hidden training burden created by foreign procurement. Hardware acquisition alone did not give the fleet the documentation, maintenance practice, or operational fluency needed to fight effectively.
Notable Point · 1:36:16-1:37:16
French-built ships created a Russian training problem
Russian crews sometimes needed French technical manuals translated through English before they became usable operating instructions.