Heavy industry was the Second Five-Year Plan's stated priority, but faster, more reliable railways and communications were essential to making the industrial system work. The programme built foundations for larger military expansion in a later plan even though it missed its production targets. An interwar carrier demanded less armour plate and heavy-gun production than a battleship. Years of Caspian operations could meanwhile have solved basic launch, recovery, and training problems before an ocean-going hull was ordered. That combination could make one carrier for the Northern Fleet and another for the Pacific Fleet plausible additions to a strained industrial programme.
Chapter · 47:29-50:12
The Second Five-Year Plan opens a path to fleet carriers
Experience from the Caspian demonstrator could place operational carriers within the Soviet Union's 1930s industrial expansion.