The Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleships (Project 23, , "Soviet Union"), also known as "Stalin's Republics", were a class of battleships begun by the Soviet Union in the late 1930s but never brought into service. They were designed in response to the s being built by Germany. Only four hulls of the fifteen originally planned had been laid down by 1940, when the decision was made to cut the program to only three ships to divert resources to an expanded army rearmament program. These ships would have rivaled the Imperial Japanese and America's planned in size if any had been completed, although with significantly weaker firepower: nine guns compared to the nine guns of the Japanese ships and a dozen on the Montanas. The failure of the Soviet armor plate industry to build cemented armor plates thicker than would have negated any advantages from the Sovetsky Soyuz class's thicker armor in combat. Construction of the first four ships was plagued with difficulties as the Soviet shipbuilding and related industries were not prepared to build such large ships. One battleship, Sovetskaya Belorussiya, was cancelled on 19 October 1940 after serious construction flaws were found. Construction of the other three ships was suspended shortly after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and never resumed. All three of the surviving hulls were scrapped in the late 1940s. Design and development Design work began in 1935 on new battleships in response to the existing and planned German battleships, and the Soviets made extensive efforts in Italy and the United States to purchase either drawings or the ships themselves in the late 1930s. The Italian firm of Gio. Ansaldo & C. proposed a ship of standard displacement with nine 16-inch (406 mm) guns, in size and appearance similar to the then under construction by the company. The U.S. firm of Gibbs & Cox provided four designs; one for a conventional battleship, and three hybrid designs which combined battleship main armament with a raised flight deck on the central superstructure capable of operating up to 30 aircraft. While these projects proved useful to the Soviets, they decided to proceed with their own designs. The first Tactical-Technical Requirement (abbreviated in Russian as ТТZ) for the large battleship design was issued on 21 February 1936 but proved too ambitious, specifying nine 460 mm guns and a speed of on a displacement of 55,000 tons. The TTZ was