around October 1952, Soviet sources refer to her proposed names as Kronshtadt or Arkhangelsk. A fourth ship was apparently ordered from Yard 402, but was never laid down. Stalingrads formal keel-laying was on 31 December 1951 and it was hoped that she could be launched on 6 November 1953, the eve of the 36th anniversary of the October Revolution. But deliveries of steel, armor, machinery and other equipment were delayed or arrived out of sequence, despite extraordinary efforts by the Ministry of Shipbuilding, and slowed construction enough so that she fell about six months behind schedule and the same was more or less true for the other ships. By 1 January 1953 Stalingrad was intended to be 42.9% complete, but was actually only 18.8% done. Moskva was planned to be 11.5% finished, but was only 7.5% done. And the unnamed ship was intended to be 5.2% along, but was only 2.5% complete. These ships were canceled on 18 April 1953, after Stalin's death on 5 March, by the Ministry of Transport and Heavy Machinery, and the hulls of Moskva and the third ship were scrapped on the slipways later that year. The Ministry ordered in June that Stalingrads hull, which was about 70% ready for launching, be used for weapons tests. Her hull was launched on 16 April 1954 and her stern, which was more or less complete, was dismantled—her bow hadn't been built when work was suspended a year earlier—and the central, long, section was modified for her new role. Career as a target hulk Stalingrads hull was towed from Nikolayev on 19 May 1955 by three tugs, but was driven ashore by high winds on 23 May at the southern entrance to Sevastopol Bay. She grounded on a very rocky bottom in very shallow water only about from shore. A number of the ordinary methods to refloat a ship couldn't be used because she was very nearly empty and so nothing could be off-loaded and the rocky bottom meant that it couldn't be excavated out from underneath her. The first attempt used brute force provided by the cruisers and Kerch to unsuccessfully tow her off. Several other attempts were made using explosive charges to create shock waves that would pivot her stern into deeper water in combination with tugs attempting to pull her around, but these were counterproductive in that several holes were blown in her sides which