Gnevny-class Destroyer

The ''Gnevny'' class () were a group of 29 destroyers built for the Soviet Navy in the late 1930s. They are sometimes known as the ''Gremyashchiy'' class and the official Soviet designation was Project 7. These ships fought in World War II.

In the early 1930s the Soviets felt able to restart construction of fleet destroyers and forty-eight ships were ordered under the Second Five-Year Plan.

The design was produced with Italian assistance despite ideological differences between the Soviets and Fascist Italy. They resembled contemporary destroyers built in Italy for the Greek and Turkish navies.

They suffered from some of the same weaknesses of contemporary Italian ships with structural weakness and limited seaworthiness. There were also significant machinery problems in the earliest ships. The design flaws were apparent after trials of the first units in 1936–1937 and production stopped after 29 ships. A modified design was then placed into production as the Type 7U.

Four surviving ships from the Pacific Fleet were transferred to the People's Liberation Army Navy and served as the s.

Design and description

Having decided on the specifications of the large destroyer leaders, the Soviet Navy sought Italian assistance in designing smaller and cheaper destroyers. They licensed the plans for the and, in modifying it for their purposes, overloaded a design that was already somewhat marginally stable.

The ''Gnevny''s had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draft of at deep load. The ships were significantly overweight, almost heavier than designed, displacing at standard load and at deep load. Their crew numbered 197 officers and sailors in peacetime and 236 in wartime.

The ships were powered by two geared steam turbine sets, each driving a single three-bladed propeller using steam provided by three water-tube boilers that operated at a pressure of and a temperature of . The turbines, rated at , were intended to give the ships a speed of . The designers had been conservative in rating the turbines and many, but not all, of the ships handily exceeded their designed speed during their sea trials. Others fell considerably short of it; reached during her trials in 1943. Variations in fuel oil capacity meant that the range of the ''Gnevny''s varied between at .

Armament and fire control

As built, the ''Gnevny''-class ships mounted four 50-caliber B-13 guns in two pairs of superfiring single mounts fore and aft of the superstructure. Each gun was provided with 150 rounds. The development of the gun was troubled by excessive barrel erosion problems and three variants were built in a not entirely successful effort to resolve the problem which complicated logistical and operational support as each performed slightly differently. The manually operated mounts had an elevation range between −5° and +45° and had a rate of fire of 6–10 rounds per minute. They fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of , which gave them a range of .

Anti-aircraft defense was provided by two 55-caliber 34-K AA guns and two 46-caliber 21-K AA guns, all in single mounts as well as a pair of DK or DShK machine guns. The 34-K guns could elevate between −5° and +85°, had a rate of fire of fire of 15–20 rounds per minute, and the ships carried 300 rounds per gun for them. Their muzzle velocity of gave their high-explosive shells a maximum horizontal range of and an effective ceiling of . The 21-K was a converted anti-tank gun with a rate of fire of 25–30 rounds per minute with an elevation range between −10° and +85°. The gun fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of . This gave them a range of . The Project 7s stowed 500 rounds for each gun. The DShK had an effective rate of fire of 125 rounds per minute and an effective range against aircraft of .

The ships were equipped with six torpedo tubes in two rotating triple mounts amidships; each tube was provided with a reload. The Project 7-class ships primarily used the 53-38 or the 53-38U torpedo, which differed only in the size of their warhead; the latter had a warhead heavier than the warhead of the 53-38. The torpedoes had three range/speed settings: at ; at and at . The ships could also carry a maximum of either 60 or 95 mines and 25 depth charges. They were fitted with a set of Mars hydrophones for anti-submarine work, although it was useless at speeds over .

Fire control for the main battery of the ''Gnevny''s was provided by a Mina-7 fire-control system that was derived from an Italian Galileo system. It included a TsAS-2 mechanical analog computer that received information from a KDP2-4 gunnery director on the roof of the bridge which mounted a pair of DM-4 stereoscopic rangefinders. Anti-aircraft fire control was strictly manual with only a DM-3 rangefinder to provide data to the guns.Yakubov & Worth, pp. 104–105

Ships

Black Sea Fleet

Baltic Fleet

Pacific Fleet

All the Pacific Fleet ships were built by Dalzavod, Komsomolsk na Amure and towed to Vladivostok for fitting out due to the shallow depth of the Amur River. One unit, ''Reshitelny'' (i), was lost by stranding on passage 7 November 1938, being damaged beyond repair. The material for these ships was assembled in Nikolayev and then shipped east via the Trans-Siberian railway.

Citations

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{{WWII Soviet ships

Destroyer classes

World War II destroyers of the Soviet Union
Italy–Soviet Union relations