The Sa'ar 2 class ("Shalechet") is a class of

missile boat A missile boat or missile cutter is a small, fast warship armed with anti-ship missiles. Being smaller than other warships such as destroyers and frigates, missile boats are popular with nations interested in forming a navy at lower cost. They a ...

s built in

Cherbourg Cherbourg (; , , ), nrf, Chèrbourg, ) is a former commune and subprefecture located at the northern end of the Cotentin peninsula in the northwestern French department of Manche. It was merged into the commune of Cherbourg-Octeville on 28 Feb ...

, France at the Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie shipyard based on Israeli Navy modification of the German Navy's . Three of the ships class were converted from s in 1974.

Design and development

The Israeli naval command had reached the conclusion by the early 1960s that their old Second World War-era destroyers, frigates and corvettes were obsolete and new ships and vessels were needed. Yitzhak Shoshan, later to command the

destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...

INS ''Eilat'' at the time of her sinking, surveyed the available torpedo boat designs and recommended the German ''Jaguar'' class. The Israeli Navy asked Lürssen, the shipyard which built the ''Jaguar'' class, to modify the wooden design by switching to steel construction, adding to the length, and revising the internal compartmentalization. Due to

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pressure on the German government, this plan was not continued and a new builder was sought. The Israeli Navy discovered that the Cherbourg-based Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie shipyard owned by Félix Amiot had experience building patrol boats in cooperation with Lürssen and would build the boats, based upon the German designs and plans. The engines were imported from Germany. The project received the codename "Falling Leaves" ( he, שלכת).Rabinovich, p. 56 An initial group of six boats was ordered in 1965, with an armament of Bofors 40 mm guns and torpedo tubes and provision for fitting sonar. This group was designated the Sa'ar 1 class. When refitted with Gabriel anti-ship missiles, they became the Sa'ar 2 class. A second group of six boats, the Sa'ar 3 class, was ordered in 1968, with an OTO Melara 76 mm gun instead of the Bofors guns of the Sa'ar 1 class and with anti-submarine provisions omitted.Gardiner and Chumbley, pp. 192–193.

Description

The boats were long, slender vessels. They measured in length, with a beam of and a draft of . Displacement is standard and full load. The boats were powered by four MTU 16V 538

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giving a total power of and driving four propeller shafts. This gave a maximum speed of . Range was at or at . The vessels in the class come in two versions of armament. One version is equipped with five to eight Gabriel II surface-to-surface missiles (SSM), one Bofors L/70 40 mm gun, two caliber M1919A4 Browning machine guns and four 7.62 mm FN MAG 58 general-purpose machine guns. The other version is equipped with four RGM-84 Harpoon SSMs and two Gabriel II SSMs.

Boats in the class

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