Soviet Destroyer Reshitelny (1940)

''Reshitelny'' was one of 29 s (officially known as Project 7) built for the Soviet Navy during the late 1930s. Originally named ''Pospeshny'', she was renamed ''Reshitelny'' before completion in 1941, and was assigned to the Pacific Fleet. She was sold to People's Liberation Army Navy in 1955 and renamed ''Changchun''. Currently she is preserved as a museum ship.

Design and description

Having decided to build the large and expensive 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 had a pair of geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller, rated to produce using steam from three water-tube boilers which was intended to give them a maximum 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, although specific figures for most individual ships have not survived. Variations in fuel oil capacity meant that the range of the ''Gnevny''s varied between at .

As built, the ''Gnevny''-class ships mounted four B-13 guns in two pairs of superfiring single mounts fore and aft of the superstructure. Anti-aircraft defense was provided by a pair of 34-K AA guns in single mounts and a pair of 21-K AA guns as well as two DK or DShK machine guns. They carried six torpedo tubes in two rotating triple mounts; each tube was provided with a reload. 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 they were useless at speeds over . The ships were equipped with two K-1 paravanes intended to destroy mines and a pair of depth-charge throwers.

Construction and service

Major components for the ship that became ''Reshitelny'' were laid down at Shipyard No. 198 (Andre Marti South) in Nikolayev on 23 August 1936 as yard number 324 and were then railed to Shipyard No. 199 at Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Siberia, for completion where the ship was laid down again on 23 August 1937 as ''Pospeshny''. She was launched on 30 April 1940 and was renamed ''Reshitelny'' on 25 August before she was commissioned on 5 September 1941.Rohwer & Monakov, p. 233 She was sold to China in 1955 and renamed ''Changchun'' and decommissioned in the 1990. She is currently a museum ship in Rushan, Shandong.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Reshitelny (1940)
Gnevny-class destroyers
1940 ships
Ships built at the Black Sea Shipyard
Museum ships in China