Workhorses of the Stalin breed
"Seven" - the extraordinary adventures of Italians in Russia
The pre-war destroyers of Project 7 cannot be called successful. Even without going into such high matters as ship electronics, features of the main power plant, artillery weapons and the like. The Reshitelny, having hit the rocks, broke into three pieces, the Sokrushitelny sank on November 22, 1942, after its stern fell off in a storm - inexperienced Soviet shipbuilders made mistakes when calculating the strength of the hull (more precisely, they thoughtlessly copied the calculations of the Italians, since the "sevens" were built according to the type of the Italian destroyer Maestrale, but in the Mediterranean Sea there are no storms like in the North).
But the most important thing is that there were few of them! During the war, 34 destroyers of this project were lost, and another 30 were not completed.
In general, at the very beginning of the Cold War, the Soviet Navy found itself without the “workhorses” that it had navy At that time there were destroyers. True, destroyers of project 41 were in the design stage, but designing is a long process, and the ships were needed yesterday...
"Thirty bis" was not afraid of either the North or the Mediterranean Sea...
Then they took the pre-war Project 30 and brought it to perfection.
The fact is that Project 30 was a development of the same "seven" and inherited all its shortcomings, including the flimsy "Mediterranean" hull. In TsKB-17, under the leadership of Arved Lyudvigovich Fisher, they took the successful main power plant, artillery and main systems and mechanisms of the "thirty", and then packed it all into a new hull.
The hull was designed based on the hulls of captured German destroyers, but their shortcomings were eliminated during the design, such as poor seaworthiness due to the overloaded bow. As a result, the hull turned out to be excellent - strong and seaworthy.
The caliber of the anti-aircraft artillery was increased to 85 mm (the "sevens" and "thirties" had a maximum of 76 mm anti-aircraft guns), installing 1x2 92-K mount, additionally installing 4x2 37 mm V-11 anti-aircraft guns (or 7x1 37 mm 70-K gun mounts) and 3x2 25 mm 2M-3M. The main caliber was left the same as on the "thirties" (and before them on the legendary leader "Tashkent") - two B-2LM turrets with a pair of 130 mm guns in each. The torpedo tubes also became five-tube, instead of three-tube on their predecessors.
The Tamir-5M hydroacoustic station, two BMB-2 bomb throwers and two bomb release devices with 51 depth charges were intended for combating submarines. The destroyer could also lay mines: 52 KB-3 mines or 60 M-26 mines were taken on board. The speed was slightly reduced in comparison with the Project 30, but this was of no particular importance - the reduction was noticeable only in calm waters; in a stormy sea, the seaworthy Thirty Bis made the Italians do what a sprinter does to a pedestrian.
"Smel'y" in the Neva
The lead destroyer of Project 30 bis "Smely" was accepted into the Soviet Navy on December 21, 1949 - on Stalin's birthday. In total, 1948 ships of this project were built from 1953 to 70 - the largest series in stories There was no Russian or Soviet shipbuilding either before or after (the Americans even built fewer Arleigh Burke-class destroyers – 68 units).
The ships were built at factories No. 200 named after 61 Communards in Nikolaev, No. 199 named after the Lenin Komsomol in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, No. 190 named after A. A. Zhdanov in Leningrad, and No. 402 in Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk).
A solid ship deserves solid combat services. "Solid" in the Mediterranean.
The life of the "thirty bis" was long and eventful!
These ships formed the basis of the Soviet fleet in the 50s and 60s, remained in service in the 70s and 80s, and some hulls were decommissioned in the 90s! The last destroyer of this project was excluded from the fleet lists in 2002 – it lived out its last years as a training destroyer. But this was in the domestic Navy. And they served not only in their homeland: the ships were transferred to Indonesia – 8 units, the United Arab Republic (there was such a country, if anyone does not remember: it included Syria and Egypt) – 5 units, Poland – 2 units, Bulgaria – 1 unit.
On radar patrol...
Some destroyers were converted into Project 31 radar picket ships, but the rest were not modernized. The fact is that on Project 30 bis destroyers, the onboard electrical network operated on direct current (for modernization with the installation of a missile weapons Project 56 destroyers with an AC network were more suitable).
Full face
The overall assessment of the project is ambivalent.
On the one hand, these were ships that were already obsolete at the design stage – a palliative that made it possible not to leave the Navy without ships until the destroyers of Project 41 and later entered service.
But on the other hand... These were very good ships: beautiful (an ugly ship cannot sail well on the sea), powerful, seaworthy.
In addition, these destroyers became a "school desk" for many commanders of units - on the way to admiral's shoulder straps, it is imperative to pass the step of "ship commander", and numerous "thirty bis" provided motivated officers with such an opportunity. Moreover, it is much easier to learn the structure of a ship on a destroyer than on a cruiser - it is smaller...
In full dress!
One of the destroyer brigades of the Black Sea Fleet was even unofficially called "royal" - it was once commanded by the future Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy S. G. Gorshkov. Serving here was considered promising in terms of career, and the destroyers were maintained with special chic: the hulls were painted a unique light-ball color, and the rails, anchor capstans and chains were completely white.
And the names on them were written in letters larger than on regular ships, like on the pre-war "sevens". The Baltic and Black Sea "thirty bis" had two-digit side numbers, the Northern and Pacific ones had three-digit numbers. In addition, not a single destroyer of this project was named in honor of any party congress, Komsomol congress, or deceased member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee: they all bore exclusively standard names for the Russian and Soviet fleets in the form of adjectives.
At the end of a career. Inkerman 1986...
The quality of the 30 bis project is best illustrated by the fact that during their long service life they did not bring a single major problem, much less a catastrophe, to the USSR Navy. Easy to operate, reliable as a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Durable!
In 1973, Seryozhny was docked at the Poti shipyard. A storm wind tore a floating crane off the opposite wall, which passed through the bay and crashed into the starboard side of the destroyer in the bow. A weaker ship could have easily sunk from such a blow, but the thirty bis escaped with a hole above the waterline one and a half meters long and a quarter of a meter wide.
And the successful hull design made the destroyers of this project some of the quietest surface ships of the USSR Navy. At least, this is what the underwater noise specialist, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Captain 1st Rank V. N. Parkhomenko, thought.
As for the shortcomings, at least some of them were smoothed out by good crew training. A textbook example is how a pair of "thirty bis" drove the British submarine Opportune of the Oberon class.
Here is how it was...
In profile...
On June 23, 1965, in the Norwegian Sea, the Northern Fleet decided to do something a little different – train. The British diesel-electric submarine Opportune decided to observe the exercises. But nearby were a pair of Soviet Project 30 bis destroyers (NATO-style “Skorii” class), which were busy discouraging all curious people from the training process.
To begin with, Opportune, being unnoticed, decided to photograph the exercises through the periscope and record the noise of the Soviet ships' propellers and the work of the destroyers' sonars on a tape recorder. But suddenly the boat realized that it had been discovered.
The submarine commander was fidgeting like an eel: he went into the depths, maneuvered at a low speed, but all he achieved was that the caring Northern Fleet sailors began to throw explosive charges overboard, simulating depth charge bombing during exercises. The persistent Englishman tried to break away for 30 hours, but the Soviet destroyers were nearby the whole time and pretended that they were just having a walk.
Eventually, with her battery completely drained, Opportune was forced to surface. After surfacing, the destroyers took up positions on both sides of the submarine and gently escorted her by the arms out of the training area.
One of the destroyer commanders thanked the submarine for their fruitful joint work, the second took a photo of the Opportune's side number - for a long memory, after which he handed over a long light semaphore, which the British could not make out (something about someone's mother, I think).
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