Surovy () was one of 18 s (officially known as Project 7U) built for the Soviet Navy during the late 1930s. Although she began construction as a Project 7 , Surovy was completed in 1941 to the modified Project 7U design.
Entering service just before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, she participated in minelaying operations and provided naval gunfire support from late June to early August. Engaging a German convoy without result on 21 August, she was damaged by a mine during the evacuation of Tallinn, Estonia, but limped back to Leningrad for repairs that lasted for most of September. After a month of shore bombardments during the Siege of Leningrad, the destroyer participated in the evacuation of Hanko Naval Base in early November, and was scuttled after being crippled by a mine during the latter on 13 November.
Design and description
Originally built as a Gnevny-class ship, Surovy and her sister ships were completed to the modified Project 7U design after Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ordered that the latter be built with their boilers arranged en echelon, instead of linked as in the Gnevnys, so that a ship could still move with one or two boilers disabled.
Like the Gnevnys, the Project 7U destroyers had an overall length of and a beam of , but they had a reduced draft of at deep load. The ships were slightly overweight, displacing at standard load and at deep load. The crew complement of the Storozhevoy class numbered 207 in peacetime, but this increased to 271 in wartime, as more personnel were needed to operate additional equipment. Each ship had a pair of geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller, rated to produce using steam from four water-tube boilers, which the designers expected would exceed the speed of the Project 7s because there was additional steam available. Some fell short of it, although specific figures for most individual ships have not survived. Variations in fuel oil capacity meant that the range of the Project 7Us varied from at , that upper figure demonstrated by Storozhevoy.
The Project 7U-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 three 21-K AA guns, as well as four DK or DShK machine guns. They carried six torpedo tubes in two rotating triple mounts amidships. The ships could also carry a maximum of 58 to 96 mines and 30 depth charges. They were fitted with a set of Mars hydrophones for anti-submarine work, although these were useless at speeds over .
Construction and career
Surovy was laid down at Shipyard No. 189 (Sergo Ordzhonikidze) in Leningrad as yard number 297 on 27 October 1936 as a Gnevny-class destroyer with the name Letuchy. She was relaid down as a Project 7U destroyer on 1 February 1939, and launched on 5 August 1939. Renamed Surovy on 25 September 1940, the ship was accepted by a state commission on 31 May 1941 and joined the 5th Destroyer Division of the Baltic Fleet on 18 June when the Soviet naval jack was raised aboard her. When Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began four days later, Surovy was still based at Kronstadt, quickly relocating to Tallinn. She participated in minelaying operations in the Gulf of Finland on 29 June, and bombarded German positions in support of the 8th Army on the coast of Narva Bay on 23 July. In the latter, the 186 main-gun rounds that the ship fired were credited with destroying five mortars and various structures.