Stroyny () 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 , Stroyny was completed in 1942 to the modified Project 7U design.
Beginning her sea trials when Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began in June 1941, the destroyer was placed in service to provide naval gunfire support in September. Stroyny spent the Siege of Leningrad bombarding German positions and was completed in September 1942. Postwar, she officially joined the Baltic Fleet and began a refit in 1953. The latter became a conversion into a rescue ship ultimately designated SS-17 that was completed in 1958. Reduced to a target ship in 1963, she was struck from the Navy List almost two years later, then scrapped.
Design and description
Originally built as a Gnevny-class ship, Stroyny 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 .
Modifications
Before the end of the war, the ship had exchanged both of her 21-K mounts for six 70-K AA guns in single mounts and an additional 34-K mount. By the end of the war, she had received a British ASDIC system and a radar of unknown type. After the war, all of her AA guns were replaced by eight water-cooled V-11M versions of the 70-K gun in twin mounts.
Due to the threat of nuclear attack in the early 1950s, Stroyny and several of her sisters were rebuilt as Project 32 rescue and decontamination ships due to their obsolescence as the Soviet Naval command considered it necessary to have ships capable of rendering assistance to ships attacked by nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction. In event of war, the rebuilt ships were to conduct nuclear, biological, and chemical reconnaissance in areas that such weapons were used, tow damaged ships as large as light cruisers out of the contaminated zone, assist ship crews in pumping and firefighting and treating wounded, and carry out decontamination of ship interiors. They were also capable of assisting the crews of sunken submarines.
To create space for the additional equipment, the torpedo tubes were removed and the original gun armament replaced by two double ZiF-31BS guns. The bridge was widened and a windshield installed, and the mast converted into a tripod mounting antennas for the Lin-M guidance radar, Stvor navigational radar, and Nikhrom identification friend or foe system. Special equipment included a dosimetry unit, chemical control station, automatic toxic substances signaling device, foam extinguishing system, water protection system for flushing substances overboard, and two decontamination stations. Two pumps were installed in the former magazines and winches, cable hangers, compressed air cylinders, and decompression chambers were fitted on the deck and superstructure.