Smely () 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 , Smely was completed in 1941 to the modified Project 7U design.
Serving with the Baltic Fleet, she served as an escort after the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) in June 1941. While covering minelaying operations in the Irbe Strait, she was mined on 27 July. After the failure of attempts to save her, Smely was sunk by a torpedo from an accompanying motor torpedo boat.
Design
Originally built as a Gnevny-class ship, Smely 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 .
The 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 World War II
Smely was laid down in Shipyard No. 190 (Zhdanov) in Leningrad with the yard number 521 on 26 October 1936 as a Gnevny-class destroyer. She was relaid down as a Project 7U destroyer in March 1938, and launched on 30 April 1939. Completed on 31 May 1941, she did not officially join the Baltic Fleet until 18 June, when the Soviet naval jack was raised aboard her. With her sister she joined the 5th Destroyer Division of the fleet.
With the 22 June beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Smely moved to Hanko, under Finnish attack, to escort the passenger liner Iosif Stalin back to Tallinn. On the next day, while approaching Suurupi Strait, she was lightly damaged by the explosion of a mine caught by her paravanes. After a week of repairs, she escorted the battleship from Tallinn to Kronstadt with her sisters and between 1 and 2 July, before returning to Tallinn. From 13 July, again with Svirepy and Strashny, she operated in Moonsund and the Gulf of Riga, fighting off repeated German air attacks. On 23 July, while dodging another air attack, her screws contacted a shoal in Kassar Bay, which knocked the left shaft out of alignment, reducing her speed to 14 knots.