Soviet destroyer Opytny
| History | |
|---|---|
 Soviet Union | |
| Name | Sergo Ordzhonikidze |
| Namesake | Sergo Ordzhonikidze |
| Ordered | 2nd Five-Year Plan |
| Builder | Shipyard No. 190 (Zhdanov), Leningrad |
| Yard number | 500 |
| Laid down | 26 June 1935 |
| Launched | 8 December 1935 |
| Commissioned | 11 September 1941 |
| Out of service | March 1944 |
| Renamed | Opytny (Template:Lang-ru), September 1940 |
| Stricken | 10 February 1953 |
| Fate | Scrapped, 1953 |
| General characteristics (as built) | |
| Type | Destroyer |
| Displacement | 1,707 long tons (1,734 t) (normal) |
| Length | 113.5 m (372 ft 5 in) (o/a) |
| Beam | 10.2 m (33 ft 6 in) |
| Draft | 4.6 m (15 ft 1 in) (deep load) |
| Installed power |
|
| Propulsion | 2 shafts; 2 geared steam turbines |
| Speed | 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph) |
| Range | 1,370 nmi (2,540 km; 1,580 mi) at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
| Complement | 262 |
| Armament |
|
Opytny (Template:Lang-ru) was the only member of her class of destroyers built for the Soviet Navy during the 1930s. The Soviet designation for her class was Project 45. She was completed in 1941 and fought in World War II as part of the Baltic Fleet. She was indigenously designed in contrast to the Type 7 which was built with Italian assistance and intended as a prototype for future Soviet destroyers. She was not a successful ship, with severe problems with her machinery and stability. Her intended armament of twin-gun turrets were transferred to the destroyer leader Tashkent and replaced by single gun mounts.
Background
When the naval architect Valerian Bzhezinsky was visiting German shipyards in 1930–1932, during the period when Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union were cooperating most closely, he was intrigued by the high-pressure Wagner boilers being developed for the German Navy. These offered the possibility of producing more power than lower-temperature propulsion plants for a given weight. After his appointment as director of the Soviet Navy's surface-ship design office and the struggle to save weight with the design of the Gnevny-class destroyers in 1933–1934, he conceived of a destroyer of an equal size using this type of advanced propulsion machinery than would be much faster than the Gnevny class.[1]
The specifications (TTZ in Russian) for this ship were issued in 1934; Bzhezinsky intended the ship to serve as a prototype to test the straight-flow, high-pressure boilers developed by Leonid Ramzin. These worked at a pressure of 75 kg/cm2 (7,355 kPa; 1,067 psi), almost three times the pressure used by the boilers of the Gnevny-class ships, and were intended to produce 70,000 shaft horsepower (52,000 kW), enough to give the ship a speed of 42 knots (78 km/h; 48 mph). This was more than enough to cooperate with the Leningrad-class destroyer leaders then under construction.[2][3]
The machinery was mounted in a unit layout with two funnels and alternating boiler rooms and engine rooms.
Due to the weight savings it was designed to mount three twin enclosed gun turrets in positions A, X and Y similar to the Japanese Fubuki-class destroyers. A new gun system, the B-2LM, was developed for this ship however due to poor weight control the twin turrets were substituted for single guns.
Service
The ship was built by Shipyard No. 190 (Zhdanov) in Leningrad, laid down as yard number 500 on 26 June 1935 under the name Sergo Ordzhonikidze. She was launched on 8 December 1936,[4] and commissioned on 11 September 1941 after extensive trials and subsequent reconstruction. She served as a floating battery during the Siege of Leningrad, during which time she suffered significant damage from German artillery fire.[5] After the war she served as an experimental ship and was decommissioned in 1949. She was scrapped in 1955–1956.
References
Bibliography
- Budzbon, Przemyslaw; Radziemski, Jan & Twardowski, Marek (2022). Warships of the Soviet Fleets 1939–1945. Vol. I: Major Combatants. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-68247-877-6.
- Campbell, John (1985). Naval Weapons of World War II. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-459-4.
- Budzbon, Przemysaw (1980). "Soviet Union". In Chesneau, Roger (ed.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946. Greenwich, UK: Conway Maritime Press. pp. 318–346. ISBN 0-85177-146-7.
- Hill, Alexander (2018). Soviet Destroyers of World War II. New Vanguard. Vol. 256. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4728-2256-7.
- Platonov, Andrey V. (2002). Энциклопедия советских надводных кораблей 1941–1945 [Encyclopedia of Soviet Surface Ships 1941–1945] (in Russian). Saint Petersburg: Poligon. ISBN 5-89173-178-9.
- Rohwer, Jürgen & Monakov, Mikhail S. (2001). Stalin's Ocean-Going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programs 1935–1953. London: Frank Cass. ISBN 0-7146-4895-7.
- Westwood, J. N. (1994). Russian Naval Construction, 1905–45. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-55553-8.
- Whitley, M. J. (1988). Destroyers of World War Two: An International Encyclopedia. London: Cassell & Co. ISBN 1-85409-521-8.
- This article incorporates material from Russian Wikipedia