Slavny () 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 , Slavny was completed in 1941 to the modified Project 7U design.
Entering service with the Baltic Fleet just before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, she participated in minelaying operations and provided naval gunfire support from late June to early August. She was damaged by mines during the Evacuation of Tallinn, Estonia, later that month, returning 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 November and December, suffering damage that forced her to put in for repairs twice. Seeing little action in 1942 and 1943, the destroyer conducted her last shore bombardment during the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive in 1944. She continued to serve with the Baltic Fleet postwar and spent the late 1940s and early 1950s under refit and modernization. Converted to a target ship in the early 1960s, she was scrapped between 1964 and 1965.
Design and description
Originally built as a Gnevny-class ship, Slavny 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
During repairs after she was hit by a shell in May 1943, Slavny was fitted with a British Lend-Lease Type 128 Asdic system. In 1944–1945, 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 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.
Construction and World War II
Slavny was laid down at Shipyard No. 189 (Sergo Ordzhonikidze) in Leningrad as yard number 293 on 31 August 1936 as a Gnevny-class destroyer. She was relaid down as a Project 7U destroyer on 31 January 1939, and launched on 19 September. Accepted by a state commission on 31 May 1941, she joined the 5th Destroyer Division of the Baltic Fleet on 19 June when the Soviet naval jack was raised aboard her, based at Kronstadt. When Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began on 22 June, Slavny was at sea near the Hanko Peninsula. She participated in minelaying operations at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland on 27 and 29 June, then escorted the battleship from Tallinn to Kronstadt with her sister ship on 1 July. During these operations the destroyer discovered submarines four times, attacking them without result.