German torpedo boat T17

The German torpedo boat T17 was one of nine Type 37 torpedo boats built for the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) during World War II. Completed in mid-1941, the ship arrived in France in December. She helped to escort a pair of battleships and a heavy cruiser through the English Channel back to Germany in February 1942 in the Channel Dash and then was ordered to Norway for escort work. The ship returned to Germany in March for a refit before redeploying back to France. T17 began another refit in Germany in early 1943 and was then assigned as a training ship for U-boat flotillas.

She returned to active duty in August 1944 and supported German forces operating in the Baltic Sea. The boat was then assigned escort duties in the Skaggerak around the beginning of 1945, which included covering minelaying missions. In May T17 helped to evacuate troops and refugees from advancing Soviet forces. The boat was allocated to the Soviet Union after the war and was renamed Poryvisty. She was assigned to the Baltic Fleet and was converted into a target control ship in 1949. Stricken from the Navy List a decade later, she was subsequently scrapped.

Design and description
The Type 37 torpedo boat was a slightly improved version of the preceding Type 35 with better range. The boats had an overall length of 85.2 m and were 82 m long at the waterline. The ships had a beam of 8.87 m, and a mean draft of 2.8 m at deep load and displaced 888 MT at standard load and 1139 MT at deep load. Their crew numbered 119 officers and sailors. Their pair of geared steam turbine sets, each driving one propeller, were designed to produce 31000 shp using steam from four high-pressure water-tube boilers which would propel the boats at 35 kn. They carried enough fuel oil to give them a range of 1600 nmi at 19 kn.

As built, the Type 37 class mounted a single 10.5 cm SK C/32 gun on the stern. Anti-aircraft defense was provided by a single 3.7 cm SK C/30 anti-aircraft gun superfiring over the 10.5 cm gun and a pair of 2 cm C/30 guns on the bridge wings. They carried six above-water 533 mm torpedo tubes in two triple mounts and could also carry 30 mines (or 60 if the weather was good).

Modifications
Early-war modifications to the Type 37s were limited to the conversion of the foremast into a tripod mast, installation of a FuM 28 radar with fixed antennas angled 45° to each side. Boats participating in the Channel Dash in February 1942 were ordered to have their aft torpedo tube mount replaced by a quadruple 2 cm gun mount and a 3.7 cm gun added at the bow, but it is not certain if this was actually done. Quadruple mounts began slowly replacing the 3.7 cm gun beginning in May as the ships were refitted and that gun may have been repositioned to the bow. By 1944, another quadruple mount had been fitted on the searchlight platform amidships. In September, installation of a single 3.7 cm gun was ordered in all surviving boats, either the Flak M42 or the Flak M43, in lieu of the aft torpedo tubes, but it is also uncertain if this was done. They all received twin 2 cm gun mounts that replaced the single mounts in the bridge wings. T17 had two 3.7 cm, a dozen 2 cm guns and all six torpedo tubes at war's end.

Construction and career
T17 was ordered on 18 September 1937 from Schichau, laid down at their Elbing, East Prussia, shipyard as yard number 1405, launched and commissioned on 28 August 1941; construction was delayed by shortages of skilled labor and of raw materials. She was working up until October when she was transferred to the Baltic for convoy escort duties. The boat was transferred to France in early 1942. On the morning of 12 February, the 2nd Torpedo Boat Flotilla (with GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T2, GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T4, GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T5, GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T11, GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T12) and the 3rd Torpedo Boat Flotilla (with T17 and her sisters T13, GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T15, and GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T16) rendezvoused with the battleships GERMAN BATTLESHIP Gneisenau and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst and the heavy cruiser GERMAN CRUISER Prinz Eugen to escort them through the Channel to Germany in the Channel Dash. The following month, T17, T15, and T16 were transferred to Norway where they formed part of the escort of the heavy cruiser GERMAN CRUISER Admiral Hipper to Trondheim on 19–21 March. Later that month T17 returned to Germany to begin a refit in Kiel that lasted until September. On 1–3 October, the boat conducted exercises in the Baltic with Scharnhorst, the light cruisers GERMAN CRUISER Leipzig and GERMAN CRUISER Nürnberg, the destroyers GERMAN DESTROYER Z25, GERMAN DESTROYER Z31 and GERMAN DESTROYER Z37, her sisters T16, GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T20, T21 and the torpedo boats GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT T22, GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT Falke and GERMAN TORPEDO BOAT Kondor.

T17 returned to France later that month and then began a refit in March 1943 in Kiel that lasted until July. Two months later, she was assigned to U-boat flotillas in the Baltic as a training ship. In February 1944, the boat was transferred to the Torpedo School and began a machinery overhaul at the Oderwerke shipyard in Stettin in June. T17 was reassigned to active duty in August and escorted the last evacuation convoy from Tallinn, Estonia, to Germany on 23 September with T13, T19 and T20. T17 was transferred to the Skaggerak for escort duties around the beginning of 1945. On 16 and 17 February, she was assigned to the escort force for two cancelled minelaying operations in the North Sea. Together with T19 and T20, T17 escorted a minelaying mission in the North Sea on 17–18 March. The boat accidentally sank the GS U-235 with depth charges on 14 April. On 5 May, she helped to ferry 45,000 refugees from East Prussia to Copenhagen, Denmark, and returned to transport 20,000 more to Glücksburg, Germany, on the 9th.

The boat was allocated to the Soviets when the Allies divided the surviving ships of the Kriegsmarine amongst themselves in late 1945, and was included on the Soviet Navy vessel list on 5 November, assigned to the Baltic Fleet. She was handed over to a Soviet crew in Germany on 15 January 1946, who raised the naval jack of the Soviet Navy aboard her two days later. She was renamed Poryvisty on 13 February before joining the North Baltic Fleet two days later. The boat was withdrawn from combat duty on 25 June 1949 and reclassified as a target control ship, before being renamed UTS-6 on 7 September. The ship was struck on 30 December 1959 and transferred for scrapping, while her crew was disbanded on 6 February 1960.