Soviet destroyer Strogy (1939)

Strogy (Строгий) was one of 18 Storozhevoy-class destroyers (officially known as Project 7U) built for the Soviet Navy during the late 1930s. Although she began construction as a Project 7 Gnevny-class destroyer, Strogy was rebuilt to the modified Project 7U design.

Still under construction when Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941, the destroyer was placed in service as a floating artillery battery in September. Strogy spent the Siege of Leningrad providing naval gunfire support and was completed in September 1942. After the war, she officially joined the Baltic Fleet and began a refit in 1953. The latter became a conversion into a rescue ship ultimately designated SS-18 and she was transferred to the Northern Fleet after the completion of the conversion in 1958. Reduced to a missile target ship in 1963, she was struck from the Navy List a year later, then scrapped.

Design and description
Originally built as a Gnevny-class ship, Strogy 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 112.5 m and a beam of 10.2 m, but they had a reduced draft of 3.98 m at deep load. The ships were slightly overweight, displacing 1727 MT at standard load and 2279 MT 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 54000 shp using steam from four water-tube boilers, which the designers expected would exceed the 37 kn 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 1380 to 2700 nmi at 19 kn, that upper figure demonstrated by Storozhevoy.

The Project 7U-class ships mounted four 130 mm 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 76.2 mm 34-K AA guns in single mounts and three 45 mm 21-K AA guns, as well as four 12.7 mm DK or DShK machine guns. They carried six 533 mm 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 3 kn.

Modifications
In mid-1943, Strogy received a Soyuz-7U anti-aircraft director for her 34-K guns. While effective against targets flying level, it was useless against dive bombers. Before the end of the war, the ship had exchanged both of her 21-K mounts for six 37 mm 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 Soviet-built Gyuys-1 early-warning radar. 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.

Deemed obsolete by the early 1950s, Strogy and several of her sisters were rebuilt as Project 32 rescue and decontamination ships 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 twin 57 mm ZiF-31BS guns. The brigade 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.

Construction and World War II
Strogy was laid down in Shipyard No. 190 (Zhdanov) in Leningrad with the yard number 523 on 26 October 1936 as a Gnevny-class destroyer. She was relaid down as a Project 7U destroyer on 26 October 1938, and launched on 31 December 1939. By the 22 June 1941 beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, she was 60% complete with turbines and piping installed. The workload of the shipyard and the Siege of Leningrad prevented a quick completion, although on 30 August the Soviet naval jack was raised aboard her and she was conditionally accepted by the navy on 28 September. By this time the 45 mm anti-aircraft gunners of Strogy had fired upon an airstrike of a dozen bombers on 2 August, and on 30 August she fired her 130 mm armament for the first time. During September she was towed to a position in the area of Nevsky Forest Park, bombarding German troops in 118 firings and claiming one aircraft downed by a 12.7 mm machine gun. Towed to a new position farther up the Neva River near the Novosaratovkoye colony on 9 November, she received two direct hits from an artillery battery on 26 November that peppered her with splinters, killing one and wounding two sailors. During the year Strogy expended 2,234 main-gun shells in support of the defenders of Leningrad.

Placed in a floating dry dock at Peter and Paul Fortress and moved to Shipyard No. 190 for completion that was finished on 22 September 1942, the hull of the destroyer was reinforced during October and November. Wartime conditions prevented sea trials, but the destroyer was considered complete by the end of the year. For the rest of the war Strogy remained on the Neva, providing fire support to ground troops and counter-battery fire. She expended 1,167 and 979 130 mm shells in 1942 and 1943, respectively. In three days of bombardment during the Krasnoye Selo–Ropsha Offensive between 14 and 16 January 1944, the destroyer fired 314 shells from her main guns. She expended a total of 4,669 shells during the siege; the intense fire rate required changing the barrel lining twice.

Postwar
Postwar, between August and October 1945, Strogy completed sea trials before officially joining the Baltic Fleet on 10 December. Transferred to the 4th Fleet between 25 February 1946 and 4 January 1956 when the Baltic Fleet was split, Strogy was modernized at Yantar Shipyard in Kaliningrad from 30 November 1953; this became a conversion to a Project 32 rescue and decontamination ship on 17 February 1956. During this period she was renamed SDK-13 on 20 March 1956 and then SS-18 on 27 December of that year, the latter after the Soviet Navy decided to classify her as a regular rescue ship. On 11 October 1958, after the completion of the conversion, she joined the Northern Fleet via the White Sea–Baltic Canal before being converted into a floating target ship for missile testing designated SM-16 on 14 September 1963. The former destroyer was struck from the Soviet Navy on 26 June 1964 and scrapped at Murmansk between 1964 and 1965.