Tátra-class destroyer

The Tátra class consisted of six destroyers built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy shortly before the First World War.

Design and description
By the last years of the first decade of the 20th century, Admiral Graf Rudolf Montecuccoli, head of the Austro-Hungarian Navy (kaiserliche und königliche Kriegsmarine), recognized that the latest Huszár-class destroyers were already obsolete in comparison to larger and faster foreign destroyers. His 1910 expansion plan called for six new large destroyers powered by steam turbines and their construction was awarded to a Hungarian shipyard to secure Hungarian parliamentary approval of the expansion program.

The Tátra-class ships displaced more than twice as much as the Huszár class which allowed them to have a much stronger armament and be significantly faster. The ships had an overall length of 83.5 m, a beam of 7.8 m, and a maximum draft of 3.2 m. They displaced 850 t at normal load and 1050 t at deep load. The ships had a complement of 105 officers and enlisted men.

The Tátras were powered by two AEG-Curtiss steam turbine sets, each driving a single propeller shaft using steam provided by six Yarrow boilers. Four of the boilers were oil-fired while the remaining pair used coal. The turbines, designed to produce 20500 shp, were intended to give the ships a speed of 32.5 kn. SMS Lika was the fastest ship of the class at 32.96 kn. The ships carried 125 t of oil and 104 t of coal which gave them a range of 1600 nmi at 12 kn.

The main armament of the Tátra-class destroyers consisted of two 50-caliber Škoda Works 10 cm K11 guns, one each fore and aft of the superstructure in single mounts. Their secondary armament consisted of six 45-caliber 66 mm K09 TAG (Torpedoboot-Abwehr Geschütz (anti-torpedo boat guns)). Two of these were placed on anti-aircraft mountings during the war. They were also equipped with four 450 mm torpedo tubes in two twin rotating mountings aft of the funnels.

Service history
Six additional destroyers were authorised on 28 May 1914 to increase the number of modern destroyers in service, but construction was cancelled before they were laid down when World War I began in August.