As promised, here are the "Jianghu's":
An intresting warship of its kind, The type 053H was the main production model of the 053 frigate, which was intended as AAW frigate or escort to give the PLAN its badly needed SAM cover in open sea operations. As the HQ-61 SAM didn't work properly untill much later date, the orginal 053 left as one of trial ship (to be drawn in near future) and a more conventional SSM armed variant was put into production. They had simple, "classic" destroyer layout, analong to the bigger 051 class destroyers, with twin SSM launchers replacing the TT of such arragnment. Their desing was essentially a enlarged Soviet Pr. 50 class (Riga) SKR desing, with diesels instead of high-preassure steam plants. The first patch fielded rather rudimentary armament of two 100mm/56 B-34 AA guns from late 1930's vintage and six douple 37mm AA guns. As noteworthy, there were no radar controlled firecontroll, but plain old analog/human eye firecontroll devices:
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053HChangde.png)
Some of the latter patch of this intial desing featured slightly different shaped bridge and the more round-shaped funnel of the later variants:
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053HNanping.png)
One ship, Jiujiang, was converted as Ambhibious fire support ship of rather intresting desing with two newer model twin 100mm AA guns and set of 122mm MLR system spread around its deck:
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053HJiujiang.png)
The seccond variant (or Jiangju-II in West) featured the Yakor (or its chinese copy) FCR set as well as improved twin mounts for the 100mm B-34 gun (with alledgedly some sort of autoloader and improved ammunition hoist) Apparently this desing also featured fin-stabilizers and different set of bilge-keels.
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053H1Linfen.png)
One ship was build in 1980's to field ASW helicopter, better sonar and french made 100mm main gun as well as western 324mm ASW TTs. Only one ship, Siping (544) was ever build to this configuration and she nowadays serve as training ship in PLAN Naval Academy.
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053HT-HSiping.png)
A lot more improved variant of the basic desing, fielding the new generation Yj-8 SSMs and enclosed maindeck running trough the hull between the main guns was build in late 1980's and early 1990's.
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053H2Huangsi.png)
Four of these were also build for Thailand, of which two featured helicopter deck in place of the aft gun mount.
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053H2ChaoPhraya.png)
Then for some weird reason still mystery to me, PLAN restored back into the older "Jiangju -II" layout and to the venerable (and at this point pretty obsolete) Yj-1 SSMs in the early 1990's and the last vessels of this class were build to this configuration.
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053H1GZidong.png)
They did feature the never automatic 37mm AA guns in place of the old copies of soviet V-11 mount.
Finaly, two of this sub-class were modified with Yj-83 SSMs and with the newer 100mm twin guns
![[ img ]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/FF053H1GZidong1.png)