Shipbucket

A really "about time" type of interlude here while working on the Novogorod's next round and finding excuses to continue procastinating with the Atlant's, here comes a reworking of my 2nd or 3rd ever Shipbucket project, the famous Pr.1159 class, or Koni class in NATO circles. An export SKR/corvette/ligth frigate type vessel, that was designed by the zelenodonskoye PKB and intended to exlpoit the demand for Pr.159 vessels that had been sold around to 3rd world nations in the 60's and 70's. The Pr.1159 shares lot from the "petyas" as well as incorporating some influences from the Pr.1124 class MPKs (both also projects from the Zelenodonskoye office). Single unit was commisioned as Delfin for the Soviet Black Sea Fleet in 1975, where she trained the customer nations crews for their purchases.

As the sales ended and the class begun fade into obsolence, Delfin was repaired and sold to Bulgaria in 1990. A PK-16 chaft launchers were fitted between the superstructure blocks in the main deck.


First actual customer was DDR, which took two units in late 1970s/early 1980s and one more in 1984. The ships were Rostock, Berlin and Halle. After the reunification, they were briefly commisioned into Bundesmarine as well as planned for sale to Royal Navy, but eventually scrapped in the mid 90's. Soviets took away their Osa-M SAM system and its FCR set before the decommisioning of Volksmarine units.



Next became Yugoslavia, which purchased two ships, Split and Koper. They differed from the Volksmarine units and Delfin by having the PK-16s aside the Osa-M complex.

At some point in the 1980's, along side with the completion of the domestic Yugoslavian Kotor class frigates, it was decided to improve their armament and capacities by installing four aft launced P-20/21 missiles in similar arragment as in Soviet Pr.61M and Pr.56U class destroyers. Curiosly no fire-controll radar was fitted, making me assume that the Rubka set could manage the target acquisition in similar way that is done by the Angara set onboard other vessels that fielded the missile. (sadly there seems to be no mentions of this detail when it comes to the termit family and its operations.) As a curiositety, two 20mm body-aimed AA guns were fitted on stern


Pr.1159T was the tropicalised version to be sold on southern nations, where previously the reputation of Soviet exports were characterised by their unhabitility in hot and hummid enverioments, as the vessels had been designed to cope in completely opposite enverioment. A large air-condition unit was placed between the superstructure blocks, altering their appereance considerably. Three units were sold to Algeria, and three to Cuba.



While Cuban vessels eventually became diving attractions in caribea, The Algerians kept soldiering with their vessels and had them rehauled in Russia. In late 1990's, Rais Korfu was refitted in St. Petersburg to a new guise with Positive ME main radar, Ak-630 CIWS replacing the old AK-230s (but no Vympel acompanied, instead another set of MR-104 was fitted in place of the MR-105) and pair of twin 533mm TTs, to suplement the obvious lack of such ASW weapons from the original design. Also, new ECM fit was installed.


In 2012 and 2013, the two remaining ones followed, with more minimal fitting, that included mostly the Positive ME radar and discarding the Artillery fire-control radars completely.



As notes for the drawings, I started this project bit too open arms, with completing the vanilla drawing before realising, that of the all versions of professional line-drawings that existed, they all varied from each other in major ways, in porpotions and specially for the underwater hull. There are two main sources of reference drawings, A russian one that can be found in Aplakov's books and other publications, and then an East German one, from their own Naval books from the 1980's. After some deep moments of despair, Ive decided to make a bastard mash-up from both of these drawings, focusing on the upper works from East German sources, and for the underwater hull from Russian ones. No actual photos of the underwater hull, specially in the stern exist, which made this so difficould overal.

A keen eye notices the obvious missing sister, the Pr.1159TR follows soonish, as it requires adittional drawing

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

That's an excellent series of well drawn vessels. I've really enjoyed this with the good and useful comments

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Work in progress:
DD County Class PNS Babur (1982)(PAK)
FF Type 21 Class D182 PNS Babur (2000)(PAK)
All relevant Coat of Arms

Beautiful drawings. What a curiously-shaped sonar dome!

Great work (small nitpick: I would change the shade on the rear guns IMHO )

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best regards
Martin

~~Normerr~~FD stuff~~

Credit where credit's due... Nice work Golly

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My artwork is posted here: https://www.deviantart.com/adenandy/gallery/all

A very nice redraw and excellent detailing too. The potted histories are good too and its nice to see these updated.

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Thanks for the comments. Indeed the Argun sonar dome seems to be the one that had mostly inspired artists who before me worked with this class... not a single reference drawing I could muster where atleast some form of resembling for a previous one could be found. I choose the one from Aplakov's books.

Anyways, the last in the line were the Pr.1159TR class, which were only purchased by Libya, two units in 1985-6. They differed from the normal 1159T class by having restructured front section in form of two large twin KT-138 launchers for the P-20 missiles, in more elegant fitting than in the self-made yugoslavian missile conversion. A complete Garbun FCR radar was also fielded in platform front of the foremast and the bridge was enlargened and positioned more foward. The SSM fit took considerable space in the front, therefore reducing the ASW RLs to just one unit, but this was more than compensated by adding four 400mm ASW TT in the midship. Additional mast was also placed behind the 4R33 SAM FCR set.
Of the two units delivered, one was sunk in the 2011 odreal and the sole survior continues to act as flag ship of the post-Gaddafian Libyan navy

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

A bit of all right here Golly. Well done1 Are the Termits still operational?

It's awesome to see them!

Great stuff as usual.

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