Couple of weeks ago some geezer in the newbie section declared that he was going to drawn the Novik class destroyer of the Russian imperial fleet, and had googled up an Gavriil class vessel that was supposedly that novik which he had begun to drawn...
It was one of those epic facepalm moments where nothing went rigth for the poor geezer (Thougth I recall the crowd beeing quite gently and supportive so I didn't have to say anything uncouraging
)
Anyways, that led me to take a peak of our old Novik and Gavriil class drawings...
Time had indeed passed that drawing of Novik by, and the two soviet fits of Gavriil's I made two years ago were notoriosly misscaled as 90 meter length when the real length was somewhere around 98 meters... Then two weeks ago, I begun to do a preliminary scetching for my AU projects and found out as well as the orginal drawing of the Gavriil was also bit missporpotioned (the scanned drawing had apparently been bit bended when I traced it)
Therefore the presentation of Novik and her numerious cousins in the bucket was quite of a failure of itself, and I was left with only solution:
Redrawn them from start
This also led me to do the missing Izjaslav class (which I found I had drawn almost a year ago but forget to publish) and the Black sea variations, plus their all in Soviet rebuild guises.
BALTIC FLEET UNITS:
Novik her self was one of a ship, and none of the following ships should be called her sisters. Novik was build In St. Pettersburg with German plans and supervisions and she was the first turbine powered destroyer in Russian fleet and fastest destroyer (37 kts) of her time (and for long, fastest destroyer in the Baltics). She served trougth the WWI and the revolution/civil war with dignity, beeing renamed as Yakov Sverldov in 1926.
She was sunk in the Juminda's Mine barrage east of Tallin during the evacuation of Tallin in August 1941 (the evacuation of Tallin was the most disastorous naval operation of WWII, and only the famous battle of Lepanto in 16th century has counted more human life in seawarfare; yet the battle between Soviet Red-bannered Baltic Fleet and German mines is usually duly ignored by the naval fans)
Novik was not repeated in the Russian shipbuilding plans, but instead four class of rather inferior desings with lesser boilers (4-5 compared to 6 of Novik) and with two shaft instead of the three of Novik. Their performances were never up to Novik's extraordinary capabilities, but they formed the backbone of Russian and Soviet destroyer force up to late 30's when newer designs begun to enter the fleet.
In Baltics, the main class was the Gavriil class, of which 22 were ordered and 14 managed to enter the Russian Imperial fleet and 8 managed to get service in the Soviet Fleet. Gavriils had 4 boilers
Of the surviving units, here is presented two of the rebuild ones showing the general similarites, but yet lot of different details in what became of all of these ships after the reconstructions that took place on rather irregular scetchule in the mid-late 1930's.
Of the sometimes rather amusing renaming policies, the Valerian Kuybyshev begun her life as Kapitan Kern in the imperial orders, then renamed first Rykov and then Zhdanov before getting her final name as the former namesakes dropped out from political fashion. Both These served in the Northern Fleet and two ships were also transferred to Pacific fleet.
Largest of the Cousin ships were the Izjaslavs, which were also build for Baltic fleet and they had five boilers. Of these, 6 were ordered, but only two managed to enter Imperial service, and only one with one non-completed vessel was passed onto Soviet navy.
In soviet Service, they were named as Kalinin and Karl Marx, and only the latter was given extensive rebuilding with new sloped funnels and after deckhouse