Shipbucket

Allrigth, saving the best for last, here is finally the Ognyevoi and Otlichnyy Class Destroyers from the Pr.30 and Pr.30-K classes... the last main class surface combatants of the Soviet Fleets that were yet missing from the Bucket.
They are also really handsome ships, one of my favorites among all destroyers (then again I've said this from all of them Ive drawn, Haven't I??)¨
so perhaps it was fit to complete the circle with them.




I will propably next Redo the more famous Pr.30bis and the Pr.31 class derivates once my still emergin AU will lead into that era... stay tuned

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

Great work!

Nice work! More please!

Very nice indeed!

Allrigth, continuing now with the Project 30Bis desing. After WWII, the Soviet Navy sougth new destroyer desing the meet the requirments for new kind of naval warfare the future envestigated, but while projects and ideas run rampat at the post war days, making them materialise was not going to happen in the speed Stalin and the military wanted. Thus the allready proven Wartime Pr.30 desing was pressed into mass production in more corrected form than from the wartime design. With Pr.30bis, the entire ships were welded and build in prefabricated components that allowed over 70 ships to be build at the 1948-1953 timeframe. Building of them was fast, fastest ships beeind completed from keel laying to commisioning in just 9 months. Since welding thecniques for shipbuilding were new to Soviet yards, and expertise aquired during the turmoil of the war, some of the finishing of these ships left lot for desire. Its told that one Northern Fleet unit, build at Molotovsk was damaged by normal warming by the sunligth during the progress and eventuall its Bow was almost 10 cm offset from the center line. Suprisingly this deforming did not affect its performance in the acceptance trials, and the ship was commisioned as planned.


The class featured new radars, radios and larger hull to tbe Pr.30 class ships, and their robust, simple and trouple-free appereance appeased the Soviet sailors and despite the design was alltogether obsolete (not least by the never-ending proplem to get "universal" e.g Dual Purpose main armament), the class was well liked and had long service life, with many beeing exported. In later years they were mostly used as naval infantry support ships and steamplants to Nuclear submarines while those were on docks.






Some of the class was selected to be converted into Radar and electronic SIGNIT inteligence gathering and general recconaince. The Pr.31 was orginally to be armed with three quad 57mm AA guns, but such installation proved out to be too much for the hull, and it was first dropped to 2 guns, but whit naval officals fear to loose ship's self-defence capacity, the orginal 130mm Battery was retained, and single barrel 57mm mounts were substituted, which proved out to be rigth choise, since the single-barrel guns had better rate of fire, and weigthed only fraction of the big quadruple mounts. Also, ASW rocket launchers were fitted and the remaining set of TT's were wired to use new ASW torbedoes.
The conversion was not that succesfull, the first generation of radar inteligence equipment was not that statisfactory and the surviability of non-missile armed ships was deemed dupios in the 1950's Soviet naval thinking. Only 8 ships were converted, of which three were placed on permament reserve immediately after the acceptance trials. Only one ship, in 1971 while operating in Egyptian coast was used in its orginal role of radar inteligence to assist Egyptians in their conflict agaisnt Israel.

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

Didn't one Egyptian vessel carried missiles at the back?

Al Zaffer had P-15 launchers on the aft superstructure, Damieta had the zif-72 quadruble 57mm AA gun with FCR in the same place (plus the RBU-2500 ASW rocket launcher installation from pr.31)
These I'll propably do next for this series, along with Wicher and propably the Indonesian ships, if I can find some reference to their quise.

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

There are some broken images in your post Golly...

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Yes, I was just to ask about that. In that post I see 3 pictures (Skoryi 1948, Besposchadnyi 1970, Ognevy), and three "Image" words, meaning usually that there's some link that don't work (usually from dropbox, although not always).

Oh awesome Golly, looking foward! The pictures works, but not as direct link, recht click at the error-sign and open in new file/link and it will work.