SU - Gnevny Class Destroyer Summary

The Gnevny class were a group of 29 destroyers built for the Soviet Navy in the late 1930s, and are sometimes referred to as the Gremyashchiy class.

In the early 1930s the Soviets restarted naval construction and a fleet of  forty-eight destroyers were ordered under the Second Five-Year Plan.

The design was produced with Italian assistance despite ideological differences between the Soviets and Fascist Italy. They resembled contemporary destroyers built in Italy for the Greek and Turkish navies.

They suffered from some of the same weaknesses of contemporary Italian ships with structural weakness and limited seaworthiness. There were also significant machinery problems in the earliest ships. The design flaws were apparent after trials of the first units in 1936/37 and production stopped after 30 ships.

The ships assigned to the Baltic and Black Sea fleets were battered during the war. Some of the survivors were used as targets for nuclear testing, while others were transferred to China's navy after the Communist takeover.

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