Leningrad-class destroyer leader

The Leningrad-class destroyer leaders were built for the Soviet Navy in the late 1930s. They were inspired by the contre-torpilleurs built for the French Navy. They were ordered in two groups of three ships each, the first group was designated Project 1 and the second Project 38. These ships were the first large vessels designed and built by the Soviets after the revolution.

Both ships in the Baltic Sea bombarded Finnish coast defense positions during the Winter War. During Operation Barbarossa they provided fire support during the German siege of Tallinn and escorted the convoys when it was evacuated at the end of August 1941. Again they provided fire support during the Siege of Leningrad as they were blockaded in Leningrad and Kronstadt by Axis minefields. Minsk was sunk by German air attack in September 1941, but was later raised and recommissioned. Neither ship did anything notable after the siege was lifted in January 1944. Moskva had a very short career in the Black Sea Fleet as she was sunk on 23 June 1941 by either a mine or the Soviet submarine Shch-206. Kharkov participated in most of the battles on the Black Sea coast, but was sunk by Stukas in October 1943 as she returned from a bombardment mission. Baku began the war in the Pacific, but was transferred to the Soviet Northern Fleet via the Northern Sea Route between 15 July and 14 October 1942, where she spent the rest of the war escorting Arctic convoys and attempting to intercept German convoys to their ports on the Arctic Ocean. Tblisi had little to do until after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria when she transported elements of the 358th Naval Rifle Battalion to the Korean port of Rason on 12 August 1945.

Not much is known of the details of their post-war careers. Most underwent a lengthy modernization in the early 1950s before being relegated to roles as training or target ships in the late 1950s. They were scrapped or expended as targets in the early 1960s.

Design
Ordered under the First Five-Year Plan the three Project 1 destroyer leaders were intended to lead flotillas of destroyers in combat. Rather than copy the British concept of a slightly enlarged version of the standard destroyer like HMS Codrington (D65) was for the A class destroyers, the Soviets chose to copy the French contre-torpilleurs like the Vauquelin-class destroyer, a series of very large and very fast destroyers that weren't intended to cooperate with other, slower destroyers. When the Leningrads were being designed the only destroyers in service for them to lead were old, ex-Tsarist ones that were only capable of 30 kn, but they were designed for 40 kn. These ships were the largest yet built from the keel up by Soviet shipbuilders and were plagued with delays and design issues as the Soviets were overambitious for their level of experience, having only previously built the Uragan-class guard ships, only one-third the size of the Leningrads.

The three Project 38 ships were ordered under the Second Five-Year Plan and were slightly larger than their Project 1 half-sisters, but otherwise identical.

General characteristics
The three Project 1 ships were 127.5 m long overall. They had a beam of 11.7 m and a maximum forward draft of 4.06 m and a rear draft of 3.76 m. They displaced 2150 LT at standard load, and 2582 LT at full load. The Project 38 ships displaced 2350 LT at standard load, and 2680 LT at full load; between 100 - 200 LT more than their half-sisters. Their massive bridge structure made them both top-heavy and poor seaboats because of the concentration of weight forward.

Armament
As a result of experience in the First World War these ships were designed to use five of the new 130 mm 50-caliber B-13 guns then under development in single mounts; two forward, two aft and the fifth gun between the bridge and the forward funnel. It was intended as a replacement for the Tsarist-era 130 mm 55-caliber gun, but with a shorter barrel suitable for use in destroyers. More propellant was used in the B-13 to duplicate the ballistics of the older weapon, but this caused severe erosion problems with the barrel, so much so that the first versions had an expected barrel life of only 130 rounds, less than the ammunition carried for each gun on the Leningrads. The solution proved to be the use of deeper grooves in the barrel, but this greatly complicated the logistical situation as liners with two different depths of grooves were produced, each with their own mutually-incompatible ammunition. Determining the solution proved to be a long and difficult process and the first guns weren't delivered until 1936, three years after the Project 1 ships were launched. The gun could be depressed to −5° and elevated to 45° at a rate of 5° per second. Traverse was about 300°, but this was limited by the gun's location on the ship. Traverse speed was 5° per second. They fired 33.5 kg semi-armor-piercing projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 870 m/s to a maximum range of around 25600 m, depending on ammunition and liner type. An individual gun weighed 5.07 t, but an entire mount weighed 4.9 t. Their rate of fire was 6–10 rounds per minute and 150 rounds were stowed aboard for each gun.

A pair of 76.2 mm 34-K anti-aircraft guns were mounted on the rear deckhouse. Manually worked, they could depress 5° and elevate to 85° with an elevation speed of 8° per second. They had 360° of traverse and a traverse speed of 12° per second. They fired an 11.5 kg time-fuzed projectile at a muzzle velocity of 810 m/s to a maximum range of around 89700 m, although maximum effective range was considerably shorter at 6500 m. An individual gun weighed 1263 kg, but an entire mount weighed 12 t. The rate of fire was about 15–18 rounds per minute.

Light AA guns initially consisted of two semi-automatic 45 mm 21-K AA guns mounted on either side of the bridge. These were hand-loaded, semi-automatic guns that had been adapted from the 45 mm anti-tank gun M1937 (53-K) and consequently lacked time-fuzed ammunition, which meant that only a direct hit would detonate the rounds. On the surviving ships these were supplemented during the war, and perhaps replaced, by six to ten fully automatic 37 mm 70-K AA guns and two to eight DK 12.7 mm machine guns. Some ships landed their middle 130 mm gun in exchange for more light AA guns. Photographic evidence shows that some ships received Lend-Lease, water-cooled .5 in Browning M-2 AA machine guns.

They were the first Soviet ships to mount quadruple torpedo tubes, one 533 mm launcher between the funnels and the other aft of the rear funnel. Sources disagree if any reload torpedoes were carried. The Leningrads were given a square stern with ramps to facilitate mine-laying. They could carry 68 Model KB, 84 Model 1926 or 115 Model 1912 mines. Although no sonar was initially fitted, just the Arktur hydrophone system that was useless at speeds above three knots, they carried 20 B-1 and 32 Model 1931 depth charges. At some point during the war Baku, Minsk, Leningrad and Tblisi were fitted with British Lend-Lease ASDIC (sonar), Type 285 fire control radars and American SG air search radars.

Propulsion
The Leningrads had three shafts, which necessitated laying out the boilers and machinery on the "unit" principle which had the advantage that one hit couldn't disable all of the boilers or engines and immobilize the ship. Two boiler rooms, each with one triple drum, water-tube boiler, were sited beneath the forward funnel. Immediately aft of them were two machinery rooms, each with one 22000 shp geared steam turbine for the two flank shafts. The third boiler room was near the rear funnel and its turbine room was just aft, powering the central shaft.

The ships proved to be as fast as required reaching 40 kn. 210 LT of fuel oil were normally carried, but this could be increased to 600 LT at full load. This gave a range of 2100 nmi at 20 kn. One problem that evidenced itself during the war was that the boiler foundations were vulnerable to shock damage.

Construction
Building times for these ships was absurdly long, not least due to mismanagement. Many delays were caused by the armament and the turbines, neither of which was ready for production when Leningrad was laid-down. The new turbines entered production after the Leningrad was launched, but the new guns which didn't even enter into production until three years after that. Additional problems were caused by the large numbers of defective parts, some items reaching a 90% rejection rate. Unusually for Soviet ships of the interwar period, the Leningrads were not overweight.

Both Baku and Tblisi were assembled at Komsomolsk-on-Amur from parts provided by the shipyard at Nikolayev.

Ships
All ships were named after cities.

Baltic Fleet
Leningrad was commissioned into the Baltic Fleet in December 1936, but one source claims that she was still being worked on until July 1938. Minsk was commissioned in early 1939. She sailed to Tallinn on 22 October 1940 when the Soviet Union began to occupy Estonia. After the Winter War broke out both ships bombarded Finnish coastal defense positions on Saarenpää Island, part of the Beryozovye Islands on 10 December 1939 and again on 30 December–3 January 1940. In addition Minsk bombarded them on 18–19 December as well. The beginning of Operation Barbarossa found Leningrad and Minsk in Tallinn and they were ordered to cover mine-laying operations at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland between Hanko and Osmussaar on 23 June. Both ships bombarded German positions surrounding Tallinn 23–27 August and participated in the evacuation of Tallinn from Tallinn to Leningrad at the end of August 1941. Minsk was sunk in Kronstadt harbor by Junkers Ju 87 dive-bombers of StG 2 on 23 September. She was later salvaged and recommissioned on 22 June 1943. Leningrad was part of the third evacuation convoy from Hanko to Leningrad from 9–12 December, but was forced to turn back by damage from nearby mine explosions. For most of the rest of the war both destroyers were blockaded in Leningrad and Kronstadt by Axis minefields and could only provide gunfire support for the defenders during the Siege of Leningrad.

Black Sea Fleet
Moskva was commissioned in 1938 and twice made port visits in Turkey before Operation Barbarossa began on 22 June 1941. Both ships bombarded the Romania port of Constanţa with a total of 350 rounds on 26 June, but Moskva either struck a mine or was torpedoed in a case of mistaken identity by the Soviet submarine Shch-206 which also attacked, but missed, Kharkov which had been damaged by near-misses from 28 cm shells from the German coast defense battery Tirpitz and bombs from Romanian aircraft. Shch-206 was sunk in retaliation by destroyers summoned to escort Kharkov back to Sevastopol.

Kharkov was repaired by 18 July and covered the retreat of Soviet Danube Flotilla to Odessa during the next several days. She bombarded Axis positions a number of times during the Siege of Odessa as well as escorting the evacuation convoys from Odessa to Sevastopol in October. During the Siege of Sevastopol she provided gunfire support and evacuated cut-off troops from elsewhere in the Crimea into Sevastopol and brought in reinforcements from Caucasian ports. She helped to transport the 388th Rifle Division from Novorossisk and Tuapse to Sevastopol between 7–13 December, the 79th Naval Rifle Brigade on 19–20 December and the 354th Rifle Division between 21–22 December, bombarding German positions in the interim. Between February and July 1942 she bombarded German troops on multiple times and brought in reinforcements and supplies for Sevastopol, evacuating wounded and refugees as she returned to port. She bombarded Axis positions near Feodosiya on 2–3 August and provided fire support for the defenders of Novorossiysk on 1–4 September. Between 8–11 September she ferried the 137th and 145th Rifle Regiments along with the 3rd Naval Rifle Brigade from Poti to Tuapse and Gelendzhik and a month later she transported 12,600 men of the 8th, 9th and 10th Guards Infantry Brigades from Poti to Tuapse to reinforce the defenses there between 20 and 23 October. On 29 November 1942 she escorted the cruiser Voroshilov on a mission to bombard Axis positions on Feodonisi and bombarded Yalta during the night of 19–20 December. On the night of 4 February 1943 the Soviets made a series of amphibious landings to the west of Novorossiysk, behind German lines. Kharkov, two cruisers, and two other destroyers provided fire support for the main landing, but the Soviet troops there were wiped out by 6 February, although one secondary landing was successful. She bombarded German positions near Novorossiysk again on the night of 21–22 February. Anapa was bombarded on the night of 13–14 May and Feodosiya on 22–23 May. During the night of 5–6 October 1943 Kharkov and the destroyers Besposhchadny and Sposobny bombarded Yalta, Alushta and Feodosiya and were spotted on their return voyage and attacked by Stukas of III./StG 3. Kharkov was damaged by their first attack and had to be towed by Sposobny. The second attack damaged all three ships and Sposobny took Besposhchadny under tow as well. The next attack sank both Kharkov and Besposhchadny. Sposobny was sunk by the fourth wave while trying to rescue survivors. This incident prompted Stalin to issue an order forbidding the use of ships destroyer-sized and larger without his express permission.

Pacific Fleet
Baku began the war in the Pacific, but was transferred to the Soviet Northern Fleet via the Northern Sea Route between 15 July and 14 October 1942, where she spent the rest of the war escorting Arctic convoys, attempting to intercept German convoys en route to their ports on the Arctic Ocean and providing gunfire support for Soviet operations. Tblisi had little to do until the Soviet invasion of Manchuria when she transported elements of the 358th Naval Rifle Battalion to the Korean port of Rason on 12 August 1945.

Postwar
Little is known of their post-war careers, other than that most underwent a lengthy modernization in the early 1950s. Minsk wasn't modernized, but rather redesignated as a training ship in 1951 and assigned to the Dzerzhinsky Higher Naval Engineering College. By the late 1950s most were being converted to target ships and other auxiliary roles before being scrapped or expended as targets in the early 1960s.