Soviet destroyer Soobrazitelny (1940)

Soobrazitelny (Смышлёный) was one of 18 s (officially known as Project 7U) built for the Soviet Navy during the late 1930s. Although she began construction as a Project 7, Soobrazitelny was completed in 1941 to the modified Project 7U design.

Design and description
Originally built as a Gnevny-class ship, Soobrazitelny and her sister ships were completed to the modified Project 7U design after Joseph Stalin ordered that the latter be built with an en echelon boiler arrangement instead of the linked arrangement of the Gnevnys so that a ship could still move even if one or two boilers were disabled.

Like the Gnevnys, the Project 7U destroyers had an overall length of 112.5 m, a beam of 10.2 m, but had a draft of 3.98 m at deep load. The ships were slightly overweight, displacing 1727 MT at standard load and 2279 MT at deep load. The crew of the Starozhevoy class numbered 207 in peacetime, but increased to 271 in wartime as more personnel were needed to operate additional equipment. The ships had a pair of geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller, rated to produce 54000 shp using steam from four water-tube boilers which the designers expected would exceed the 37 kn speed of the Project 7s because there was additional steam available. Soobrazitelny herself only reached 36.8 kn during her sea trials in 1943. Variations in fuel oil capacity meant that the range of the Project 7Us varied between 1380 to 2700 nmi at 19 kn, that lower figure demonstrated by Soobrazitelny.

The Project 7U-class ships mounted four 130 mm B-13 guns in two pairs of superfiring single mounts fore and aft of the superstructure. Anti-aircraft defense was provided by a pair of 76.2 mm 34-K AA guns in single mounts and three 45 mm 21-K AA guns as well as four 12.7 mm DK or DShK machine guns. They carried six 533 mm torpedo tubes in two rotating triple mounts amidships. The ships could also carry a maximum of 58 to 96 mines and 30 depth charges. They were fitted with a set of Mars hydrophones for anti-submarine work, although these were useless at speeds over 3 kn.

Construction and career
Soobrazitelny was laid down in Shipyard No. 200 (named after 61 Communards) in Nikolayev as yard number 1078 on 15 October 1936 as a Gnevny-class destroyer with the name Prozorlivny. She was relaid down as a Project 7U destroyer on 3 March 1939, and launched on 26 August 1939. The ship was renamed Soobrazitelny on 25 September 1940 and was commissioned into the Black Sea Fleet on 7 June 1941.