ORP Grom (1936)

ORP Grom was the lead ship of her class of destroyers serving in the Polish Navy during World War II. She was named after the Polish word for "thunderclap".

History
Grom was ordered from the British J. Samuel White shipyard in Cowes and laid down in 1935, and commissioned in 1937. Grom was thought of as a large destroyer, similar to flotilla leaders. She and sister ship ORP Błyskawica were to support the outdated French-built ORP Wicher (1928) and ORP Burza in the role of the core of the Polish Navy in a possible conflict. As Poland had only one major seaport, the main task of the Polish naval forces was to secure supplies shipment to and from the allied countries. Because of that, the Grom-class was designed to fulfill both the role of shore defence and convoy escort and was supposed to be stronger than single enemy destroyers.

Two Parsons' steam turbines of 54000 shp altogether, 3 boilers and 2 shafts allowed the Grom to travel at 39 knots (72 km/h/45 mph), faster than the contemporary designs like the U.S. and es, the British, or the German s. Also, as it was not clear whether the ships would be used to secure convoys to the Polish port of Gdynia or the Romanian port of Constanţa (through the Romanian Bridgehead), the possible range was much larger than in the case of destroyers designed exclusively for the Baltic Sea. The ship had an effective range of 3500 nmi at 15 knots (28 km/h/17 mph).

On 30 August 1939, the Polish destroyers Burza, Błyskawica and Grom were ordered to activate the Peking Plan, and the warships headed for Great Britain, from where they were to operate as convoy escorts. On 1 September 1939, Polish destroyers met the British destroyers HMS Wanderer (D74) and HMS Wallace (L64). The British ships led the Polish flotilla to Leith, and in the night the Polish destroyers came to Rosyth. However, no convoys were ever organized to help Poland during the Polish Defensive War and the Polish ships were used in support of allied maritime operations.

During her operations during the Norwegian Campaign Grom was ranked by the German soldiers as probably the most hated of all the allied ships deployed to the area. This hatred was founded by the fact that the Grom took an intense interest in all hostile movements on shore and was reputed to spend hours lurking the coast in order to kill even a single German. It is worth to note that this aggressive posture caused the Grom to inflict such heavy damage and casualties on the civilian population in the area that they also looked at the vessel with mixed feelings. On 4 May 1940, Grom carried out what turned out to be the last of her many naval gunfire support missions in the Narvik area in the Rombaken fjord. She was attacked by a Heinkel He 111 bomber from Kampfgeschwader 100 (piloted by Lt. Korthals). Her loaded midship torpedo launcher was struck by a bomb from a German plane and the torpedo exploded, causing the hull to break into two parts and the ship to sink almost immediately with a loss of life of 59 sailors.

The wreck was never raised and it was not until 6 October 1986 that it was penetrated by divers for the first time.