Soviet destroyer Silny

Silny (Сильный) 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, Silny was completed in 1940 to the modified Project 7U design.

Design and description
Originally built as a Gnevny-class ship, Silny 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. Some fell short of it, although specific figures for most individual ships have not survived. Variations in fuel oil capacity meant that the range of the Project 7Us varied between 1380 to 2700 nmi at 19 kn, that upper figure demonstrated by Storozhevoy.

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
Silny was laid down in Shipyard No. 190 (Zhdanov) in Leningrad with the yard number 520 on 26 October 1936 as a Gnevny-class destroyer. She was relaid down as a Project 7U destroyer on 31 January 1938, and launched on 1 November 1938. Accepted by a state commission on 31 October, Silny was officially joined the Baltic Fleet Light Forces Detachment on 12 April 1941. Along with her sisters SOVIET DESTROYER Stoyky, SOVIET DESTROYER Storozhevoy, and SOVIET DESTROYER Serdity, she relocated from Tallinn to Ust-Dvinsk on 14 June. In the days following the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, on 22 June, the destroyer participated in minelaying operations in the Irbe Strait, escorting the cruiser SOVIET CRUISER Kirov between 27 and 28 June while fending off air attack.

On the morning of 6 July, she, Serdity, the old destroyer SOVIET DESTROYER Engels, and the Uragan-class guard ships Tucha and Sneg were detached for minelaying operations in the Irbe Strait.