Soviet destroyer Sposobny (1940)
1939 Soobrazitelny-class destroyer
Sposobny (Russian: Способный, lit. 'Capable') was one of 18 Storozhevoy-class destroyers (officially known as Project 7U destroyers) built for the Soviet Navy during the late 1930s. Although she began construction as a Project 7 Gnevny-class destroyer, Sposobny was completed in 1941 to the modified Project 7U design and assigned to the Black Sea Fleet.
During the Sieges of Odessa and Sevastopol in 1941–1942, the ship escorted convoys to and from those cities and provided naval gunfire support to the defenders. Sposobny struck a mine in early 1942 and had to be towed back to port for repairs. She was further damaged by bombs while still under repair in April 1942 and these were not completed until mid-1943. After a failed attempt to intercept German convoys off the Crimea, the ship and two other destroyers were attacked by German aircraft. After repeated attacks, the other two were sunk first and Sposobny was sunk while trying to rescue their survivors.
Design and description
Originally built as a Gnevny-class ship, Sposobny and her sister ships were completed to the modified Project 7U design after Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ordered that the latter be built with their boilers arranged en echelon, instead of linked as in the Gnevnys, so that a ship could still move with one or two boilers disabled.
Like the Gnevnys, the Project 7U destroyers had an overall length of 112.5 meters (369 ft 1 in) and a beam of 10.2 meters (33 ft 6 in), but they had a reduced draft of 3.98 meters (13 ft 1 in) at deep load. The ships were slightly overweight, displacing 1,727 metric tons (1,700 long tons) at standard load and 2,279 metric tons (2,243 long tons) at deep load.
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