Universal plowmen of the sea. Project 254 basic minesweepers
ORP Tour during trawling with electromagnetic trawl TEM-52. Photo 8.F.O.W.
The first full-fledged minesweepers of our Navy after the Great Patriotic War were Project 254 units built under a Soviet license. They turned out to be indispensable not only in the fight against mine danger, but also in monitoring the area. They were also widely used as general purpose escort ships.
Project №4
In 1957-1959, the service of minesweepers ended, which passed under the white and red flag immediately after the war. At this time, the composition of our fleet was replenished with units of a completely new type, namely the basic minesweepers of the Soviet design 254 in modifications K and M. However, in order to trace the path of minesweepers of this type under the Polish flag, you need to go back for a while to the second half of the 40s and early 50s -x.1946. It was then that the Naval Command (DMV) developed new plans for the naval development of the armed forces from time to time. Trawl forces played an important role in the prepared options for expanding the fleet. In the plan since 1959, when Cadmium was the commander of the Navy. Adam Mohuchi, by 48 the fleet included 20 sea and base minesweepers, but these figures are the result of an ongoing assessment of the mine clearance needs of Polish waters of responsibility imposed by an international commission. When Cadmius took command of the naval forces. Włodzimierz Steyer assumed that in the next 18 years it would be possible to include 24 base minesweepers and 6 minesweepers "red". The next commander, Soviet cadmium. (since 1951 November 1956 Vice Admiral) Viktor Cherokov, his goal was to temporarily strengthen the fleet and therefore the plans developed at that time had a time horizon only until 1950. In 5, at the beginning of his mission in Poland, he really approached to the capabilities of the state, while allowing the construction of ships in our shipyards, saw the need to build 4 base minesweepers and 15 roadside mines. Three years later, when the work on the development of licensed projects was promising, the "traction" increased to 12 and 50 units in both subclasses, respectively. In the second half of the 1965s, when the capabilities of our shipyards were known, the plans presented were adapted to reality. They provided for the construction of 24, maximum 27 basic minesweepers by 254, but initially these should have been only units of project 206K / M, later the second dozen had their own design, i.e. developed project XNUMX.
It is one thing to plan the commissioning of ships, and another to develop tactical and technical requirements for them and determine the place of construction. In the spring of 1950, DMW developed very preliminary assumptions for several classes of ships, including a 350-450 ton sea minesweeper and a 150-200 ton basic minesweeper. When Cherokov arrived in Gdynia, he immediately remembered the bilateral agreements of 1949 that the Soviet Union undertook to provide license documentation for the most necessary parts of our fleet.
