Kronshtadt class submarine chaser

The "Kronshtadt" class submarine chasers were a Soviet design built under license in China in the 1950s. The first Chinese built unit entered service in 1957 and was designated as the Type 6604 submarine chaser.

ervice history

Two boats of this class, #271 & #274 participated in the Sino-South Vietnamese naval battle in the Paracel Islands on January 19, 1974, with #274 heavily damaged. However, #274 was able to make it back to the Yongxing Island for emergency repair after the battle, and returned to Hainan Islands the next day.

Despite their obsolescence, these boats remained active well into the mid 1990’s. Although the ships are no longer capable venturing into open ocean, these units remain on the People's Liberation Army Navy’s list of its reserve fleet, actively used as weaponry training boats for naval militia in various military maritime districts in China.

The second mission of this class is to take Chinese children enrolled in military / naval summer camps and junior military / naval academies for short cruises for patriotic education and public relations missions. However, due to the age of these units, they are increasingly being used in its secondary missions in recent years and according to domestic Chinese media sources, even in this limited capacity of the secondary mission, the cruises are only consisted of short tours within the harbors.

*Displacement: 300 t
*Length: 52.1 m
*Beam: 6.5 m
*Draft: 2.2 m
*Speed: 18 kt
*Range: 2,500 nm @ 14 kt
*Propulsion: 3 diesel engines @ 3,300 hp with 3 shafts (20 tons of fuels total)
*Complement: 50
*Armament:
**Guns: 1 Soviet (or Chinese built) 90K dual purposes 85 mm gun, 2 Soviet (Bu-11) or Chinese Type 61 37mm guns (II x 1) and 6 Soviet or Chinese Type 14.5 mm heavy machine guns (II x 3)
**ASW: 2 RBU-1200 rocket launchers (in some) and 2 BMB-1 ASW mortars, and 2 depth charge rails, 20 mines.
*Radar: 1 Ball End search radar
*Sonar: 1 Soviet hull mounted high frequency active sonar