SKR-52 "Tuman" – the USSR guard ship

After World War I, the command of the USSR Navy began a program to restore the Soviet Navy, which had suffered greatly from losses in combat operations. Much attention was paid to the building of guard and anti-submarine defense ships, since the country had long sea borders, that needed to be protected from "imperialist designs". After studying the examples of German shipbuilding, that came after the war as trophies, including the “Elbing”-type destroyers, the guard ship project No. 42 “Kondor” was created. The ship was quite good, but the USSR Navy leadership and Stalin himself decided, that the ship should be smaller and set the designers the task of projecting a guard ship of project 50 with a displacement of about 1,200 tons. In the summer of 1950 this task was received by the Leningrad department of CKB-820, headed by D. D. Zhukovsky. The documentation was prepared by the CKB-820 department in Kaliningrad. In the summer of 1952 the first serial ship SKR “Gornostay” was launched in Nikolayev. In early 1953 this ship sailed to Sevastopol for running tests. Based on the results of the tests and including the identified shortcomings, the working documentation was adjusted and subsequent ships were built according to the modified project. Later, some of the ships were modernized according to the 50-PLG project for anti-submarine defense. Despite the positive characteristics of the project and the sailors' sympathy for the "half-hundred", experts noted the outdated armament and radio-electronic equipment, so it is not surprising, that most of the ships of this project did not work out their entire resource, and some, without even being in any combat service, were written off and cut up after a certain time. In the late 80s, an attempt to rework some of the ships ended in nothing and was discontinued along with the collapse of the USSR.

A small model of a small ship - perfectly designed, also perfectly detailed, intended only for medium-experienced and experienced modelers. There is a considerable supply of colors, textual instruction in Russian, Polish, English and German - small, but perfectly complementing the perhaps somewhat chaotic, but not bad, quite informative and easy-to-read graphic instruction. Where necessary, details are printed double-sided.