Beograd-class destroyer
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The name ship of the class Beograd (right) and the flotilla leader Dubrovnik in the Bay of Kotor after being captured by Italy
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Beograd class |
| Builders: | |
| Operators: | |
| Preceded by: | Dubrovnik |
| Succeeded by: | Split |
| Built: | 1937–1939 |
| In service: | 1939–1945 |
| Planned: | 3 |
| Completed: | 3 |
| Lost: | 3 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Destroyer |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 98 m (321 ft 6 in) |
| Beam: | 9.45 m (31 ft 0 in) |
| Draught: | 3.18 m (10 ft 5 in) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 38 knots (70 km/h; 44 mph) |
| Range: | 1,000 nautical miles (1,900 km; 1,200 mi) |
| Complement: | 145 |
| Armament: |
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The Beograd class were three destroyers built for the Royal Yugoslav Navy in the late 1930s based on a French design. Beograd was built in France and Zagreb and Ljubljana were built in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During the World War II German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Zagreb was scuttled to prevent its capture, and the other two were captured by the Italians. The Royal Italian Navy operated the two captured ships as convoy escorts between Italy, the Aegean Sea and North Africa, but one was lost in the Gulf of Tunis in April 1943. The other was captured by the Germans in September 1943 after the Italian surrender, and was subsequently operated by the German Navy. There are conflicting reports about the fate of the final ship, but it was lost in the final weeks of the war. In 1967, a French film was made about the scuttling of Zagreb. In 1973, Josip Broz Tito posthumously awarded the two officers who scuttled Zagreb with the Order of the People's Hero.
Following the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS) at the conclusion of World War I, Austria-Hungary transferred the vessels of the former Austro-Hungarian Navy to the new nation. The Kingdom of Italy was unhappy with this, and convinced the Allies to share the Austro-Hungarian ships among the victorious powers. As a result, the only modern sea-going vessels left to the KSCS were 12 torpedo boats, and they had to build their naval forces from scratch. In 1929, the name of the state was changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the early 1930s, the Royal Yugoslav Navy (Serbo-Croatian: Kraljevska Jugoslavenska Ratna Mornarica, KJRM) pursued the flotilla leader concept, which involved building large destroyers similar to the World War I Royal Navy V and W-class destroyers. In the interwar French Navy, these ships were intended to operate with smaller destroyers, or as half-flotillas of three ships. The Royal Yugoslav Navy decided to build three such flotilla leaders, ships that would have the ability to reach high speeds and with a long endurance. The long endurance requirement reflected Yugoslav plans to deploy the ships into the central Mediterranean, where they would be able to operate alongside French and British warships. The pursuit of this concept resulted in the construction of the destroyer Dubrovnik in 1930–1931. Soon after she was ordered, the onset of the Great Depression meant that only one ship of the planned half-flotilla was ever built.
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