Yugoslav destroyer Split

History
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Name:	Split
Namesake:	City of Split
Builder:	Yarrow Shipbuilders, Split
Laid down:	July 1939
Fate:	Captured while under construction, 15 April 1941
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Name:	Split
Launched:	March 1950
Acquired:	27 October 1944
Commissioned:	4 July 1958
Decommissioned:	1980
Struck:	2 February 1984
Fate:	Scrapped, 1986
General characteristics (as completed)
Type:	Large destroyer
Displacement:	2,400 long tons (2,439 t) (Standard) 3,000 long tons (3,048 t) (Deep load)
Length:	120 m (393 ft 8 in) (o/a)
Beam:	12 m (39 ft 4 in)
Draft:	3.7 m (12 ft 2 in)
Installed power:	50,000 shp (37,000 kW) 2 × Admiralty 3-drum boilers
Propulsion:	2 × shafts; 2 × geared steam turbines
Speed:	31.5 knots (58.3 km/h; 36.2 mph)
Complement:	240
Armament:	as designed: 5 × single Škoda 140 mm (5.5 in)/56 caliber naval guns 5 × single Bofors 40 mm guns 4 × single ZB vz.60 15 mm machine guns 2 x triple 533 mm (21 in) torpedo tubes as completed: 4 × single 127 mm (5 in)/38 caliber Mark 12 naval guns 4 × twin, 4 × single Bofors 40 mm guns 1 × quintuple 533 mm (21 in) torpedo tubes 2 × Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot mortars 6 × Depth charge throwers; 2 × depth charge racks 40 × mines

The Yugoslav destroyer Split was a large destroyer designed for the Royal Yugoslav Navy in the late 1930s. Construction began in 1939, but she was captured incomplete by the Italians during the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. They continued to build the ship, barring a brief hiatus, but she was not completed before she was scuttled after the Italian surrender in September 1943. The Germans occupied Split and refloated the destroyer later that year, but made no efforts to continue work. The ship was scuttled again before the city was taken over by the Yugoslav Partisans in late 1944. Split was refloated once more, but the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was able to do little with her before the Tito–Stalin Split in 1948 halted most work. Aid and equipment from the United States and Great Britain finally allowed her to be completed 20 years after construction began. She was commissioned in July 1958 and served as the navy's flagship for most of her career. Split became a training ship in the late 1970s after a boiler explosion. She was decommissioned in 1980, and scrapped six years later.

The Yugoslav Navy decided to order a single large destroyer rather than a repeat pair of smaller Beograd-class destroyers in the late 1930s because the Navy's planners didn't believe that the smaller ships could adequately support the raiding strategy that it intended to conduct in the event of a war with Italy. The staff decided on a much larger equivalent of the flotilla leader Dubrovnik that could out-gun any Italian destroyer and cover the escape and return to base of the raiding forces. The French company Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire was selected and based the new ship on their design for the 2,610-metric-ton (2,570-long-ton) Le Fantasque-class destroyer. She was built by Yarrow Shipbuilders at their shipyard in Split and was named after her place of construction.

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