Sava-class river monitor


The Sava-class river monitors were built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy during the mid-1910s. The two ships of the class were assigned to the Danube Flotilla and participated in World War I. The ships survived the war and were transferred to Romania and the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as reparations.

Description and construction

The ships had an overall length of, a beam of, and a normal draught of. They displaced, and their crew consisted of 91 officers and enlisted men. The Sava-class ships were powered by two triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, using steam generated by two Yarrow boilers driving. The engines were rated at and were designed to reach a top speed of. They carried of fuel oil.
The main armament of the Sava-class river monitors was a pair of L/45 guns in a single turret forward of the conning tower and a pair of L/10 howitzers in the rear turret. They also mounted a pair of Škoda 7 cm guns| L/26 anti-aircraft guns, two QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss| L/44 guns, and seven machine guns. The maximum range of her Škoda L/45 guns was. Her armour consisted of belt and bulkheads thick, deck armour thick, and her conning tower, gun turrets and cupolas were thick.

Ships

Careers

In Romanian service, Bucovina was fitted for service at sea as an anti-submarine escort, having one of her seven machine guns replaced by one 610 mm depth charge thrower. Otherwise her armament remained unchanged. In Romanian service, she also had a range of 750 nautical miles, more than enough to travel across the greatest East-West extent of the Black Sea, which was 635 nautical miles.

Footnotes