Silny was
laid down in
Shipyard No. 190 (Zhdanov) in
Leningrad with the
yard number 520 on 26 October 1936 as a
Gnevny-class destroyer. She was relaid down as a Project 7U destroyer on 31 January 1938, and
launched on 1 November 1938. Accepted by a state commission on 31 October 1940,
Silny officially joined the
Baltic Fleet Light Forces Detachment on 12 April 1941 when the naval jack of the Soviet Union was raised aboard her. On the morning of 6 July,
Silny,
Serdity, the old destroyer , and the
Uragan-class guard ships Tucha and
Sneg departed for minelaying operations in the Irbe Strait;
Silny carried 70 mines on her deck. Upon reaching the entrance to the strait at 12:29, German ships, reported as
torpedo boats and an
auxiliary cruiser, were spotted and both Type 7Us moved to attack, with
Serdity leading. Although their gunners reported explosions on the German ships, which were actually the minesweeping support ship
Minenräumschiff-11 (the former
Osnabrück) and an attached
minesweeper,
Silnys captain ordered the dropping of the mines stored on her deck due to the danger of explosion. This latter was not completely fulfilled as at 13:19 she received a hit on her stern that killed four and wounded seven sailors, damaging one 130 mm gun. A splinter also set fire to a mine, which was thrown overboard by three nearby wounded sailors who received the
Order of the Red Banner for their action a week later. The hit caused
Silny to reverse course behind a smoke screen, and
Serdity did likewise two minutes later. In July,
Silny made several more sorties to
Moonsund and the
Gulf of Riga, but had her screw damaged by grounding or contact with a
shipwreck near
shoals in Moonsund. She was sent to
Kronstadt for repairs, leaving the dock on 23 August. Two days later, she bombarded Finnish positions on the coast of
Vyborg Bay alongside
Stoyky, expending more than 500 shells from her main guns over the next three days. The destroyer laid minefields in the
Gulf of Finland during early September, setting 196 mines and 130
mine protectors in five sorties, before moving to
Oranienbaum on 15 September to conduct shore bombardments of advancing German troops with the assistance of a fire correction post. There,
Silny fired five hundred 130 mm shells until 20 September, when increased shelling and air raids on the exposed harbor of Oranienbaum forced her to withdraw to Kronstadt. Damaged by shelling on 20, 24 April and 14 May 1942, she was quickly repaired, downing a German aircraft with fire from a 37 mm gun on 24 April. From late 1942 to 1943, her only combat firing occurred on 1 June 1943 with the expenditure of eighteen 130 mm shells on Axis positions. She conducted shore bombardments in support of the
Krasnoye Selo–Ropsha Offensive in January 1944, firing either 146 or about 400 main-gun shells. Assisted by
forward observers, the destroyer fired her last forty-four 130 mm shells of the war from Kronstadt in a 10 June bombardment of Finnish positions on the
Karelian Isthmus during the
Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive. From November to the end of the war,
Silny was refitted at the Baltic Shipyard. == Postwar ==