ORP Grom

ORP Grom was Grom-class destroyer serving in the Polish Navy during World War II. The lead ship of her class, she was laid down in 1935, commissioned in 1937 and lost in battle on May 4, 1940 in Ofotfjord near Narvik during the Norwegian campaign.

Ordered in the British Cowes-based J. Samuel White shipyard, ORP Grom was thought of as a heavy destroyer. She and her younger sister ship ORP Błyskawica were to support the outdated French-built ORP Wicher and ORP Burza in the role of the core of the Polish Navy in a possible conflict. As Poland had only one major seaport, the main task of the Polish naval forces was to secure supplies shipment to and from the allied countries. Because of that, the Grom class was designed to fulfill both the role of shore defence and convoy escort. Two Parsons' steam turbines of 54,000 shp altogether, 3 boilers and 2 shafts allowed the Grom to travel at 39.5 knots, much faster than the contemporary designs of Farragut, Porter, La Fantasque or Tribal class. Also, as it was not clear whether the ships would be used to secure convoys to the Polish port of Gdynia or the Romanian port of Constanza, the possible range was much larger than in the case of destroyers designed exclusively for the Baltic Sea. At 15 knots, the ship had an effective range of 3500 NM.

On August 30, 1939, the Polish destroyers ORP Burza, ORP Błyskawica and ORP Grom were ordered to activate the Peking Plan, and the warships headed for Great Britain, from where they were to operate as convoy escorts. On September 1, 1939, Polish destroyers met the British destroyers HMS Wanderer and HMS Wallace. The British ships led the Polish flotilla to Leith, and in the night the Polish destroyers came to Rosyth. However, no convoys were ever organized to help Poland during the Polish Defensive War and the Polish ships were used in support of allied maritime operations.

During her operations on the Narvik front the Grom was ranked by the German soldiers as probably the most hated of all the allied ships deployed to the area. This hatred was founded by the fact that the Grom took an intense interest in all hostile movements on shore and was reputed to spend hours lurking the coast in order the kill even a single German. Grom was carrying out the last of her many NGFS missions in the Narvik area when she was sunk by Luftwaffe bombers in the Rombaken fjord. On May 4, 1940 the loaded midship torpedo launcher was struck by a bomb from a German plane and the torpedo exploded, causing the hull to break into two parts and the ship to sink almost immediately. 59 sailors lost their lives.

The wreck was never raised and it was not until October 6, 1986, that it was penetrated for the first time.