Russians find an old G-5
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation announced they have discovered and identified torpedo boat AKA-76 in the Black Sea off Cape Panagia. The G-5 (Г-5) type boat was sunk 17 November 1943 by German aircraft during the Kerch-Eltigen landing operation, taking 10 personnel with her.
Not much left…
Designed in the late 1920s by famous aircraft designer AN Tupolev, the 61-foot duralumin vessels, powered by imported Italian Isotta-Frascini diesels (and later M-34 water-cooled piston aircraft gasoline engines– yikes!) were very light and could top 50+ knots at max speed on smooth water. Carrying a pair of 533mm rear-launched torpedoes and two 12.7mm Dshk guns for self-defense, they had a six man crew (with the fact that AKA-76 had 10 aboard being indicative that she was probably a control boat for the landings). They could float in just 32-inches of water when fully loaded and, at speed, pass through areas even more shallow.
Торпедный катер
Some were shipped to the Republicans in Spain as military aid in the Spanish Civil War, thought they proved ineffective.
Though 329 were completed, and at least 70 lost in WWII, these boats did not claim many anti-shipping victories other than a few smallish Romanian and German vessels in the Black Sea and some Finnish ones in the Baltic. A swarm of G5s reportedly (Soviet legend) harassed the German cruisers Leipzig, Emden and the destroyers T-7, T-8 and T-11 enough that the Kriegsmarine abandoned an initial assault on the Estonian island of Saaremaa in 1941.
The G-5s did prove very good at helping demine coastal areas and harbors while infiltrating raiding parties and supplies behind enemy lines, as well as in racing close during landings and letting their Dshk guns do the heavy lifting alongside small-arms equipped crew.
No less than 28 Heroes of the Soviet Union, including Aleksey Afrikanov, earned their decorations in G-5s, with the aforementioned officer doing so with a group of torpedo boats that suppressed German artillery positions at close range in Tsemess Bay and Novorossiysk on the night of 10 September 1943, just before the start of the landing operation, thus ensuring a successful landing of troops from the sea.
During the Korean conflict, three DPRK-crewed G-5s attacked the cruisers USS Juneau (CL-119) and HMS Jamaica off Chumunjin on 2 July 1950, without much success. All three were splashed at long range.
More on the class (in Russki)