- Yes
- No
History: The Project 912 boats were made due to high demand to equip the border guard with vessels. While the Project 902 vessels were positively assessed, Poland decide to instead build the Project 912s in Gydina instead of Gdansk where the 902s were built (apparently a political decision).
A table showing each vessels construction details:
This class would later be used as the basis for the Project 912M sub chasers and serving for Poland together for a quite a few years.
Originally, all 5 ships would be part of the 6th Border Guard Ship Brigade, later the Maritime Border Guard Ship Brigade in 1967 to patrol Polish waters and if push came to shove, searching for submarines.
Upon the establishment of the Polish Border Guard, the entire class would be transferred to the maritime border guard unit on June 18th 1991. The final ship Tecza would be decommissioned on the 18th of March 2008, marking the end of the classes 43 service.
In the end, Fala would become a museum ship while Szkwal and Zorza would be bought by private companies, the latter would be scrapped in Gdansk in 2004.
Despite it being objectively more modern than the prior class of patrol boats, the 912 wasn’t looked back on kindly by some, arguing the Project 902 was better as a patrol boat. One major flaw was the hull line generating bow waves at max speed, leading to a substantial amount of drag.
Specifications:
Armament: 4x 30m AK-230, 4 AMD-1000 mines and 12-24 B-1 depth charges
Displacement: 212t
Complement: 28
Top speed: 44.45km/h
Width: 6.29m
Length: 41.26m
Engines: 2x 40DM diesel engines (2400 HP)
Sources:
Robert Rochowicz. The history of the “912s” - patrol boats and chasers .
Grzegorz Goryński. History of the construction of project 912 patrol vessels.
https://colloquium.amw.gdynia.pl/index.php/colloquium/article/view/271/218