Sail Training Shp SS Jadran

 Jadran is a training ship powered both by sail and internal combustion built for the navy of Yugoslavia and now owned by the Navy of Montenegro. My friend Karoly a resident of Serbia sent me this fine card.. 

Jadran is a barkentine   with a displacement of 737 tons and a length of almost 60 meters. The beam reaches 8.90 m, intermediate draft is 4.05 m, the main mast height 39.1 m, and the deck surface totals 93.3 m². Total length of rope is 11 kilometers. The main motor is the "burmajster-alpha" 353 kN and develops a maximum speed of 10.4 knots. On the sailboat, there are three single, two double and three four-person cabins, one 12-berth and one 30 berth space.

On 16 July 1933, at 10.00 hours, the ship arrived in Tivat, and was commissioned into theYugoslav Royal Navy. The crew remained on board until April 17, when the destroyer Zagreb was sunk. It was surrendered to the Italian Navy , which used it as a training ship under the new name Marco Polo. 

At the request of the Yugoslav  government and the ship was returned to Tivat. Immediately its restoration was begun in the Sava Kovacevic marine-technical repair bureau. Repairs began on 21 April 1947, and finished on 17 December 1948. The ship was ready for sailing, and served as part of the Vojnopomorskog school center in Divulje. 

Annual Conference of Heads of Government of the Working Community of the Danube region

This pretty maxicard was issued by Yugolavia on 15.5.1991 to commemorate the Regular Annual Conference of Heads of Government of the Working Community of the Danube region which was held in Belgrade from 15th to 17 May 1991.

Thank you Karoly from Serbia for this nice card.

Navy Day

The picture on the card is of the Navy Day being celebrated in the days of the erstwhile Yugoslavian Navy. This card was sent to me by Karoly of Serbia.

Missile Boat of the erstwhile Yugoslavian Navy

This card brings back nostalgic memories of my days in the Missile Boat Squadron (with OSA class boats) in the Indian Navy. SFR Yugoslav Navy guided missile gunboat of the Končar class, which was a class of fast attack craft that was built for the SFR Yugoslav Navy in the late 1970s. Following the break-up of Yugoslavia one craft went to the Croatian Navy whilst the remaining five went to the Montenegro Navy. As of 2009 three vessels remain in service.

As planned by the Yugoslav navy, the entire class of six ships was due to undergo extensive overhauls and modernization during the early 1990s. The ships' anti-ship armament was to be replaced by the Swedish state-of-the-art RBS-15 system after the removal of the old Soviet P-15 Termit missiles. The stern Bofors 57 mm gun was also due to be removed and replaced by a CIWS AK-630M unit. However, only one ship managed to undergo these changes. It was the RTOP-402 which, as the war in Yugoslavia broke out, was being worked on in a Croatian shipyard and thus remained in Croatian service. All other RBS-15 missiles (out of roughly 100 delivered by the time) were captured by the Croatian forces. This ship entered Croatian Navy service as RTOP-21 "Šibenik" in late 1991 and saw additional light upgrading and overhauls over the years.

The class is named after the first vessel which in turn was named after Rade Končar. Armed with two SS-N-2B launchers, the Končar-class boats were modeled after the Swedish Spica class. This card was sent to me by Karoly from Serbia.