Grom and Błyskawica entered service in 1937, becoming the strongest European destroyers of their time after the latest French ones. With the imminent outbreak of World War II, the destroyers broke through the Baltic to Britain to help escort wartime supply convoys to Poland. However, the convoys were never organized due to the rapid fall of Poland, and Grom came under the command of the British fleet, with which she took part in the Norwegian campaign. On May 4, 1940, Grom was hit by a bomb in the torpedo tube, which caused the torpedoes to detonate. The ship sank within three minutes. In 1943–44. the ship participated in operations in the North Atlantic and escorted polar convoys. During the Battle of the North Cape, Stord took part in the sinking of German battleship Scharnhorst. In 1944, the destroyer participated in covering the landings in Normandy, and then returned to escorting convoys to the USSR. After the war, Stord became the flagship of the Norwegian Navy.
With the outbreak of World War II, Great Britain launched the mass construction of destroyers in batches of eight. As a rule, all of them had four single-gun mounts of 102-120mm guns and one or two four-tube torpedo launchers. Two of them were transferred to the Norwegian Navy and received the names Stord and Svenner. Stord entered service in September 1943.
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