The third Wicher in Polish naval history. Why warships inherit the names of their predecessors

When the name Wicher is pronounced on Wednesday over the barge at the quay of PGZ Stocznia Wojenna, the new frigate will become the third vessel in the history of the Polish Navy to carry it. The first defended the Hel Peninsula in September 1939 and rests on the seabed of Gdańsk Bay to this day. The second patrolled the Baltic for over a decade of the communist era, a Soviet-built hull under the Polish flag. The third is to carry the Polish fleet into a new age. The story of this name is also a story of how navies build identity through names.

business maritime economy history investments navy nato pomerania shipbuilding industry defense industry tricity news army

12 august 2026   |   08:32   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa

The first Wicher: defender of Hel

The first Wicher was a breakthrough in the most literal sense: the first modern combat vessel of the navy of interwar Poland. Built at the French yard Chantiers Navals Français in Blainville to plans derived from the French Bourrasque-class destroyers, she entered service in July 1930 and made her first entry into Gdynia on 15 July that year. As the naval historian Jerzy Pertek recorded, the names for the two Blainville-built destroyers, Wicher and Burza, were chosen personally by Marshal Józef Piłsudski, then minister of military affairs. Thus began the tradition, alive to this day, of naming Polish destroyers, and later other strike vessels, after violent weather phenomena.

Through the 1930s Wicher served as flagship of the Polish destroyer division. When Błyskawica, Grom and Burza sailed for Britain in late August 1939 under Operation Peking, Wicher remained on the Baltic as the only Polish destroyer. She screened the minelayer Gryf in the aborted mining operation Rurka, and from 2 September, on the Fleet Command's orders, defended Hel as a permanently anchored floating battery. A day later, after an earlier gunnery duel with German destroyers, she was hit by four bombs from diving Junkers aircraft and sank at the quay in the shallow water of Hel's harbour. One sailor was killed and around twenty wounded, and most of the crew fought on in the land defence of the peninsula until its capitulation on 2 October. The remains of the ship still lie underwater near the naval port of Hel, a dozen or so nautical miles from where her successor will take to the water on Thursday.

The second Wicher: a Soviet hull under the Polish flag

The name returned to the fleet in June 1958, when the flag was raised on a Project 30bis destroyer, built at the Zhdanov yard in Leningrad and previously serving in the Soviet fleet as Skoryy. Poland first leased the vessel from the USSR together with her twin, Grom, and bought both ships outright in 1965. The second Wicher spent more than a decade taking part in Baltic exercises and representing the Polish flag in foreign ports, including in Britain. She was withdrawn from service in the mid-1970s.

She was the last Polish warship to carry a name from the storm family until the 1990s, when the Orkan-class fast attack craft entered service. Notably, the names Burza, Wicher and Huragan were considered for those boats during the naming process, but Orkan, Piorun and Grom were chosen instead, leaving the three historic names free. As it turned out, they were waiting for the frigates.

Huragan: a name yet to make its debut

Among the three Miecznik ships, the most intriguing case is the third. Huragan is a name that no vessel under the Polish flag has ever formally carried. It was assigned to a destroyer planned in the late 1930s as a development of the Grom class, to be built alongside a twin named Orkan. Steel cutting had already begun when the outbreak of war halted the project. The name was later earmarked for a vessel loaned by the Allies, which had a Polish crew for a few months but never officially joined the Polish fleet and was ultimately transferred to Free French forces. The future ORP Huragan will thus close an account opened in 1939, after nearly ninety years.

Why fleets keep old names

Inheriting names is a practice shared by most of the world's navies. The Royal Navy has commissioned more than a dozen ships named Ark Royal, the US Navy successive Enterprises, and the new Type 31 frigates, on whose design the Miecznik class is based, carry the names of historic Inspiration-class vessels. The logic is the same everywhere: a ship lives for a few decades, but a name can live forever, and with it a fighting tradition, battle honours and the memory of crews. A new vessel does not start from scratch; she steps into a ready-made biography.

In the Polish fleet this continuity has an added dimension. The navy of interwar Poland existed for barely two decades, and most of its ships were lost or never returned home, so names became one of the few lasting links between generations of sailors. Hence the Kormoran-class minehunters inheriting names from prewar minesweepers, Ślązak from a prewar torpedo boat, and earlier the Orkan-class craft from wartime destroyers. The Miecznik frigates complete the most recognisable series of these references: Wicher and Burza return to the Baltic where their predecessors fought, and Huragan will finally see a flag raised above it.

There is one more, less obvious symbolism. The first Wicher arrived in Gdynia from a foreign yard, because Poland could not yet build such ships. The third Wicher was built in Gdynia from the first steel plate. The entire journey of Poland's shipbuilding industry fits within the history of a single name.

Buy us a coffee, and we’ll invest in great maritime journalism! Support Gazeta Morska and help us sail forward – click here!

ORP Wicher historia Marynarki Wojennej obrona Helu 1939 program Miecznik i tradycje morskie PGZ Stocznia Wojenna

comments

---

enter content

COMMENT

nick

Add the first comment