English shipbuilder Sir John Thornycroft, credited as a pioneer in the torpedo-boat industry, initially created the Miranda series of mahogany fast boats culminating in the Miranda IV, launched in 1910. This boat could reach speeds of up to 35 knots with a single 120hp petrol engine. The boat was characterised by a hard chine-stepped hull and categorized as a ‘skimmer’. In 1915, Thornycroft designed and built a large series of Coastal Motor Torpedo Boats (CMBs) based on this design and armed with torpedoes.

The CMBs were deployed by the Royal Navy during the Allied intervention into the Russian Civil War in the Baltic, where two boats, under Lieutenant Augustus Agar, were delivered in the spring of 1919. Thanks to their speed and low draught the boats were to be used to ferry British agents back and forth from Petrograd, during overnight passages over the booms and minefields which protected its approaches.

When the anti-Bolshevik rebellion occurred in the fort of Krasnaia Gorka in the vicinity of Kronshtadt on 17 June 1919, a British boat sank the Bolshevik cruiser Oleg which was bombarding the fort. The success of this mission prompted Rear-Admiral Walter Cowan to launch an attack on the Bolshevik ships anchored at Kronshtadt with a flotilla of seven CMBs. One ex-cruiser was sunk, and two battleships damaged as a result. This daring attack left a lasting impression on the Bolsheviks and shaped Soviet naval development for the next three decades.

The idea of numerous fast attack torpedo craft sending the British battlefleet approaching Leningrad to the bottom of the Gulf of Riga was extremely appealing to the Russians. However, construction of such a mosquito fleet was obstructed by a lack of mahogany in Russia and an unfamiliarity with hydrodynamic lift technology by Russian shipbuilders. However, this technology was well known to aircraft engineers and Soviet decision-makers saw the advantage of aircraft and naval engineers working together. The design and construction of the boat was therefore entrusted to Andrei Tupolev, an aircraft designer who copied Thornycroft's single step ‘skimmer’ using duralumin technology from all-metal aircraft construction pioneered by Hugo Junkers. This technology was provided by the Germans who, wanting to circumvent Versailles Treaty restrictions, had placed their aircraft factory in the Soviet Union.

The first Soviet built motor torpedo boat named Pervenets was a copy of the British CMB, except that it was made of duralumin instead of mahogany. Numerous boats were built in the series, with 386 delivered by the end of WWII and 338 after, bringing their total number to 724. They were a technically refined, specialized and sophisticated weapon, but as often happens, they fought in a war for which they were not designed. Their mission was to be a sudden and en masse high-speed attack force on a tight formation of enemy ships entering the confined and relatively calm waters of the Gulf of Finland, or the Gulf of Sevastopol. Instead, they were conscripted as naval workhorses, used for escort duties, transportation and assault troop landings. The tasks they accomplished were not envisaged at all, while the boats themselves were poorly maintained and manned by unenthusiastic crews. Over a dozen boats were adapted as fire support craft with the torpedo troughs plated over and Katyusha rocket launchers installed.

Tupolev himself was arrested in October 1937, accused of leading a subversive anti-Soviet organization and being an agent of French intelligence. Many of his colleagues were executed but Tupolev was imprisoned in an elite labour camp which was, in effect, the design and construction bureau of the NKVD (Soviet secret police) and operated in closed and guarded accommodation. Tupolev was given the freedom to request help from colleagues or experts in other forced labour camps and organize a design team. Their greatest achievement was the development of the Tu-2, the twin-engine frontline bomber aircraft, a de facto copy of the German Junkers Ju-88. This earned Tupolev his release, but his full rehabilitation was to come only in 1955, after Stalin's death.

Despite the enormous number of 250 enemy ships sunk claimed by the Soviet MTBs, their attacks actually accounted for no more than 30 sinkings. The Soviet system, and the Stalinist one, did not permit failure so sinkings were dutifully reported to assure one's personal safety. At sea no material evidence of victories (such as destroyed tanks or wrecked aircraft on land) remained afloat, so such claims were particularly tempting. The biggest warship sunk with the assistance of the Tupolev-designed boat was the Soviet gunboat Krasnoe Znamiia, torpedoed in November 1942 by the Finnish Thornycroft built CMB Syöksy, assisted by two ex-Soviet copies captured by the Finns year before.

The idée fixe of Soviet naval doctrine (based on the Russian one) was the ‘inter-theatre manoeuvrability’ of light craft and small combatants via the inland waterways or the railway system. The Trans-Siberian Railway, interconnected with the tributaries of the Volga would, it was thought, secure the transfer of small craft between the Far East and the Baltic, Arctic, and the Black Sea. However the whole concept of the railway transfer of MTBs necessitated they had a basic width limit of 4 metres, which proved to be a serious design constraint affecting all Soviet designs from the 1920s onwards. The general plan to move light craft and combatants around proved to be tactically worthless because of the time and effort necessary to conduct such operations, while its strategic influence was restricted by the limited capacity of the boats. Only the experience of the Vosper, Elco and Higgins boats delivered by the Allies opened the eyes of Soviet decision-makers and designers, which resulted in the successful post-war development of MTBs.

You can read more in Soviet Motor Torpedo Boats of World War II