The prototype was built at the No.194 Marti yard in Leningrad in 1939, and after good test performance it was meant to replace it before the German invasion put a stop to those plans.

Compared to the prototype Komsomolets, the new design, called Project 123-bis, had a flush deck hull, and were powered by American-supplied Packard petrol engines instead of the Soviet Mikulin GAM-34.

The armament consisted of two twin 12.7-millimetre (0.50 in) DShK heavy machine guns, two 450 mm torpedo tubes, and six depth charges.

A new variant, Project 123-K, was developed in 1950, with the addition of a radar and a single twin 14.5 mm KPV machine gun replacing the DShKs.

Three of them (T-333, T-336, and T-339) launched an abortive attack on the American Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer USS Maddox on August 2, 1964, starting the Gulf of Tonkin incident.