The Admiralen class were eight destroyers built for the Royal Netherlands Navy between 1926 and 1931. All ships fought in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and were scuttled or sunk.

Design

These ships were built in the Netherlands with assistance from the British company

Yarrow ''Achillea millefolium'', commonly known as yarrow () or common yarrow, is a flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. Other common names include old man's pepper, devil's nettle, sanguinary, milfoil, soldier's woundwort, and thousand seal. The ...

(at that time the leading builder of destroyers in the world). The Dutch ships were based on the British destroyer . A novel feature was the provision of a

seaplane A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water.Gunston, "The Cambridge Aerospace Dictionary", 2009. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteri ...

for scouting. There was however no catapult, the plane being lowered into the sea by a crane. The differences between the two groups were minor; the second group was fitted for minesweeping rather than mine laying, and they carried one less gun for 30 tons of fuel.

Design

Between 1925 and 1928 eight new destroyers were laid down to replace the ''Wolf''-class destroyers. The design came from Yarrow & Co, they based it on HMS ''Ambuscade'' and HMS ''Amazon''. The Royal Netherlands Navy took the Yarrow & Co design and made some minor changes. The first group was fitted with four 120mm no. 4

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guns, while the second group was fitted with four 120mm no. 5 HIH Siderius guns. The main differences are the mounts used and the no. 4 were able to elevate between −5 and +30 degrees while the no. 5 guns could elevate between −5 and +35 degrees, giving a range of 19,500 meters. The second group was equipped with 40mm no. 1

Vickers Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public i ...

AA guns, however these guns had problems firing at higher angles; the guns would malfunction or not fire at all. Because of this the ships of this group could use only their single 75mm AA gun against targets above 1000 meters. After 12 years of ignoring this issue it was finally solved in 1939 by stiffening the guns, however when Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940 this issue wasn't solved for the surface ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy.

Ships

References

Citations

References

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External links

Dutch destroyers at Unithistories.com
{{WWII Dutch ships Destroyer classes World War II destroyers of the Netherlands