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This book looks at three classes of British destroyers – the Tribals, Battles and Darings – that were each different to the standard destroyer being built at the time. The three classes of destroyers examined here were each larger than the ‘normal’ destroyers that preceded them, and were seen as general purpose ships more similar to a very light cruiser than to the traditional torpedo armed destroyer of the inter-war period. The Tribal class destroyers were in heavy demand, and by the end of September 1942 twelve of the sixteen built for the Royal Navy had been lost.
The three classes had very different careers. The Tribal class ships were in action from the start of the Second World War, were heavily involved in most naval campaigns of the war, and suffered heavy losses. The Battle class ships were built during the war, but took too long and largely failed to get into action. The Daring class ships were built after the war and had the longest careers of all three types, but saw little action.
One minor quibble is that the wartime J, K and N and L and M classes of destroyers weren’t that different to the Tribals, with three twin 4.7in turrets (compared to four for the Tribals), similar dimensions and displacement, so the line of development from Tribal to Battle to Daring presented here wasn’t quite as clear cut in reality. However the Tribals were significantly larger than the standard inter-war destroyers, and carried twice as many guns, so did mark a significant change in destroyer design. I could also have done without the sections in the final chapter that focus on the current Royal Navy (as of 2022) – this sort of thing is always a hostage to events, and will date much quicker than the rest of the book.
The key feature of all three classes is that they were general purpose warships, capable of performing many roles well, rather than being specialist torpedo carriers, anti-aircraft vessels or anti-submarine warfare ships. One lesson their design does suggest is that the ‘destroyer’ experts in the Royal Navy would have preferred the wrong type of ships, generally wanting to focus on the aggressive use of the torpedo and leaving the other less ‘glamorous’ roles to other specialist ships (a similar debate went on in the US Navy). During both World Wars destroyers had to be capable of operating in a wide range of roles that they hadn’t been designed for – convoy escort being the most obvious – so the flexibility that was built into the designs was essential.
This book combines an excellent technical history of these three destroyer classes with a good account of the wartime careers of the Tribal classes, and explains the reasoning behind the different types, what they were developed for and how well they lived up to those intentions.
Chapters
1 – The Royal Navy of the 1930s
2 – Forged by War 1939-40
3 – A Different and Not So Different Kind of War 1941-2
4 – Cometh the War, Cometh the ‘Battle’
5 – The Shield and the Cannon 1943-5
6 – To the East and the War is Over
7 – The Lessons and Legacy of the ‘Back Pocket Cruisers’
Author: Alexander Clarke
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 208
Publisher: Seaforth
Year: 2022