The Whale Has Wings Vol 1 - Rebirth by David Row Read Free Book Online Page A

meant 8 flotillas of destroyers! While the staff appreciated that carriers were important, allocating them over a third of the current destroyer strength as escorts was certainly not possible. The solution was to assume that half the carriers (on average) would be with the fleet or fleet units, and hence would share their escorts (they would still need a dedicated ship as plane guard to rescue crews who crash-landed) so 5 additional flotillas of destroyers would actually serve. This was thought possible to achieve in the 8 year period under discussion.
    T he destroyer building program for this year was quite high, but current plans had only one flotilla of the J/K class building over the next two years. It was therefore decided to build 2 additional flotillas, one each year, then take a closer look at the problem. By now, the naval designers were heavily loaded; they were looking at a new generation of capital ships and cruisers, and there was not much effort available to design new destroyers. A compromise of a modified Tribal class destroyer was designed. One of the twin 4.7" guns was removed to save weight for a heavier close in AA suite (it was assumed a destroyer acting as a carriers guard would draw unwelcome attention from enemy planes). Four twin 4" guns was considered to give a better AA performance, but this was rejected due to concerns as to the suitability for low elevation fire, and the ability to protect the carrier from enemy light units was considered more important. Removing two 4.7's allowed the ships to carry an octuple pom-pom in its place, and two quad pompoms forward, making them very heavily protected. This was also to allow them to engage dive bombers (and, if rather suicidally, torpedo bombers) attacking the carrier. The navy was quite confident that the seamanship of its destroyer captains was up to the close manoeuvring required, even if some of the carrier captains were a little nervous at the idea. They would also, of course, be able to act as close in AA escorts for other ships, depending on the circumstances. While the general policy was to carry defensive armament on the ships under attack, there were bound to be times when this ability to reinforce defences would be useful. The ships beam was widened, and the internal fuel tanks made somewhat larger (as a result of losing the 4.7" magazine); in addition the machinery was slightly modified to give better economy at the expense of a small loss of speed. The net result was a ship with 50% more range than a Tribal, at the expense of a couple of knots of speed. Given the high speed of the Tribal class, and the fact that the main purpose was escort, this was deemed acceptable, although it was noted that later ships should have more powerful machinery.
     
    In June the situation in Europe took another turn for the worse, one which again involved the navy. The Spanish Civil War broke out, and the Navy was tasked to undertake neutrality protection patrols. Both Hitler and Mussolini sent aid to Franco, and both the RAF and the FAA watched the introduction of modern types of German and Italian planes with interest and considerable concern.
    In September, negotiations on licensing the Hispano cannon designs began. With prompting from the Navy (and an allocation of some funding to help), the Air Ministry gave funding to some British arms companies to test and evaluate the design in detail, and to start looking at what would be needed to change the specifications to Imperial measurements
    After seeing the way in which Italy and Germany were cooperating in Spain, it came as no surprise that in late October an official Rome-Berlin Axis was announced. It did however worry the navy; up until now Italy had been seen, if not as an ally, then at least as a neutral. Now Italy moved to the status of a potential opponent, which meant more ships and resources had to be allocated to the Mediterranean. Despite the recent increases in spending on the navy, due to the time