A Dutch Fast Battleship
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2013

When the Royal Netherlands Navy commenced planning for a new class of capital ships to help defend the Netherlands East Indies, they studied a number of foreign warship designs. Thanks in part to the close ties between the Dutch design firms and the Krupp conglomerate, the final design for a Dutch battle cruiser closely resembled the German Scharnhorst class of undersized fast battleships.

The Germans chose a main armament of nine 280mm (11-inch) guns for political reasons, keeping their caliber below that being proposed by Great Britain for a new round of naval limitations treaties. The Dutch kept a similar main armament, as they intended the ships to serve as Cruiser Killers, a counter to the big and powerful Japanese Type A heavy cruisers they expected to fight in a future naval war.

Dutch intelligence proved very accurate: the Japanese Combined Fleet tackled the Empire's more powerful opponents, the United States and Britain, while cruiser forces backed by seaplane carriers spearheaded the "Strike South." Unfortunately, the Dutch appear to have missed that the Japanese counted the four rebuilt fast battleships of the Kongo class as "cruisers" in terms of planning and fleet assignment.

German plans called for eventually installing a new main armament of six 15-inch guns in their two ships, and the Dutch were aware of this from the start of their design process. Arming the new Dutch battle cruisers with 15-inch guns from the start would have given them a range advantage over the Japanese fast battleships and a broadside in the same ballpark as the Japanese ships' eight 14-inch guns.

The Dutch ship would also require thicker armor for such a role, as the Cruiser Killer design called for protection against 8-inch shellfire. That would probably cost her a couple of knots' worth of speed, though at 34 knots she was already a very fast ship for her size. Alternatively, the Dutch could have gone with more powerful engines and a longer hull, but that last doesn't appear very likely.

The Second World War at Sea game system doesn't parse gunnery ranges very carefully, so the advantage of moving to a larger caliber is somewhat mitigated in game terms. It's still a good increase in primary firepower, and a better-protected ship is probably more valuable than a few knots' speed.

We first included three of the Dutch battle cruisers in Spice Islands. Spice Islands was especially satisfying to design, as it shows the defenses the Dutch Navy wanted to put in place in the East Indies against Japanese aggression. While it is alternate history, it's also an exploration of "what if" questions that were asked at the time rather than a caffeine-fueled fantasy imagined 70 years later on the Internet.

You can download new counters for the upgunned battle cruisers here and ship data for them here.

Click here to order Spice Islands now!