Stronger Dutch Navy in 1940

Parma

Before the Great war there was an ambitous battle ship plan, plan 1912, build up around 9 battle ships. Due to the uotbreak of the Great war in august 1914, the plan never past parlemaint.
After the Great war the Dutch fleet made of armored cruisers build around the turn of the century was complete worn out. A fleet plan was made, musch less ambitous as the 1912 plan but never the less. It consisted of 4 cruisers, 24 destroyers and 36 submarines and a enlargement and modernisation of a naval base in the Dutch East Indies.
In OTL the plan was rejected in parlemaint 50 againt and 49 in favour. One pm in favour was ill and 10 members of the Catholic pary voted against.
After havy public debate between pro and con. Mostly devided among the lines socilist and comunist, but as well in the large Catohilic party and Protestant parties.
What if the voting was 52 in vavour and 48 against.
The fleet would be build in the twemties and early 30ties. Lets asume it will be completed accoording to plan despite resistance in the late twenties due to the econimic crises.
Let asume there will be a small adition in the thirties when some people found out it is a nice way to subsidice the shipyards and keep the people at work.
The fleet in 1940 would consist of :4 cruisers, simmilar as British design, Exeters?
24 destroyers, and 36 submarines, which are design exercises of the U boats. ( OTL Dutch subs were equiped with telescopic diesel exhaust in the 1930thies)
And in the mid thirties 2 more light cruisers(anti aircraft?), 6 destroyers and 8 submarines.

What affect would this have on the second WW in the far East? Especialy the war around Malaysia, and Indonesia?
Any interesting scenario's?
 

Theodoric

Hmm. Don't forget that Germany invaded the Netherlands more than a year and a half before the Japanese invaded Indonesia. With some bad luck, half of the Navy could be fighting off the coast of the Vaderland, against the Germans, instead of defending the DEI.
 

bard32

Banned
The Dutch were neutral in World War I, and again, briefly, in World War II.
General Henri Winkelman, the Dutch prime minister, was forced to surrender
the country after the bombing of Rotterdam. If the Dutch had had a stronger navy, as well as a stronger army, and air force, in 1940, The Netherlands would have been better off.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
In the end, not much difference. The Malaya Barrier was indefensible without adequate air cover. Some extra boats would be handy, but it is unlikely that the Dutch navy would deploy more than a dozen or so subs into the Pacific..
 

Parma

I understand that a part of the navy would flee to the UK and become a part of the Roayal navy in 1940. And as a consequence stayed in the Norhtsea and Atlantic. How ever the Dutch Navy was designed not for the NorthSea but for the Dutch East Indies. The home waters were left to a brown water fleet and Navy ships who came to the motherlands for service or other ocasions.
Despite there will be no flat tops, there will be a considerable large submarine fleet, around 40!, who can opose a threat to an invasion fleet for Malaya or the Archipel.
 

Markus

Banned
bard32 said:
If the Dutch had had a stronger navy, as well as a stronger army, and air force, in 1940, The Netherlands would have been better off.
Click to expand...

Hmm, 4 CA, 2 CL, 30 DD, and 42 subs and all of that in spite of the Great Depression. Makes one wonder how you find the money for the Army and the Air Force, too.
 

Riain

A sizable Dutch navy could be a catalyst for other actions which would increase the effectiveness of the resistance against the Japanese. Such a fleet may lead to the formation of the ABD naval command before the war (ABDA without the US). This command could shake down some of the procedures involved in making a multinational fleet into a fighting force. Force Z could become part of this ABD command, and this may influence its actions one fighting starts, not throwing itself away like IOTL. The USN ships that join ABD to make it ABDA would enhance it's strength without throwing established procedures out of balance. Such a command would be far more effective in fighting the Japanese once the war started, and I think the IJN would have to stop some of the things it was doing to hunt it down and destroy it.

However even with such a strong Dutch navy, combined with Force Z and the rest of the ABDA force and experienced in working cooperatively, would be no match for the forces the IJN deployed into the area. Perhaps it could sinks some important IJN ships, stop or delay a landing or two and rob one or two others of naval support. But in the end the IJN could hunt it down and kill it. Nagumo was off Darwin on Feb 19, he could find the ABDA fleet and conduct massed strikes against it instead.
 

Tyr

I'd imagine they would stick to the European theatre. They aren't going off to fight Japan when their homes are still occupied.
 

HJ Tulp

Donor
Leej said:
I'd imagine they would stick to the European theatre. They aren't going off to fight Japan when their homes are still occupied.
Click to expand...

I'm quite sure that the vast majority would be send to the Indies though a couple might be send to serve as escorts on the Atlantic. They would have been useless against the Germans and it were the DUTCH East Indies not to forget.
 

chris N

Actually Dutch plans called for the construction of 3 Battlecruisers that were similar to the Scharnhorst class and two additional light cruisers were under construction when the war broke out. In addition there was another light cruiser in the far east that had been laid up due to needs for considerable repairs. If the battlecruiers had been available they would have required the Imperial Japanese Navy to commite far more forces at the 11 inch guns would have out range the Japanese heavy cruisers.
 

Riain

A pair of 11" BCs will most probably draw the attention of the IJN carriers, and even in company with Force Z would be easy meat for Nagumo's 5 carriers. The Carriers were in the DEI/IO area from about mid Feb to mid April. That inescapable fact sort of ruins any AH ideas I entertain about surface forces doing some good stuff during the Japanese drive south.

How is this for a best case scenario? Force Z (sunk on Dec 10) unites with ABDA naval ships (sunk on Feb 27/28) and after some inconclusive engagements meets a Japanese invasion force escorted by 2 heavy and 2 light cruisers and 14 destroyers. The ABDA fleet destroys both the invasion force and all 4 cruisers and 10 destroyers of the escort. This force is then hunted down by Nagumo's 5 carriers and all the heavy units are destroyed within a week of the Battle of Java Sea. All the allied ships which are sunk in this scenario were sunk anyway without anychieving anything, but in this secnario 4 important IJN ships were sunk, an invasion is stopped and Broome is probably not bombed. Not much but better than OTL.
 

Markus

Banned
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

I'm a bit confused - I thought the Dutch built their OTL heavy cruisers (De Ruyter etc) as a scaled-down version of the battlecruiser plan post-war... They certainly DID built them, because they got sunk

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Redbeard

Banned
The Royal Dutch Navy in WWI and II had defence of the DEI as its absolute main task, very few ships would be alloacted to Netherlands itself.

If a force like described in the ATL is present, especially the 36+ subs will cause great trouble for an IJN operating in SEA. After all Germany only had 57 U-boats at the outbreak of WWII and some of those were small coastal types used only for training. The larger RDN in general would probably have the Japanese deploy a larger part of the IJN to SEA, but here the Schnorkel equipped Dutch subs could be a very nasty surprise to the IJN (or any other navy).

On the open ocean intercepting with subs proved very difficult, but SEA provide a lot of strategic bottlenecks where surface fleets would be very vulnerable. In this ATL the battle of the Java Sea might be the battle where the IJN lost its capacity to carry on the offensive.

It will still be all important who ends up controlling Singapore. I don't agree that Malaya can't be defended without adequate airpower (CalBear). The Japanese airforces were not very efficient in the tactiacl army support role, but the British must accept/think they can cope with big civilian losses in Singapore itself from air bombardment.

But if the British act as insufficiently at all levels as in OTL I think we might very well end up with Singapore on Japanese hands (The main part of the Japanese forces taking Singapore were deployed and supplied over land from Thailand) but most of DEI still on Dutch hands.

That will very much diminish the use of Singapore for the Japanese as to get there they will either go a very long way over road or by ship through enemy infested waters. More serious many of the resources they went for were in the DEI, but AFAIK most of the contemporary oilfields were on the north side of Borneo, and that ought to be among the spots that the Japanese are favorites to control.

But essentially this makes an allied strategy focussed on pushing back Japan in SEA much more tempting vs. the OTL strategy of island jumping across the Pacific.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 

Markus

Banned
Grey Wolf said:
I'm a bit confused - I thought the Dutch built their OTL heavy cruisers (De Ruyter etc) as a scaled-down version of the battlecruiser plan post-war... They certainly DID built them, because they got sunk

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Click to expand...


No, they didn´t. The BCs were supposed to be build in addition to the existing light cruisers. De Ruyter was a 7,000-8,000 ton CL, just like the two WW1 Java-class CL, Tromp and van Hemskerk were 4,000 tons vessels that can rather be classified a DD flotilla leaders or super-DDs than CLs.
 

Riain

My trusty cruiser book has the DeRuyter as a 7 gun 7,500 ton ship, the Tromps designed as 6 gun 4,600 ton ships and the 2 Eendracht class laid down in 1939 as 10 gun 10,800 ton ships. They didn't lay down any other cruiser class ships.

There is a lot going on that the time and a lot of AH possibilities, most of which run into each other. All of which I think the Dutch could do little to interfere, with even with the cruisers they were building and the BCs they had planned.

As for what is possible, I think holding the Japanese in Southern Malaya in mid Feb is possible. Also I think that force Z could have been held back for a while and interidcted the convoy which invaded Pelambang on Feb 14 as it passed within steaming range of British held territory.
 

chris N

Two light cruisers were under construction in the Netherlands when the war broke out. The Dutch were able to get one of them to Great Britain while the other remained in the Netherlands for the entire war. The ship was not completed until after the war . She and her sister ship received a major overhaul and were convered to CLGs.
 

Riain

'Light' cruisers is a bit of a misnomer, since they were as big as a Washington 'Heavy' cruiser and carried 10 x 5.9" guns. However the Dutch, for whatever reason, abandoned a heavy HA gun and instead carried paired 40mm for AA defence.
 

Parma

Redbeard, that is what I mean.

A stronger Dutch navy, which is build up from the mid 20ties, would serve as a cathalist for the combined fleets of the Alied.
A considrable fleet of subs, could damage an invasion force and the phsycological effect of submarine attacks could delay the IJN or even disrupt the invasion plans.

The whole idea of building a large submarine fleet and a relative small cruiser flotila was this; The cruisers were the scouts and the submarines and destroyers were the weapons of offense. When this was conceiled ( 1920ties) it was thought that submarines were as effective as a battleship, but much cheaper in purchase and maintenance and it can be manned with les than 100 sailors. Which is cheaper is use but also easier to man. The Netherlands had only a population of around 5milion.

The building plans in the late 30ties, early 40ties OTL and the batlecruiser plan were hastly attemts of the gouverment to cover up the BIG stratigic mistake it made in this 1923 voting.
 
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