German Destroyers (Shipcraft Series)

German Destroyers (Shipcraft Series)

Destroyer HNLMS Kortenaer (Lanasta)

Destroyer HNLMS Kortenaer (Lanasta)

John Henshaw

The revolutionary battleship Dreadnought of 1906 brought together in one package the new technology of oil fired boilers and steam turbines, and all-big-gun armament; in doing so she rendered all other capital ships then afloat completely obsolete. Ten years later the V&W Class did to destroyers what the dreadnoughts had done to battleships: they set a completely new and higher standard of technology and were a cut above anything that had come before. They were, however, less revolutionary than evolutionary and in this new book John Henshaw takes the reader through all the developmental stages with a detailed history of the step-by-step lessons that were learnt, not all of which were fortuitous.

In one package the Royal Navy finally acquired a hull that possessed not just good sea-keeping capability but one that was able to carry heavier armament without any adverse effects. Range and speed were commensurate with their size while the super-firing guns, fore and aft, could be deployed in all weathers for a four-gun broadside. The V & W design set the trend for all destroyer design for the next two decades and, indeed, the basic layout of destroyers stayed the same long beyond that.
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