Very Special Ships. Arthur Nicholson
rooms, No 1 forward of No 2, with one boiler in each compartment trunked into the middle funnel. They sported two sets of single-reduction geared turbines – high-power, low-power and cruising turbines – in a single engine room, with the associated gearing in a gearing room immediately aft of the engine room. The turbines drove two shafts and two propellers, each of which had a diameter of 11½ft. Each boiler was designed to develop 18,000 SHP at 350 revolutions per minute, for a total of 72,000 SHP, exactly double that of the Abdiel of the First World War and more than any destroyer in the Royal Navy at the time; the ‘Tribal’ class destroyers developed 44,000 SHP.14 The Abdiels’ designed maximum speed was 39.5 knots at 350 revolutions.
However, the Abdiel s’ true maximum speed soon became the stuff of exaggeration, if not legend. One former crewman claimed with complete earnestness and sincerity to have been shown his ship was making 50 knots. The controversy over their true speed has persisted at least as late as 2012, in the pages of the Navy News, where a claimed speed of 44 knots prompted some spirited debate. The fact is that while the Abdiels were very fast ships, they could not defy the laws of physics. Their design was original but not obviously innovative, especially since they lacked a secret such as superheated boilers; they simply packed very powerful machinery into a small hull with just two shafts and propellers. If there was secret to their speed, it was that they packed more power on each shaft (36,000 SHP) than any other British warship15 besides the battlecruiser Hood, which was also designed to develop 36,000 horsepower on each of her (four) shafts.16
In any case, they were without a doubt the fastest ships in the Royal Navy and may have made just over 40 knots. The Welshman made 37.6 knots on trials,17 and on her trials the Manxman made 35.6 knots while developing 73,000 SHP.18 After her refit in 1942, the Abdiel made 38.6 knots, according to her Navigator, Lieutenant Alastair Robertson, who took great care to measure her speed. For the sake of comparison, the highest speed a major British warship ever made on trials was the 39.4 knots made by the Yarrow ‘S’ class destroyer HMS Tyrian in 1919, though she was in a light condition and with ‘very highly stressed machinery’. In service, she could probably make 36 knots with a clean bottom.19
More importantly, again and again the Abdiels proved that they could maintain high speed in real sea conditions. Almost as important, they could do so without excessive vibration, which would have hindered their effectiveness. A downside to great speed was that, at least early in the Abdiel’s first commission, it led to cavitation, erosion of the base of the propellers. The propellers had to be replaced, but for a time she had to limit her speed to 25 knots.20
The Abdiels were faster than any ship in the US Navy and were equalled or outstripped by very few ships of other navies. For speed, the Abdiel s’ competitors were the six French super-destroyers of the Fantasque class (2569 tons, up to 45.02 knots on trials), the French super-destroyers Volta and Mogador (2994 tons, up to 43.78 knots on trials),21 the Italian-built Soviet destroyer leader Tashkent (2893 tons, rated at 110,000 SHP and 42 knots),22 the three Italian small light cruisers of the ‘Capitani Romani’ class (3747 tons, up to more than 43 knots),23 and the Japanese large destroyer Shimakaze, which was about the size of an Abdiel, at 2567 tons, and made as much as 40.7 knots at 79,240 SHP during her short life, but she also sported boilers that operated at an extremely high temperature (400° C) and pressure (571 psi).24 Not to take away anything from these ships, but they were not nearly as versatile as an Abdiel, though the Tashkent was used a fast transport during the siege of Sevastopol in 194225 before she was damaged at sea and then sunk at the quayside by German dive bombers.
The speed of the Abdiels was one thing, but their endurance was a very different matter. The Abdiels were designed to store 591 tons of oil fuel and 58 tons of diesel fuel, which was primarily for their generators but could be used in the boilers as well. They were to have an endurance of 5300 to 5500 miles at 15 knots when six months out of dock (and with a correspondingly barnacled bottom), but it was estimated from their sea trials that their endurance was only 4680 miles under those conditions. With a clean bottom, their endurance was estimated at 5810 miles.26 In 1942, based on experience with the Manxman, the Admiralty estimated their endurance as 3300 miles at 20 knots, 2070 miles at 25 knots, 1450 miles at 30 knots, 1060 miles at 35 knots and only 845 miles at their maximum speed of 38 knots.27
The Abdiel s’ limited endurance was to become a real concern and was the Achilles’ heel of the design. This unfortunate trait was to some extent rectified in the Repeat Abdiel s. In not living up to their designed endurance, the Abdiels were hardly unique among British warships of the Second World War; according to a Royal Navy study, British warships entered the war with machinery that was 25 per cent less economical than that used in the US Navy.28 Another class that disappointed in this regard was no less than the King George V class battleships. Their fuel consumption under trials conditions was 2.4tons/hr at 10 knots, but in practice it was 6.5 tons/hr, due to heavy consumption by auxiliaries and steam leaks. In 1942, it was found that the true endurance of the new American battleship Washington was double that of a KGV.29 During the Bismarck chase, both the King George V and the Prince of Wales barely made port after playing their parts. That the Abdiels were not unique in their disappointing endurance would have been little comfort.
When the Abdiels were designed, there was nothing like them. And there was never anything like them. Before and during the Second World War, a number of navies constructed purpose-built minelayers with enclosed mine decks, but none of them could exceed 21 knots. The US Navy’s sole representative was the USS Terror, which on a displacement of 5875 tons was armed with four 5in guns and could carry a whopping 900 mines, but could not make more than 18 knots.30 Similarly, the Imperial Japanese Navy built the Tsuguru, Itsukushima and Okinoshima,31 the Polish Navy the Gryf, the Royal Norwegian Navy the Olav Tryggvason, the Spanish Navy the Jupiter, Marte, Neptuno and Vulcano and the Soviet Navy the Marti, actually the former Imperial Russian yacht Shtandart.32 The Royal Netherlands Navy built a number of small, slow minelayers, the newest being the Jan van Brakel and the Willem Van de Zaan.
The originators of the fast cruiser-minelayer, the Germans built two minelayers before the war, the Brummer and the Bremse. The Bremse could even make 27 knots, but they were not the equal of their Great War namesakes. Just before the war broke out, the Germans did design a class of purpose–built minelayers, the first being known to history as just ‘Minenschiff A’. The design provided for a ship of 5800 tons, 4.1in and 37mm guns and enclosed minedecks with a capacity of 400 mines. With a speed of only 28 knots, however, they did not quite qualify as fast minelayers and in any event their construction was not pursued.33
The closest analogue to the Abdiels was the French cruiser-minelayer Pluton, later renamed La Tour d’Auvergne, which was launched in 1929. She carried four 5.5in guns and 290 mines on a semi-enclosed mine deck and was rated at 30 knots. She was lost to an accidental explosion of her mines at Casablanca on 13 September 1939,34 and so never had the chance to prove her worth.
Not that an effective offensive minelayer had to have an enclosed mine deck or carry many mines. The Italian Regia Marina employed light cruisers and destroyers for minelaying and on 3 June 1941, a force of five light cruisers and seven destroyers laid two fields northeast of Tripoli.35 The effort bore fruit more than six months later, on 19 December, when the Royal Navy’s Force K ran across one of the fields and lost the light cruiser Neptune and the destroyer Kandahar. The German Kriegsmarine used destroyers to carry out a daring and highly effective offensive minelaying campaign off the British coast in the winter of 1939–40. In this effort, German destroyers undertook eleven missions, all undetected by the British and laid 1800 mines, which resulted in the sinking of three British destroyers, sixty-seven merchant ships totalling 238,467 tons and other vessels.36
While some other navies employed fast cruisers or destroyers for offensive minelaying duties,