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in 1937, just after the cruiser De Ruyter was commissioned in the Dutch navy, the design work started on the Eendracht class cruisers. these cruisers were meant to replace the Java and Sumatra, 2 world war 1 era cruisers serving mainly in the east indies. the most likely opponent would be the Japanese navy, which had strength in numbers and firepower both. However, from the point of view of the Dutch they had a few big disadvantages: the Dutch would not stand alone in a battle against the Japanese. Powerful allies Britain and the USA would tackle the battleships and most of the heavy cruisers, allowing the Dutch to fight ships of relatively equal strength. Another disadvantage was that the Japanese would fight a long way from home, while the Dutch knew the territory and had ground based planes available.

All this created the strategy that lead to the design of these ships. The hull was based on the recent De Ruyter, however all that was on it was changed. The boilers were positioned aft of the turbine rooms, while the arnament was concentrated forward in 3 triple 150mm gun turrets, build by bofors. In addition, the centrally guided anti-aircraft battery of the De Ruyter (5*twin bofors 40mm #3) was complemented by a second, smaller battery on top of the pilothouse (with 3 of these same mountings) the 2 sets of 3 torpedo tubes were centrally guided and allowed the ship to attack opponents armoured against its guns, while the fully flush deck design added a lot of volume that could be used for flagship tasks.

Well, you guessed right, made up up nearly all of the above for the sake of this design experiment. I wanted to see how well a ship on (nearly) the same hull would work if I gave her an all forward armament. Compared to the real life Eendracht class I lost one gun, but the weight gained by losing one turret gave me the power to expand armour, torpedo protection and the AA battery. Note that each of the turrets has the same firepower as the De Ruyter had on the full forward battery.

Armament consists of:
3*3 150 mm/53 Bofors M39
8*2 40mm/60 Bofors #3
2*3 533mm Torpedo Tubes
While this ship cannot cover its own ass, when attacking an invading fleet and it’s escort it can most likely throw a mighty blow. On most ranges all of the forward turrets can open fire on all angles except 45 degrees from the centreline aft. We do not know if this ship would make a difference in the battle of the Java Sea (against Japanese torpedo’s, her additional protection would be the only advantage compared to the De Ruyter) but we do know that, like her real world counterpart, the German invasion would make sure she would not be finished to be there anyways. Instead, she would be finished post-war as the Zeven Provincien cruiser……. Something I hope to add to this thread later on.

A few last things to add here:
Note the kingfisher aircraft on the deck. The Netherlands ordered these for use on the ships in the east indies, but after the Java Sea battle there was no fleet to put them on. As planned, they might have ended up on these though, so I added them.
Do note the 40mm #3 bofors mountings on the deck. These are basically the stabilised mounting that became known as the hazemeyer, after the on mount radar guidance was added (that was the #4). Expect those to be drawn sometime near as the old hazemeyer drawing was a tad oversized and…… old.
99% of this ship was new drawn, as I disagreed with some parts of alex’s drawing, sometimes the parts were just old or they were just not how I would draw them myself. So just the question here to not copy-paste parts of this vessel for your own use unless you absolutely know what you are doing.

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

That's a good looking ship Ace,

I would query the layout a bit, would it not be better to keep the boilers centralised behind the thickest part of the armour belt, and have all the aircraft handling facilities aft? A more traditional layout for that class of vessel.

putting the boilers aft of the engine rooms have allowed me to go with the shafts alongside the boiler room. this allowed me to put the machinery more aft, which allowed me to have more on the bow without having to lengthen the ship. in other words, I'm stuck with this arrangement of the machinery if I want to keep the same displacement.

re the aircraft arrangement, I have actually played with putting the aircraft aft, the boats just forward of the funnel (with the cranes being next to the funnel) and the AA battery more spread over the ship. this layout gave me more freedom, AA firepower and useful space, while the aircraft handling facilities are exactly in the same position as the original design, which I have used as benchmark (when in doubt, just keep it as it was or as close to it as possible)

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

I was thinking more along the lines of the Tone/Mogami type layouts. At present I can not see a hangar for servicing your aircraft. I thought putting the catapult aft could allow you some space for a hangar.

I see what you mean, and indeed there is no hangar. I indeed considered these ideas (2 hangars next to the funnel for example) but decided not to add them on grounds of weight and operational doctrine. I would have to loose something else to add them and the original eendracht did not have them either adding some displacement would make that interesting things, but as the dutch fight near their colonies a seaplane carrying cruiser might be not what they needed (I would rather put that displacement in 8in/203mm guns)

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

This is a great concept idea and it works well.
You've obviously thought this one out very well and I think it works well. I agree a hangar is probably not likely given Dutch practice at the time for deck stowage.
The only artistic nitpick I can make is perhaps remove the portholes above the torpedo tubes as they would not useful for anything there (unless they are dummies of course!)

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Thanks Hood!

re the torpedo tube portholes, these puzzle me a bit as well. they were there on the official plans of the eendracht cruiser though. they might be there to give light to the torpedo tube space, or to see out from when the torpedo tubes were rotated out.

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

similar to some Japanese cruisers.

Nice work and an interesting take on a light cruiser idea.

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Would you please not eat my gun...

As with the real life version of this ship, the ships were not finished in 1940, when the Germans invaded the netherlands. Some work was done on them by the germans but nothing significant. This resulted in the Netherlands having 2 modern cruiser hulls finished up to main deck level.

These hulls got major modifications to bring them up to postwar standard. Most notably were the adaption of unitised machinery and the addition of radar and fire control systems. in 1952 and 1953 respectively the 2 new ships were completed: the Zeven Provinciën and the De Ruyter. These were modern ships and while they had not the main gun firepower of the original design nor that of foreign cruisers, they were a valuable warship in both ASuW and AAW combat situations.

their armament consists of:
3*2 152mm/53 Bofors M42
6*2 57mm/60 Bofors M50
8*1 40mm/60 Bofors #6
1*1 103mm Bofors Lichtraketwerper

(note: I have added a similar table to the first post for the original design, for comparisions sake)

please comment and let me know what you think of this quite awesome (if I may say so myself) but quite ugly design

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin