HNLMS Van Galen () was a built for the Royal Netherlands Navy during the 1920s. Completed in 1928, the ship played a minor role in the Second World War. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940 she was soon sunk by German aircraft. Her wreck was salvaged in 1941 and subsequently scrapped.
Design and description The Admiralen-class ships were derived from the design of the destroyer , an experimental British ship designed after the First World War. The ships had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draft of . Van Galen was one of the second batch of the Admiralens which differed slightly in minor details.Roberts, p. 390 They displaced at standard displacement while the second-batch ships were heavier at full load at . Their crew consisted of 143 men.van Willigenburg, pp. 42–43
The Admiralens were powered by two geared Parsons steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by three Yarrow boilers. The turbines were designed to produce which was intended give the ships a speed of . One of the differences from the first-batch ships was that the second-batch ships carried additional fuel oil which gave them an extra of range,Whitley, p. 212 for a total of at .
The main armament of the Admiralen-class ships consisted of four Mk 5 guns in single mounts, one superfiring pair fore and aft of the superstructure. The guns were designated 'A', 'B', 'X' and 'Y' from front to rear and only 'A' and 'Y' were fitted with gun shields. The second-batch ships had only a single anti-aircraft (AA) gun that was positioned between the funnels. Rather than the additional 75 mm AA gun of the first-batch ships, they had four AA guns; these were on single mounts amidships. All of the Admiralens were equipped with two rotating, triple mounts for torpedo tubes. They were able to carry a Fokker C.VII-W floatplane that had to be hoisted off the ship to take off. While the first batch of Admiralens were fitted to lay mines, the second-batch ships could be equipped with minesweeping gear.
Construction and career
Van Galen was laid down on 28 May 1927 at the Fijenoord shipyard in Rotterdam, and launched on 28 June 1928. The ship was commissioned on 22 October 1929.
She was the only destroyer in home waters when Germany invaded on 10 May. The Germans had captured the airfield at Waalhaven in Rotterdam, and Van Galen was ordered to bombard the airfield. German aircraft attacked her while underway in the Nieuwe Waterweg and she sank near Merwehaven. The Germans raised the wreck on 24 October 1941, but the ship was in such bad shape that she was scrapped in Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht.van Willigenburg, p. 42
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