The Delfim-class submarines were a class of three submarines built in the United Kingdom for Portugal in the 1930s. They served in the Portuguese Navy between 1934 and 1950.
Design
By the late 1920s, the Portuguese Navy had decommissioned its first submarine, , and its remaining submarine force — which consisted of the three aging vessels of the Foca class — was in such poor material condition that its submarines no longer could operate except in protected coastal waters under controlled conditions. To address the obsolescence and decreasing operability of its submarine force and replace the Foca-class submarines, the 1930 naval program designed by Minister of the Navy Contra-almirante (Counter Admiral) Luís Magalhães Correia included three new submarines of the Delfim class.
Vickers-Armstrongs designed the Delfim class as medium-sized patrol submarines. They were somewhat smaller than British submarines of the era but similar to them in appearance, except that the deck gun was housed in a fully enclosed gunhouse. The Delfim-class submarines were long and had a beam of and a draft of . They displaced on the surface and submerged.
Two Vickers diesel engines producing a combined drove two screws and gave the Delfim-class submarines a top speed on the surface of . Their two electric motors produced a combined and gave them a maximum submerged speed of . On the surface, they had a range of at full speed and at . Submerged, their range was at full speed and at .
Each Delfim-class submarine had six 533 mm (21-inch) torpedo tubes, four in the bow and two in the stern. They carried 12 torpedoes, giving them one reload for each tube. Each submarine also had a 4-inch (102-mm) deck gun and two machine guns. The Delfim-class submarines had a crew of 36.
Construction
The Vickers-Armstrongs shipyard at England, built the submarines. It laid down all three of them in March 1933 and delivered them to the Portuguese Navy between December 1934 and March 1935.
Delfim-class submarines
The Delfim-class submarines served in the Portuguese Navy from the mid-1930s until 1950, forming the 2nd Submarine Squadron. Although this included the World War II period (1939–1945), Portugal remained neutral during the war, limiting the submarines to patrol and training duties along the Portuguese coast during the conflict. They thus had fairly uneventful careers.
Ship name Builder Laid down Launched Commissioned Decommissioned Fate Vickers-Armstrongs, England 1 May 1934 14 November 1950 Stricken 1953; scrapped 24 January 1935 Stricken 1954; scrapped 30 May 1934 14 March 1935 Stricken 1952; scrapped
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