Tribals, Battle and Darings. The Genesis of the Modern Destroyer. By Alexander Clarke with a Foreword by Andrew Lambert FKC. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, 2021. ISBN 978-1-5267-7290-9.
Reviewed by David Hobbs
Alexander Clarke’s qualifications include a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London where he worked under the supervision of Professor Andrew Lambert and, more recently he has researched the Tribal class destroyers within a Royal Navy context.
This is his first book and, logically, he begins with a description of the Tribals’ conception, design and construction but, disappointingly, the ships of all three classes that were built for and served with distinction in the RAN are barely mentioned. The failure to explain why the Australian Navy Board decided to build ships of these classes and the choice of names for them are major weaknesses that will negate any appeal this book might have had to ANI members. The major part of the text covers RN Tribal class destroyers’ operations in World War 2 but the omission of Australian and also, to a large extent, the Canadian vessels means that there are no descriptions of their operations during the Korean War. Another missed opportunity, later in the book, was the chance to describe HMAS Vendetta‘s operations during the Vietnam War.
This lack of Commonwealth content is all the more surprising because the author explains how the RN ships’ names were specifically chosen to strengthen ties within the British Empire between pages 24 and 28. The adoption of HMS Ashantiby the Assante Tribe in what was then the Gold Coast in 1939 is offered as a well-illustrated example. The book certainly re-awakened my interest in the three classes and this led me to search my own library for earlier books that include descriptions of their design, development and operation. I found twelve that include more comprehensive details within the subject matter of British destroyer design, among them books by Norman Friedman, D K Brown and Vince Fazio and I consider them to be better references. That said, the six pages of primary source material listed in the bibliography show how diligently the author researched his subject within a UK context. His descriptions of RN Tribal operations are interesting but that only makes the omission of RAN and RCN ships and their varied experiences more frustrating.
The author takes the view that the heavy gun armament, more limited torpedo armament and attractive appearance of the Tribal class made them into what he refers to as ‘back-pocket cruisers’. Other historians agree that in 1935 the Admiralty considered calling these ships scout destroyers, patrol destroyers, cruiser destroyers or heavy destroyers. There is, therefore, some justification for the author’s belief that they overlapped into the scout/light cruiser category but it is far more likely that that they were primarily intended to counter the contemporary large, heavily-armed destroyers being built by Germany, Italy and Japan and match those being built in France and the USA. Some of these were larger than the Tribals, as fast or faster and carried heavier gun and torpedo armaments. The Tribals’ reduced torpedo armament was criticised at first but actually began a trend in which torpedoes were removed from destroyers during the war in order to reduce topweight and provide space for additional anti-aircraft armament and other new equipment. This was an opportunity for the author to discuss the changing nature of destroyer operations but he does not do so in any great depth. He does, however, accept that the Tribals’ size made them better platforms to upgrade. That is also why the Battle and Daring classes, which were significantly larger than the war emergency classes, were so important in their turn.
Less space is devoted to the Battle and Daring classes but the latter are compared to the Tribals because of their handsome appearance and ability to act as surrogate cruisers in representational tasks such as ‘showing the flag’. Clarke notes that several RN Battles were placed in reserve after their completion because of the post-war manpower shortage but makes no mention of the hulls that were cancelled, including eight that had actually been launched. Nor does he mention the un-built Batch 3, three-turret Battle design which was an evolutionary step towards the subsequent Daringclass. Surprisingly, in view of the book’s secondary title ‘the Genesis of the Modern Destroyer’, the author makes no mention of the cancelled 1950s RN cruiser-destroyer project with its highly automated 5-inch gun armament which, as its description implies, was actually conceived to be capable of engaging a cruiser in a gun action. Nor does he mention the County class which even the Editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships referred to as light cruisers although they were built with destroyer technology to fulfil emerging roles for the type. He could, arguably, have looked back to the 2,1750 ton super-destroyer Swift of 1907 which included a 6-inch gun in its armament or forward again to the projected helicopter destroyer designs of the late 1960s. The last chapter describes the modern RN and compares its destroyers with the Tribals.
Whilst reading through this book I jotted down the typographical mistakes and errors that I had spotted into a notebook, eventually filling five pages. On page 32, for instance, Captain George Creswell is described as a ’34 year-old veteran’ in 1939 despite having commanded a destroyer in 1915. Presumably the word ‘old’ should not be there. On page 35 the photograph captions are transposed and refer to the wrong image. On a more positive note there are 124 good photographs of which half are of Tribals. Unfortunately, the photograph captions reveal that the author has not drawn out everything he could from them. For example the caption to the photograph at the top of page 101 states ‘Cadiz looks a lot more finished here…’ failing to notice the Pakistani ensign aft. Although she retained the same pennant number, D 79, the photograph was clearly taken after February 1957 when she was sold to Pakistan and re-commissioned as PNS Khaibar so of course she looks a lot more finished, she was over ten years old and recently refitted for sale. She also has the number ’25’ on the funnel indicating that she has become part of the Pakistani Navy’s 25th Destroyer Flotilla.
This is a disappointing book overall but it is not without points of interest and could have been so much better if the RAN and RCN ships with their wider experiences had been included. I do not recommend it to ANI members.
