HMS Whelp (R37)
W-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy during the Second World War / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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HMS Whelp was one of eight W-class destroyers built for the Royal Navy during the Second World War. Completed in 1944, the ship spent most of the war assigned to the Eastern and Pacific Fleets. She screened British aircraft carriers as their aircraft attacked targets in the Japanese-occupied Nicobar Islands, the Dutch East Indies, Formosa and near Okinawa. Whelp was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay in 1945 and later in Hong Kong. She was paid off in January 1946 and went into reserve.
Whelp underway on the Tyne, 1944 | |
History | |
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United Kingdom | |
Name | Whelp |
Ordered | 3 December 1941 |
Builder | Hawthorn Leslie and Company, Hebburn |
Laid down | 1 May 1942 |
Launched | 3 June 1943 |
Commissioned | 25 April 1944 |
Decommissioned | January 1946 |
Fate | Sold to the South African Navy, 25 April 1952 |
South Africa | |
Name | SAS Simon van der Stel |
Namesake | Simon van der Stel |
Acquired | 25 April 1952 |
Commissioned | 20 March 1953 |
Out of service | 27 March 1972 |
Renamed | 20 March 1953 |
Reclassified | Converted into an anti-submarine frigate, 1962–64 |
Fate | Scrapped, 1976 |
General characteristics (as built) | |
Class and type | W-class destroyer |
Displacement |
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Length | 362 ft 9 in (110.6 m) |
Beam | 35 ft 8 in (10.9 m) |
Draught | 14 ft 6 in (4.4 m) (deep load) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion |
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Speed | 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph) |
Range | 4,675 nmi (8,658 km; 5,380 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) |
Complement | 179 |
Sensors and processing systems |
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Armament |
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Whelp was sold to the South African Navy (SAN) in 1952 and renamed Simon van der Stel. She was subsequently converted into a fast anti-submarine frigate in the early 1960s and served as a training ship from 1968 until 1972 when she went back into reserve. Simon van der Stel was recommissioned in 1975 for a refit, but that proved to be uneconomical and she was scrapped the following year.