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Abdiel Class Cruiser Minelayers.
Until 1936 the RN had lacked the funds to pursue specialist minelaying ships.
Till then the RN had used older destroyers that had been fitted for minelaying
for the task when required. Those ships were nearing 20 years of age and were
growing less reliable each year.
The new design had learnt from the failure of the earlier Adventure class ships.
These ships were to be greyhounds. At 435 by 42 feet they were not overly large,
but in that space, two sets of the new J-N class machinery systems were fitted.
This produced 100,000shp. From that, on trials, the Abdiel made 44 knots at 110%
overload power. At normal full power the ship comfortably made 42 knots. Easily
the RN's fastest ships. Armament had not been stinted with four twin 4.7" DP
mountings. The AA armament utilised the brand new 40mm gun in single mountings,
six being fitted. Up to 160 mines could be carried.
Four were originally ordered, 2 in 1937, 2 in 1938. Due to early losses,
repeat orders for four more were placed in 1940 and 1941.
Abdiel: Sunk 1940, mining the inner leads Norway, torpedoed by U-boat.
Latona: Sunk 1940, bombed by Italian aircraft.
Argonaut: Sunk 1941, bombed by German aircraft in Skerki Channel.
Astraea: Sunk 1943, torpedoed by U-Boat in North Sea.
Welshman: Sunk 1942, torpedoed by U-617 off Crete.
Manxman: Scrapped 1975.
Iphigenia: Sunk 1944, by Kamikaze hit off Okinawa.
Ariadne: Scrapped 1962
I did several drawings with different armaments and layouts, the final version is above, below is the rest of the designs.
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