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During the development of the modified design of the Eendracht Class cruiser in 1946, there was some ongoing discussion about the priorities of the armament of the vessels. would the requirement really be the other cruiser class vessels of the world, or would the likely opponent for an dutch cruiser be something else entirely?

according to an report, send in to the navy staff 20 november 1946 where it was mentioned the requirements for the main armament of the cruiser would need to have the following targets, in order of priority:
1. air targets
2. submarines
3. MTB type vessels
4. land targets
5. large surface combatants.
the vessel build in real life could do all this, but the order of its capabilities might have been different then the above list.

but what if the main armament was changed to fully AA capable, ASW mortars, homing torpedo's and more sonars were to be added and the secondaries kept as powerful as originally designed? then the ship would loose some marks in 4 and 5, however she would be far more capable in point 1,2 and 3.

The above drawing is based on the Eendracht as IRL, modified as summed up above. the crew, powerplant and most of the arrangement is kept as on the real ship, but the vessel certainly is different.

while the vessel would have become somewhat less powerful overall, this cruiser might have been one powerful NATO asset in the cold war......

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Quit nice design.

An interesting take, would have been a powerful ship but I wonder if its too big and expensive. You've got the firepower of at least 2 destroyers on one hull but probably saving little in manpower and being more expensive to maintain.
An interesting what-if though.

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What benefit would multiple active sonars provide?

@ Hood:
I agree, most likely she would be way too expensive...... that said, the dutch operated 2 ships far more focused on ASuW, while these offered an difference in focus from the DD's, would they not also be too expensive for what they would actually do?

Over the destroyers, they have an larger crew, more maintenance and fuel cost and only marginally more armament then 2 destroyers. However, she would be an far better gun platform, have longer detection range, have a lot of upgrade potential and enough space for all the required crew to actually be on board in non-war conditions. (As the destroyers often sailed with only half their powerplant active due to crew cost and crew space available.)

But yeah, part of the reason I drew this was to be able to talk about the usability of all this, just mad science or would this actually be an worthy alternative?

@ Lebroba:
having 2 sets of sonar domes was actually not uncommon at the time. Sonars were single purpose only, and could not do both tracking and searching functions at the same time. In addition, different weapons sometimes require different sonars. In this case, the ship has the forward sonar dome completely copied from the Friesland Class destroyer, while the aft sonar dome is somewhat bigger and has an higher power sonar in it, allowing longer detection range.

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I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
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I've never seen that kind of setup. Some of the concerns I have with the ASW setup:
1) You would have to be able to electronically sync the transmit/receive gates so you aren't pinging into the other set of hydrophones while they are in listen.
a) This would be problematic if you are in different range scales
2) Each sonar set would require it's own set of transmit/receive cabinets, power supplies, cooling water, signal conditioners, etc etc. Two sonar domes, means two pressurization systems, double the amount of valves, strainers etc
a) you would have to have two sets of operators and maintainers for each sonar system. From a budget stand point it would make sense to have just the one more powerful sonar with a search processor and a track processor.

The range of world war 2 sonars where more limited by the ridiculously high transmit frequencies then by source level (dB). I would nix the smaller one.

Sorry Ace, but:
Usually guns-cruisers were very bad ASW ships :
- Too big (with too much high silouette)
- Not enough maneuvering (a too large tactical-diameter...compared to destroyers)
- Still very vulnerable to torpedoes hits (usually 1 torpedo-hit severely damage the ship & 2-3 hits sink them)
- Lightly slower (28-33 knts) compared to destroyers (30-36 knts)

The fact is that the search sonar in the 'destroyer' dome would be purely there for redundancy, I think. They would not be on at the same time, so these issues would not be there.

Keep in mind, I will most likely know less about the sonars of that time period then you and other people here, but fact is this is not the only ship with dual retractable sonar domes in this same time period, so they should make some sense, don't you think? The USN DLG's, for example.
You might be right about that, but fact is that an ASW capability was proposed, even if only self defensive (the real life ship had ..... depth charges and sonar for that reason) makes it an interesting thought experiment, but I will not speak against the fact that it is flawed. larger tactical diameter and too high a silhouette, certainly! vulnerable for torpedo's too, but all that is true for any cruiser, and if any cruiser would be vulnerable, would it not make sense to give your fleet flagship something to protect itself?
In case of the dutch navy, the cruiser would also be just as fast as the destroyers of the 1947A class, while it could keep that speed in higher sea states (and it did actually have space on board for the crew of both sets of engines, being able to go that fast under peacetime conditions as well) which under those conditions make it faster then the 1947B class as well.

So no need to apologize, but I think this idea is not entirely bad, or at least not as bad as you make it sound

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Do you have a reference for US Destroyers having two sonar domes? I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm very interested in the history of my rating and navy specialty. I was under the impression that DLGs used the AN/SQS-23 sonar dome which for the time period was massive, about 20 feet in diameter and had outrageous power requirements as they sought to exploit bottom bounce propagation paths to extend tactical ranges. Having a system as expensive and complex as that be redundant doesn't seem like good military thinking.

I'm looking forward to reading about these multiple sonar configurations?

Sorry, I meant the DL's. Norfolk and mitscher classes. Those were refitted with SQS-23 but were originally build with QHB and SQG-1 sonars.

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
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