Douro-class destroyer


The Douro class destroyers consisted of five ships used by the Portuguese Navy and two used by the Colombian Navy, all built during the 1930s. Note that in Portugal, this class of destroyers is usually referred to as the Vouga class, with the term Douro class being usually employed to designate the previous class of Portuguese destroyers also known as.

Design and construction

In 1930, the Portuguese navy drew up a 10 year shipbuilding programme to replace its aging fleet, with planned purchases including two cruisers, twelve destroyers and a number of submarines and sloops. The competition for the design for destroyers was won by Yarrow Shipbuilders beating bids from Thornycroft and Italian shipyards. An order was placed for four ships on 12 June 1931, with two ships, Vouga and Lima to be built by Yarrows in the UK and the remaining ships, Tejo and Douro to be built at Lisbon with machinery to be supplied by Yarrow. A fifth ship, Dão, again to be built in Lisbon using Yarrow-supplied machinery, was ordered on 18 January 1933.
Yarrow's design was based on, a prototype destroyer built for the Royal Navy in 1926. The ships were long overall, with a beam of and a draught of. The ship displaced at standard load and at Displacement (ship)#Full or [deep load or loaded displacement|full load].
They were powered by two Parsons Marine [Steam Turbine Company|Parsons]-Curtis geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by three Yarrow boilers that operated at a pressure of. The turbines, rated at, were intended to give a maximum speed of. The destroyers carried a maximum of of fuel oil that gave them a range of at.
Armament was similar to contemporary Royal Navy destroyers, with a gun armament of four 4.7 in Vickers-Armstrong Mk G guns, and three QF [2 pounder naval gun#QF 2-pounder Mark VIII|2-pounder () Mk VIII "pom-pom"] anti-aircraft guns. Two quadruple banks of 21-inch torpedo tubes were carried, while two depth charge throwers and 12 depth charges constituted the ships' anti-submarine armament. Up to 20 mines could be carried. The ships complement was 147 officers and men.
The two Yarrow-built ships were laid down in October 1931, and commissioned in 1933, while the first two Lisbon-built ships, Tejo and Douro, laid down in 1932, were sold to the Colombian Navy before completion in response to the Leticia Incident between Columbia and Peru, and Peru's purchasing of two ex-Russian destroyers from Estonia. Renamed and, respectively, they served the Colombians as the. Two further ships were ordered by the Portuguese Navy to replace them.

Service

The five destroyers carried out patrols to defend Portugal's neutrality during the Second World War. Their anti-aircraft armament was revised during 1942–43, with the three pom-poms and one of the banks of torpedo tubes replaced by six 20 mm cannon. They were refitted by Yarrow from 1946–49, with the machinery refurbished, anti-aircraft armament again revised to three Bofors 40 mm [Automatic Gun L/60|Bofors 40 mm gun] in powered mounts and three 20 mm cannon, and sonar and radar fitted. Douro reached a speed of at during post-refit trials.
Four of the five destroyers were refitted and modernised again in 1957, with two 4.7 inch guns removed, allowing a Squid anti-submarine mortar to be fitted and the anti-aircraft armament to be increased to five 40 mm Bofors guns and three 20 mm cannon. The last of the class, Vouga, was discarded in 1967.