HMS Whelp (R37)
1943 W and Z-class destroyer
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 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.
Description
The W-class ships displaced 1,710 long tons (1,740 t) at standard load and 2,530 long tons (2,570 t) at deep load. They had an overall length of 362 feet 9 inches (110.6 m), a beam of 35 feet 8 inches (10.9 m) and a mean deep draught of 14 feet 6 inches (4.4 m).
The public source identifies “HMS Whelp (R37)” as 1943 W and Z-class destroyer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Whelp, Z-class and destroyer.
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This entry incorporates text from “HMS Whelp (R37)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.