24 class sloop

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300px
HMS Sir Bevis
Class overview
Operators: Royal Navy
 Royal Australian Navy
22x20px Imperial Japanese Navy
Preceded by:Flower class sloop
Built:19171918
In commission:19181946
Planned:24
Completed:22
Cancelled:2
Lost:1
General characteristics
Displacement: 1,320 long tons (1,341 t) standard
Length: 258 ft (79 m) p/p
267 ft 6 in (81.53 m) o/a
Beam: 35 ft (11 m)
Draught: 10 ft 6 in (3.20 m)
Propulsion: 4-cylinder triple expansion engine, 2,500 ihp
2 cylindrical boilers
1 screw
Speed: 17 knots (20 mph; 31 km/h)
Range: 260 tons of coal
Complement: 82
Armament: As designed:
• 2 × 4 in (100 mm) guns
• 39 depth charges

The 24 class was a class of minesweeping sloops. Derived from the preceding Flower-class sloop, but designed to appear double-ended. Twenty-four ships to this design (hence the class name) were ordered between December 1916 and April 1917 under the Emergency War Programme for the Royal Navy in World War I, although two of them were cancelled before launch. All were named after famous racehorses, but they were not named "Racehorse" class as the Admiralty realised that this could easily be confused in communications with the Racecourse-class minesweeper of paddle minesweepers, and they officially became the 24 class.

Like the Flower class sloops, they were single-screw Fleet Sweeping Sloops used almost entirely for minesweeping, although only ten were completed by the Armistice in 1918. However, they had identical deckhouses and gunshields at either end of the vessel, with straight stems and sterns. Furthermore four of those completed had the single mast aft of the centrally-located funnel, and the rest had the mast forwards of the funnel.

Ships

See also

References

  • British and Empire Warships of the Second World War, H T Lenton, 1998, Greenhill Books, ISBN 978-1-85367-277-4
  • Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I, Janes Publishing, 1919
  • The Grand Fleet, Warship Design and Development 1906-1922, D. K. Brown, Chatham Publishing, 1999, ISBN 978-1-86176-099-9

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