John Newman
The Bunker Group
Yes it’s true that only three of eight planned Tribal class destroyers were built, but...Worse than that, Hobart lost her bow to a torpedo in mid 43 and under repair for virtually the rest of the war, Australia and Shropshire were, for all intents and purposes, our cruiser force for the last two years of the war. If it wasn't for the Tribal Class destroyers being able to step up and back fill sufficient cruiser duties things would have been even worse.
Pre war the requirement was for a full flotilla of eight Tribal Class destroyers, we only completed three. The RN was suffering severe manning issues and there were discussions in relation to the transfer of HMS Ocean or even possibly HMS Implacable and Indefatigable to the RAN to serve with the BPF, it was likely they would be Australian crewed with NZ manned airgroups as the Kiwis made up a not insignificant proportion of RN FAA manpower late war. Too bad the staff discussing this didn't bother keeping the government in the loop and the whole thing fell over.
I think many people would be horrified if they realised just how small the RAN is and how few MFUs there actually are.
Let’s not forget the 10 new build ‘N’ and ‘Q’ class destroyers that the RN transferred/loaned to the RAN during the period of the war.
So it wasn’t doom and gloom on the Destroyer front.