Hazemeyer destroyer counterfactual

The counterfactual imagines roughly two dozen Dutch destroyers produced by a sustained building programme of two or three ships a year from the 1920s. With more Hazemeyer mountings available, some could remain aboard instead of the navy surrendering its scarce examples for British study. The proposed effect of two or three radar-directed 40 mm destroyers in a task group is to make repeated dive-bombing attacks prohibitively costly. Ju 87 attacks are judged especially vulnerable, and torpedo bombers would face a similar danger. Germany might respond by accelerating glide bombs, radio-guided weapons, or other changes to anti-shipping tactics. For Far Eastern operations, the imagined destroyers operate alongside capital ships and land-based aircraft. The survivability claim applies to a heavily contested air environment, with an explicit reservation about extending it to one dominated by the enemy.