Shipbucket

Portuguese Escorts, Bernardo Comidas

Around mid to late 1930s, situation was desperate for the Portuguese Navy. Once a renown naval superpower in the early days of European seas explorer in 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal have been unable to follow the rapid pace of naval development after the Industrial Revolutions. Although Portugal manage to acquire several numbers of armored cruisers and coastal battleships in late 19th century, by 1930s the fleet was hopelessly obsolete although the Portuguese Navy have managed to acquired small number of modern ships in the 1920s and 30s to replace older ships from before the turn of century. With escalating situation in Europe and Asia, Portuguese Navy were in dire need of an escort ships to protect ships going from Iberian Portugal into its vast colonies in Africa and Asia. By 1935, the Navy invited many shipbuilders across the Europe for a escort ships capable of reaching Timor and back. Three companies show up including the British Thornycrofts, Dutch Ingenieur-Kantoor voor Scheepsbouw, and Italian Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico. At first the British companies seems favourable owing to previous cooperation between Portugal and Britain, especially on building the Vouga-class Destroyers. But the Italian companies, in an unexpected turn of events, bidding a price substantially lower than all the competitors and with a promise for building the ships in Portugal, was declared a winner in late 1937.

The ships were pretty unique amongst other contemporaries. Displacing at 1050 t, her appearance much resembling a far faster torpedo boats, although in reality it only has a maximum speed of 25 knots. Its primary armament was geared towards protecting the convoy from surface raiders, which at that time was deemed as biggest threat to shipping than the submarine warfare that proved to be one in subsequent conflict. To deal with possible surface raider, the ships was armed with a pair of triple 533mm torpedo tubes derived from Italian design. Two single 100mm gun were reused from the decommissioned Douro-class Destroyers but with several modification to the breech and mounted in a newly-designed mount. To deal with submarine threat, the ships was armed with Italian-designed Icb 432/302 depth charge projector. To complement it were an additional space for carrying 9 naval mines placed in aft section. It was planned that the ships would've received the 20mm Oerlikon cannon but the said cannon were in short supply and as the result most of the time Bernardo Comidas didn't carry any anti aircraft guns at all.

The lead ships were christened as Bernardo Comidas, in honor of Portuguese sailors who died in Macau in a battle against the Chinese in 17th centuries. The first three batch was then built in a pretty lax pace and only been laid down in late 1938 and launched in August 1939 and were commissioned in mid 1940, well in a middle of another war in Europe.



Bernardo Comidas served mainly escorting Portuguese civilian ships around the Iberian and sometimes, well into Africa, but never ventured beyond the Angolas. Her wartime event was uneventful to say and she survived the war and was subsequently modernized in 1952 with US made weaponry such as Bofors gun and modest radar settings. Bernardo Comidas soldiered on until were put into reserve in 1961 and were scrapped in 1972.

Ludolf Offtertinger-class Light Destroyer/Escort

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Worklist

Working on currently:

• French, Bretagne, First Rate → Attaching the Sails (FD Scale)

• French, SS Normandie, Ocean Liner → Detailing the Hull (FD Scale)

Planned works:

• American, Wyoming, Schooner → Blueprint (FD Scale)

• American, USS Pennsylvania, First Rate → Blueprint (FD Scale)

• American, SS United States, Ocean Liner → Blueprint (FD Scale)

The submission period for the Second World War destroyer challenge has concluded. The community poll is now open and can be found here. Responses will be accepted until 23:59 UTC-12, 29 November 2020. The results of the poll, and the subject of the next challenge, will be revealed shortly thereafter.

Congratulation to all,
There's plenty of high level interesting entries (i will be glad if i'm in the middle part of the ranking.....)

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"You can rape history, if you give her a child"
Alexandre Dumas

JE SUIS CHARLIE

Very neat design, indeed! Do you know by whom and where the ships were built? CUF shipyards maybe? And do you what kind of
propulsion these ships had? Thanks!

The community poll for the Second World War destroyer escort challenge has closed. 22 entries were received before the deadline four days ago. There were a number of outstanding drawings, and I don't think any entry failed to arouse interest. Competition, as we will see, was quite stiff. I wish to thank all the artists who participated. The 27 people who responded to the poll also deserve thanks for their contribution. Now, without further ado, it is time for the results.



First place goes to that Kiwi Imperialist fellow and their Itasy class frigate, Tsimanampetsotsa. In all seriousness, achieving first place is quite a highlight for me. I have come close in the past, achieving third place in the interwar fighter challenge and second place in the first assault rifle and main battle tank challenges, but winning is a little different. Thank you for such a positive response. I have been thinking about abandoning my Imerina alternate universe in favour of a larger one for a while, but winning this challenge with a Merina ship may push me in the opposite direction. Now, for those skeptical of the challenge master achieving first place in the challenge, I have shared the poll and the results with the staff team on the Shipbucket Discord for verification. If I have erred, they will no doubt correct me in short order.

Second place is a remarkable three-way tie between The_Sprinklez (Lovac class), Shigure (Gremary class), and Armoured Man (G-38 class). It really shows how powerful a single point in the community poll can be. Congratulations to the three of them for their excellent work. Superboy, TheGrumpyKestrel, and Jadog123 have all earned special mentions. Superboy and TheGrumpyKestrel both achieved the highest score in the design realism category, while Jadog123 was the highest ranking artist in the originality category. Well done!



For those interested in a Soldierbucket challenge, the infantry challenge is now open.