Construction The cruiser was ordered on 1 August 1932, and her
keel was laid on 16 September 1933 at the
Wilton-Fijenoord shipyard. Despite continued financial issues, she was
launched on 11 May 1936. On 3 October, she was completed and
commissioned as
De Ruyter, named after 17th-century admiral
Michiel de Ruyter. The enlarged fleet, comprising five cruisers and nine destroyers from four nations, was led by
De Ruyter as it moved to intercept the Japanese forces off Java. Contact was made in the mid-afternoon, and the two fleets engaged at long range. The distance made accurate gunnery difficult:
De Ruyters salvos all missed, though she was struck by a
dud shell that caused negligible damage. About 20 minutes into the battle, the Japanese fleet launched a large salvo of
Type 93 torpedoes and hoped the Allied fleet would not expect such an attack from such an extreme range. The only hit was to the destroyer
Kortenaer, which promptly sank. The gunnery duel continued:
HMS Exeter was struck in her
boiler room, which cut her speed to . As
Exeter turned to withdraw and avoid colliding with the ships behind her, the trailing cruisers followed suit, and mistakenly believed an order had been given by
De Ruyter. Doorman then desperately had his now-isolated cruiser reform the
battle line and ordered several destroyers to make torpedo attacks as cover. Once reunited with the other cruisers, he then broke off from the engagement and circled around the Japanese to intercept the transports somewhere north of him. The force was now reduced to the cruisers
De Ruyter,
Java,
Houston, and
Perth. The destroyers had either been sunk, severely damaged, tasked with escorting the crippled
Exeter, or forced to break off due to lack of fuel and torpedoes.
Sinking The cruisers were temporarily followed by Japanese floatplanes, which gave the Japanese an understanding of his route. Unaware, the Allied cruisers passed near the invasion force, but were ambushed by the Japanese
heavy cruisers
Haguro and
Nachi. Under cover of darkness, the Japanese closed to undetected and fired a spread of torpedoes followed by a renewed gun duel. The fleet took evasive action, but one torpedo from
Nachi struck
Javas
magazine. The resulting explosion obliterated the old cruiser. Doorman believed the torpedoes had all passed and resumed course, which placed
De Ruyter directly in the path of another spread, this time from
Haguro. A torpedo struck her stern near the
reduction gears with devastating effect. Power was lost,
oil spilled from a ruptured tank, and fire engulfed her aft section. As the fire spread to the antiaircraft platform, the 40 mm ammunition began to
cook off, while damage-control teams struggled to respond. Without electrical power,
fire hoses and
pumps were inoperable, but to fight the fire, the burning
dynamo generators had to be extinguished. One of the last orders from the cruiser was for the remaining two ships to flee. The order to abandon ship was given among more
secondary explosions. The wounded were prioritized and placed into the only boat that could deploy without electricity. Doorman and
De Ruyters captain,
Eugène Lacomblé, were determined to
go down with the ship. While their exact fate is unclear, one sailor saw the two retreat to a
cabin, where they presumably killed themselves. A total of 344 crew members roughly 80% of the ship's complement died, many from the anti-air ammunition explosions or the floating oil fires. == Wreck ==