The Lemurian Navy always had a problem with keeping up with the building requests from the Royal Navy. It was building a Squadron (12) of 'L' Class destroyers when war broke out and the RN put the 'M' class into production and built lots of them. By the time the Lemurian Navy had finished its L's the RN was up to the R, S, classes. The Lemurians put 24 of those under orders as its 'War Emergency Destroyer' type. The next VW class did not get built at all. The other destroyer type built during the war was the destroyer leaders of the Phillippe class. These ships did not finish being completed till 1920 when the next 'A' class trials were underway.
The biggest upgrade between the 'L' type they had been building and the Charlemagne was speed and torpedo size. The L went 30 knots, the Charlemagne 36 knots. The L had 18" torpedoes the Charlemagne 21". A sharp increase in capabilities. No L type made it into World War 2 in a fighting condition all were down to accommodation ships, target vessels, and/or discarded, scrapped. The RN built two and three funnel versions, Lemuria built all three funnel ships.
By the start of WW2, 20 of the 24 were still in commission. Four had been removed and scrapped. The class as a whole was at the end of its life cycle. Another couple of years would have seen them all disappear from front line service. The wartime service of these ships was supposed to be eight based at Hazamara, then six each at Colombo and Trincomalee. They would provide convoy escorts to the ships going from Hazamara to South Africa and eventually up to Sierra Leone. The Colombo vessels would escort ships going to and from the Red Sea and eventually serve in the Mediterranean. The Trincomalee based vessels were to escort ships to Singapore and Darwin, which eventually led to fighting against the Japanese.
No large refits were done to these ships, weaponry would be removed to make way for either enhanced antisubmarine weapons and/or AA weapons. By the end of the war, the remaining ships, all had different specifications, no two were alike. The drawing above is a typical type on the Sierra Leone run. Much more chance of fighting against U-boats, and that is what the armaments are targeting.
