The Java class was a class of light cruisers of the Royal Netherlands Navy, with the lead ship named after the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. Originally, three ships were planned: Java, Sumatra, and Celebes. Celebes was intended to be the flagship of the naval commander in the Dutch East Indies, and therefore she was slightly bigger than the other two ships. However, the contract was cancelled with 30 tons of material already prepared (a new ship, HNLMS De Ruyter was later built to fill that requirement).
The class was designed by the Dutch with technical oversight by the German company Krupp, and constructed in the Netherlands. Armed with ten 150-millimetre (5.9 in) guns, they were of comparable capability to the German and British cruisers designs of the time. However, these were not turret-mounted, and by the time the cruisers were finally launched after all the delays caused by the upheaval of World War I (Sumatra in 1920, Java in 1921), the ships had already become outdated. Nevertheless, both Sumatra and Java were still active at the outbreak of World War II, mainly for colonial duties. Both vessels were lost in the war, with Java torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese in 1942 in the Dutch East Indies and Sumatra scuttled as a breakwater during the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944.
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