Background
Doorman, born in Utrecht and raised Catholic, came from a family of professional soldiers.
Doorman, born in Utrecht and raised Catholic, came from a family of professional soldiers.
In 1906, he and his brother Lou ACM Doorman were commissioned as midshipmen. In 1910 came his promotion to officer rating.
A navy officer since 1910, Doorman served first in the Netherlands East Indies; during and after World War I, he helped develop the Dutch naval air force. He returned to the East Indies in 1937 as commander of the naval air force, and in 1940 he became commander of the entire Dutch fleet in the East Indies. In February 1942 he was appointed tactical commander of a combined “strike force” that was ordered to stop an expected Japanese invasion fleet from landing on Java. Doorman’s force, consisting of five cruisers and nine destroyers, intercepted a comparably sized Japanese fleet escorting a number of transport ships in the Java Sea on February 27.
In the ensuing engagement and its aftermath, all the Allied cruisers, including Doorman’s flagship, De Ruyter, were sunk by torpedoes and shell fire, as were a number of destroyers. Japanese losses were negligible, and the invasion force landed on Java on February 28. Before he went down with his ship, Doorman is said to have transmitted a message, “Ik val aan, volgt mij” (“I attack, follow me,” sometimes given as “All ships follow me”), that served as a rallying cry for the Dutch during the remainder of World War II. Doorman himself was honoured after the war with a number of aircraft carriers commissioned into Dutch service under his name. In the 1990s the Royal Netherlands Navy commissioned several Karel Doorman-class multi-role frigates.
Karel Doorman is often honoured because he signalled "Ik val aan, volg mij" ("I am attacking, follow me") during the Battle of the Java Sea, which was considered very gallant.
On 27 February 1942, at approximately four in the afternoon, the Japanese and the allied squadrons spotted each other. Karel Doorman notably recognized that the Dutch fleet was smaller than the Japanese, and gallantly proceeded to attack the Japanese fleet and go down with the ship. The guns of the two Japanese cruisers had a longer range than the Allied guns and at about five o'clock the British cruiser HMS Exeter was hit. Twenty minutes later the Dutch destroyer HNLMS Kortenaer was torpedoed. The ship exploded and broke in two pieces. Confusion arose in the Allied squadron over the way forward, compounded by the fact that HMS Exeter could only sail at half power and wanted to return to port at Soerabaja or now day Surabaya on its own steam.
Remembering instructions issued by High Command, Doorman gave the order to attack at the approach of the Japanese fleet. The tactical command "I attack, follow me" as such he did not signal at the beginning of this battle in the Java Sea. It is a very free translation of the signal sent by him, "All ships – follow me", to remedy the confusion. The battle on 27 February 1942 which, with interruptions, lasted for over seven hours, ended with the almost complete destruction of Doorman's squadron. The squadron commander was killed aboard the flagship, which sank after about 1 ½ hours.