Karel Doorman

Karel Willem Frederik Marie Doorman (23 April 1889 – 28 February 1942) was a Royal Netherlands Navy officer who during World War II commanded remnants of the short-lived American-British-Dutch-Australian Command naval strike forces in the Battle of the Java Sea. He was killed in action when his flagship HNLMS De Ruyter was torpedoed during the battle, having chosen to go down with the ship.

Doorman was born 1889 in Utrecht, and raised as a Roman Catholic from a military family. In 1906, he and his brother Lou ACM Doorman were commissioned as midshipmen. In 1910, he was promoted to officer and moved to the Dutch East Indies aboard the cruiser Tromp. During his first three years of duty from January 1912 to December 1913, he was placed aboard the survey vessels HNLMS van Doorn and HNLMS Lombok and was mainly tasked with mapping the coastal waters of New Guinea. Early in 1914, he returned to the Netherlands on board the cruiser De Ruyter. In March 1914, he requested a transfer to the Aviation Service.^{[citation needed]}

In April 1914, Doorman served on the Noord-Brabant during its mission to the Principality of Albania to recover the body of Major Lodewijk Thomson of the International Gendarmerie. Doorman's transfer to the Aviation Service was approved in mid-1915 and he became one of the first naval officers to be awarded his pilot wings.^{[citation needed]}

From 1915 to 1918, Doorman was stationed at Soesterberg with the Aviation Service under the command of Captain (later Major) of Engineers Henk Walaardt. There, he met Albert Plesman, an observer who later became a pilot. In 1915, Doorman was awarded a civilian pilot's license and in 1916 he was awarded a naval pilot's license. From 1917 to 1921, he was an instructor at Soesterberg Air Base and from October 1918 at the Naval Air Base De Kooy in Den Helder. Doorman commanded this Naval Air Base from 1919 to 1921. Because of his merits as an organizer in the nascent field of naval aviation, he was made a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1922.^{[citation needed]}

Budget cuts and an arm injury ended Doorman's active flying career but from November 1921 to November 1923, he attended the Higher Naval School in The Hague; this training, which included coursework in aircraft and naval vessel communication, laid the groundwork for his later career. After he completed this training, he was placed with the Department of the Navy at Batavia in December 1923.^{[citation needed]}

From 1919 to 1934, Doorman was married to Justine A.D. Schermer. Their son Joop Doorman [nl] was born in 1928. The marriage ended in 1934, soon after the birth of a third child. That same year, Doorman married Isabella J.J.J. Heyligers, with whom he had a fourth child.

In 1926, for the first time in eleven years, Doorman gained a longer appointment aboard the armored naval vessel De Zeven Provinciën. Until late 1927, he was the ship's gunnery officer and later also became its first officer. Early in 1928, Doorman returned to the Netherlands, where he ran equipment-purchasing for The Hague's Naval Aviation department. In 1932, under his command, the mine-layer HNLMS Prins van Oranje sailed three times in the same year to the Dutch East Indies. The same year, he also commanded two destroyers; Witte de With and Evertsen; the latter saw action against the rebels on HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën in February 1933.^{[citation needed]}

In January 1934, Doorman returned to the Netherlands with Evertsen and spent three years as Chief of Staff of the naval commander in Den Helder. In 1936, he submitted a request to the Secretary of Defense to command a cruiser in the Dutch East Indies. Consequently, he departed as a captain in 1937 for the Dutch East Indies, commanding the cruisers Sumatra and Java. In August 1938, he was appointed Commander of Naval Aviation in the Dutch East Indies. From his headquarters at Surabaya Morokrembangan Naval Air Station, he made a number of inspection tours in the archipelago.