Conrad Emil Lambert Helfrich

Conrad Emil Lambert Helfrich (born Oct. 11, 1886, Java, Netherlands East Indies—died Sept. 20, 1962, The Hague) was a Dutch admiral who during World War II commanded the ABDA (American, British, Dutch, and Australian) naval fleet in its unsuccessful attempt to protect the Dutch East Indies from Japanese attack. Between 1942 and 1944 he headed the Dutch armed forces in the southwestern Pacific.

A naval officer since 1907, Helfrich was chief of staff of the Dutch East Indies naval fleet from 1939 to 1942; in February of that year he became commander of the ABDA naval fleet. After leading unsuccessful attempts to halt the advance of the numerically superior Japanese fleet in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, he ordered Adm. Karel W.F.M. Doorman to try to stop the Japanese invasion of Java while he withdrew all remaining ABDA naval forces to Australia (Feb. 28, 1942). Though criticized at the time by some Allied naval officers for this withdrawal, his actions were later seen to have been necessary to save the rest of the fleet from annihilation. When the ABDA command was dissolved (March 1942), the Dutch government-in-exile directed him to take all remaining Dutch armed forces to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where he served until 1944 as commander of Dutch sea, air, and land forces in the southwestern Pacific. He was the Dutch delegate to the United Nations meetings in San Francisco (April–May 1945) and represented his government at the Japanese surrender (Sept. 2, 1945). He directed the naval ministry at The Hague until his retirement in 1949.