NEW VANGUARD • 162

US DESTROYERS 1934–45

Pre-war classes

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

•  The Treaty Classes: 1,500-Ton Destroyers

•  The Treaty Classes: 1,850-Ton Destroyer Leaders

•  The Post-Treaty Classes

TOWARD A TWO-OCEAN WAR

•  Modifications

•  Mobilization

DESTROYERS IN ACTION

•  The Atlantic and Mediterranean

•  The Pacific

LOOKING BACK

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDICES

•  Dimensions and Design Specifications

•  Recognition Features

US DESTROYERS 1934–45
PRE-WAR CLASSES

INTRODUCTION

The destroyer force with which the United States entered World War II was the product of twenty years of peace, 1919–1939.

On the nation’s economic front, these two decades couldn’t have been more different. Following a brief recession after World War I, the American economy expanded at an unprecedented rate and in 1929 gross national product reached one-third of the world total. Conversely, that October’s stock-market crash ushered in the Great Depression, a decade of hardship at home and around the world.

The fortunes of the American shipbuilding industry were nearly the reverse. During the four years after the war ended, deliveries dropped to less than 5 percent of the World War I peak and stayed there until 1938. This near collapse brought plant closings, layoffs, and a corresponding loss of expertise that jeopardized the industry’s future ability to rebound – a circumstance decried in 1944 by no less than the US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King as a mistake that should never be repeated.

In 1921, however, such a risk was of little concern as the US hosted a Naval Arms Limitation Conference at Washington. In the hope of gaining a lasting peace, it offered to sacrifice its postwar superiority in capital ships and not to strengthen existing bases or establish new ones in the Pacific. The conference ended in February 1922 with nations agreeing to limit battleship tonnage and to abide by the resulting treaty at least through 1936, with two years’ notice given before any withdrawal.

The United States’ world view proved naive. In 1925–1928, while Japan completed 125 large combatant ships and Britain, France, and Italy a collective 275, the US commenced a building “holiday” during which it commissioned only 11. This did not at first raise any alarm at home, where activist Brigadier General “Billy” Mitchell had promoted the view that air power made a surface navy unnecessary and pacifists maintained that building up the Navy would promote war. Disinterest continued throughout Herbert Hoover’s presidency, 1929–33, during which time keels for only 11 more large warships were laid down.

But the world was not moving toward a lasting peace. Germany’s postwar civilian government never succeeded in establishing a sound economy. In 1933, new German Chancellor Adolf Hitler set about mobilizing armed forces, which in 1935 he announced to the world as a fait accompli. Japan, too, was unhappy; a British ally in World War I, it chafed at its quota under the Washington Treaty and further resented United States legislation excluding Asians from applying for US citizenship. In 1931, the Japanese Army occupied Manchuria and looked forward to further territorial expansion.

The streamlined Sims class epitomized a transition between an era of shipyards as engine builders and shipyards as assembly facilities, a central theme in the design history of the US Navy’s prewar destroyers. Here Anderson, the first to commission, runs builder’s acceptance trials in 1939. (NH 96119)

Through all this the US Navy, though neglected, was not idle. Despite a long-term manpower reduction beginning in 1922 to fewer than 100,000 officers and enlisted personnel, it maintained its preparedness via a nucleus of dedicated career professionals. It also supported programs – e.g., at the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, always a respected source of advanced thinking, and at the new Naval Research Laboratory at Anacostia, District of Columbia, which was soon to develop the first operational US radar – through an extended network of public and private efforts to advance science in the service of national defense.

In 1927, a second Naval Arms Limitation Conference at Geneva accomplished little, but a third one at London in 1930 extended individual ship and total tonnage limitations to cruisers and destroyers. For the latter, the United States’ limit was 150,000 long tons standard displacement, of which 16 percent could be up to 1,850 tons while the balance was not to exceed 1,500 tons, i.e. 13 of the former and 84 of the latter. In this light, with its entire destroyer force consisting of 1,200-ton flush-deckers designed c.1916, the time had come for the United States to end its building holiday.

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

The United States’ procedure for building new warships began with two actions by Congress: one to authorize construction and a separate one to appropriate funds. With advice from a General Board of senior admirals, the Secretary of the Navy then approved contracts and turned over the design process to three independent technical bureaus – Construction and Repair for the hull and fittings, Engineering for propulsion and auxiliary machinery, and Ordnance for armament – which prepared specifications and contract plans upon which shipbuilders based their bids. The shipbuilders (Navy yards or private firms) then prepared their own detailed designs or subcontracted them to an outside design agent.

The function of US Navy destroyers, which had not changed much since 1905 when it was first described, was to protect the fleet from enemy torpedo boat attacks and to attack offensively with their own torpedoes. For these tasks, they needed speed and seakeeping ability sufficient to screen the fleet in any except the worst weather. By the late 1920s, in light of the modern weapons systems evolving, this was something the remnants of the Navy’s force of 273 World War I era flush-deck destroyers could no longer be expected to provide.

In 1927, the Bureau of Construction and Repair reopened the destroyer design question for the purpose of consolidating postwar developments. Two years later, studies yielded a 1,440-tonner intended to combine the long range and heavy armament needed to operate with a fleet fighting its way across the Pacific to relieve the U.S.-held Philippines. By November 1930, the Bureau of Construction and Repair had investigated three designs of 1,375, 1,500 and 1,850 tons. April 1931 yielded a 1,500-ton ship with increased speed and seaworthiness compared with the flush-deckers – still too small to maintain station with a modern high-speed carrier task force in rough weather, but capable of delivering a torpedo attack in anything less.

Farragut (foreground) and her class steam off San Diego in an exhibition staged for Movietone News in September 1936. Contemporary doctrine contemplated destroyers advancing to launch a torpedo attack against an enemy battle line. Here, the smokescreen has been laid by aircraft. (NH 67293)

Meanwhile the Bureau of Ordnance, recognizing the growing threat posed by aircraft, experimented during the 1920s with “dual-purpose” guns that could be used against both surface and air targets. The resulting 5-inch/38-caliber weapon had power, reliability, and rapid-firing capability. Teamed with a powered fire control director that could deliver firing solutions for high-speed targets, it proved so effective that it was adopted as the main antiaircraft armament on cruisers, battleships, and carriers, and emerged as the most successful naval gun of its type in World War II.

Against surface ships, the Mark 15 torpedo developed in 1931 was longer and heavier than those of World War I but similar in speed and range. Against submarines, the depth charge was little changed since its development in World War I and could be rolled off stern-mounted tracks or projected away from the ship by centerline-mounted “Y-guns.”

Regarding machinery, standard practice in World War I had been for the Bureau of Engineering to issue specifications to shipbuilders, who executed their own designs. By 1930, however, only three private shipbuilders retained their own design departments (Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation in Quincy, Massachusetts; New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey; and Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Virginia). All three were licensed to fabricate turbines by Britain’s long-time world leader, the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Co., Ltd., which reviewed their proposed designs in light of its latest research, and also made them available to the British Admiralty.

In February 1931, Congress passed the Naval Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1932, which funded five 1,500-ton destroyers left over from a 1916 authorization; in June 1932, it funded three more for fiscal year 1933 and then eight 1,850-tonners for 1934. Contracts for these 16 destroyers were awarded to two of the big three – Bethlehem for the 1,500-tonners and “New York Ship” for the 1,850-ton leaders – for which the Bureau of Engineering provided specifications consistent with Parsons’ conservative design philosophy.

Porter-class 1,850-tonners Balch, Moffett, Winslow, and McDougal, moored at San Diego in 1939, exhibit their single-purpose 5-inch twin mounts and 1.1-inch antiaircraft gun positions fore and aft. (NARA 80-G-422626)

The Treaty Classes: 1,500-Ton Destroyers

Fiscal years 1932 and 1933: the Farragut class

a new USS Farragut.