WWII Destroyers? (1 Viewer)

[Shortround6]

Germans had some design experience with large destroyers in WW I but no practical experience (feed back).
The S 113 was running trials when the war ended

And wound up in French hands as reparations. 2060 tons, 346ft long, 4 15cm guns and 4 23.6in torpedoes. 2 sisters broken up incomplete.
a class of 6 near sisters from a different yard saw one ship (V 116) going to Italy and the other scrapped in various stages of completion. A further group of 3 ships from another yard were all broken up incomplete. These were all oil fired and the Germans had been using oil firing since the 1913 year classes. Early ships had used mixed firing but all oil allowed for a a number of improvements including a large reduction in machinery personnel.
The S 113 had poor sea keeping even in the North Sea.

 

[Shortround6]

The US made some mistakes of their own in the 1930s.

Somers class. Sounded good on paper.
8 5in/38s in twin mounts.
2 quad 1.1 AA mounts.
2 0.5in AA guns
12 21 torpedo tubes, all on the center line.

However.
Extremely top-heavy.
The 5in twins would only elevate to 35 degrees. Not dual purpose.
The 1.1s may have been late (?) but in any case, they were troublesome in service.
To solve the top-heaviness they took off the 3rd gun mount and one set of torpedo tubes.
In fact the last two ships got 1st and 4th mounts replaced by the later twin mount hi elevation guns and got a single gun in the 3rd mount location and given a scattering of 40mm (3 twin mounts) and 20mm guns leaving them with about the same fire power as a Fetcher. These two also got a late war emergency AA refit which traded all the torpedoes for extra AA guns.
They were just a few feet off the length of a Fletcher and just about 3 ft narrower. Kind of shows what the DP battery costs in a small ship.

 

[SaparotRob]

But they looked mahvelous!

 

[GreenKnight121]

But in 1939, American and Japanese destroyers as groups both had topweight issues, aside from any fighting qualities.

You seem to be applying the problems of 13 4x2 5" gunned ships designed as destroyer leaders (the 8 Porter class and the 5 Somers class) to all USN destroyers - when the 1930s & early 1940s 4x1 5" & 5x1 5" gunned destroyers (which made up the majority of USN destroyers) had no such issues.

 

[EwenS]

You seem to be applying the problems of 13 4x2 5" gunned ships designed as destroyer leaders (the 8 Porter class and the 5 Somers class) to all USN destroyers - when the 1930s & early 1940s 4x1 5" & 5x1 5" gunned destroyers (which made up the majority of USN destroyers) had no such issues.

Well that is not entirely true.

Reading Friedman's US Destroyers all the Goldplater classes after the Mahans had come out overweight and that became a real issue with the Sims class. At light displacement the lead ship Anderson was reported to be nearly 120 tons overweight and top heavy, so affecting their stability (GM at light weight was 1.68ft compared to 2.68ft as designed). So the design had to be modified before most of them entered service. The Sec of the Navy approved the changes on 25 Sept 1939. Having been designed around a TT armament of 3 quad TT (1 centreline & one on each side) they sacrificed one of the side sets and had the other placed on the centreline on a new deckhouse.. Other changes authorised included 60 tons of fixed ballast, and elimination of the splinter protection around the director, director tube and pilot house

Sims running builders trials in July 1939 with all 3 sets of TT in place. Note the missing Mark 37 director at this point.

Sims in Nov 1940 having lost both sets of sided TT and with the director now in place.

Sims in May 1940 with the new deckhouse in place and a second centreline quad TT and the boats relocated from the shelter deck alongside No 3 5"/38 to the main deck.

The changes were approved in time to allow the later completions in the class to emerge with the modified armament.

Elsewhere I've read that these interwar classes, while not necessarily unstable when completed, had little stability margin for the changes that began to take place when WW2 broke out. Firstly depth charge armament & then light AA had to be increased. Those changes required sacrifices elsewhere - guns, TT etc varying by class. Similar effects can be seen in other navies to a greater or lesser extent depending on the design, but the USN seems to have been affected more than some others. One indication of the lack of stability margin in some of the US 1,500 tonners can be seen in the Gridley class. These 4 ships were the only group that were not refitted with any Bofors guns during WW2. Not only that but they still ahd to sacrifice their two aft sets of TT in 1945 when relegated to the Atlantic Fleet in the first few months of that year. Any work on an Emergency AA refit for them in 1945 was considered a very low priority and was never carried out.

 

[Shortround6]

Just about everybody was trying to put more than a quart in a pint pot when it came to destroyers.
This was not helped with the London naval treaty.
AS warfare was not only a 'hidden' cost it was a real, rapidly escalating cost once war broke out.
Some navies had designed for two different weight limits, the treaty limit which was sometimes called "peace limit" and the actual designed weight or "war limit". The US did this a lot.
This also meant that the ships would be slower in service with full ammo, fuel and extra 'stuff'. than the speed on trials.
The British 'standard' destroyers were small. They needed a lot of destroyers and the Washington treaty had no real limits on destroyer size but the limit was total tonnage so the British just enlarged the WW I W & V class a bit to around 1400 tons to keep numbers up.
Some other navies were trying to use large destroyers as junior cruisers and those got rather large quickly. The US spent the 20s sitting back and building nothing as they had built so many destroyers at the end of WW I that over 1/2 were out of commission at any given time. This was both good and bad. The early 'gold platers' got see a lot of what everybody else was doing, but they came up with new designs faster than they could be built let alone tested so any bad ideas/problems went through a number of classes before being straightened out.
The AA problem took everyone by surprise. Planes got a lot faster, stronger and carried much more armament very quickly. A couple of Lewis guns on posts were no longer enough

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

USN doctrine was to let sea water into the fuel tanks as fuel was used, it kept displacement about the same, which is why USN ships are generally quoted as having one top speed. The RN allowed the tanks to empty, which is why people like HT Lenton quote top speed and top speed full load. In *theory* it generally gave RN ships a slightly better stability, given the fuel still on board. It took a while to pump out the tanks, the US destroyers lost to the typhoon in 1944 had been emptying their tanks expecting to refuel soon as well as trying to stay in formation instead of riding the weather.