The destroyer of World War II was a fast unarmored
warship
of 1000 to 3000 tons displacement. It was typically armed with
four- or five-inch guns,
torpedoes,
antisubmarine
weapons, and light antiaircraft
weapons for point
defense.
Destroyers were originally developed to protect capital ships from torpedo boats. This required rapid-firing weapons and enough speed, range, and seakeeping ability to accompany and screen the larger ships. With the advent of the submarine, the destroyer became the principal antisubmarine screening ship, and depth charges and sound gear were added to its inventory. During the First World War, the sound gear took the form of sensitive hydrophones, which could detect noises from a nearby submerged submarine. Most of the major powers had independently developed sonar, which uses an active signal to more precisely locate submarines, by the start of the Second World War.
The antisubmarine mission continued through World
War II,
but destroyers proved to be the workhorses of the fleet. Their
main armament
shifted to dual-purpose weapons useful against aircraft (of which
the
best was
the U.S. 5”/38 gun) and Allied destroyers
acquired sophisticated radars.
This gave them a significant antiaircraft escort capability. Because of
their
shallow draft, destroyers were useful for shore bombardment, because
they could
get in close to shore for accurate gunnery.
American destroyers built before the war were almost universally top heavy and very uncomfortable for their crews. The Fletchers, built during the war, reversed this trend and were very capable ships. Japanese destroyers were also very capable and did not suffer from stability problems, largely because the Japanese had learned this lesson from the Tomozuru Incident, in which a torpedo boat capsized in a typhoon in the 1930s. (Two pre-war American destroyers would capsize in a typhoon late in the war.) American destroyers had powerful antiaircraft armament but miserable torpedoes, while Japanese destroyers were almost the opposite, with poor antiaircraft and the best torpedo in the world — the Long Lance. British destroyers started the war with even worse antiaircraft defenses than the Japanese, but better torpedoes than the Americans, and they excelled at antisubmarine warfare.
American destroyers were designed to have a
cruising radius of 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km) with operations in
the Pacific in mind. However, when steaming at their maximum speed of
better
than 30 knots, destroyers consumed fuel
prodigiously. American practice was to maintain an equally lavish
fleet train
with enough tanker support to keep
the destroyers
going. The Japanese, with fewer tankers, often refueled their
destroyers from
the larger warships in the task force, a practice occasionally used by
the Americans as well.
The Japanese began the war with 110 destroyers while the Americans had 68 destroyers in the Pacific, the British had just 8 in the Far East, the Dutch had 7, and the Australians had 2. However, while the Japanese constructed an additional 33 destroyers during the war, the Americans alone deployed an additional 302 destroyers to the Pacific before the surrender. Japanese destroyer losses were relatively heavy during the Solomons campaign, and Allied intelligence was quick to appreciate that the Japanese were suffering from a serious destroyer shortage in early 1943. This prompted Nimitz to issue an order on 13 April that destroyers be given higher target priority by submarines (second only to capital ships) in order to aggravate the Japanese destroyer shortage.
Destroyer Missions. American destroyers found themselves employed in four main roles during the war. As anticipated in prewar planning, they screened task forces, but primarily in an antiaircraft role rather than against light surface forces. They played a major role in shore bombardment, a mission also anticipated in prewar planning, but not nearly to the extent that actually took place. Antisubmarine operations were also far more important than anticipated. Finally, destroyers were a major part of what we would now call surface action groups in the Solomons and elsewhere, employing their torpedoes, not against the enemy battle line, but against enemy light surface forces. This mission was almost completely unanticipated.
One aspect of antiaircraft screening that became
increasingly prominent under the kamikaze
threat was radar picket duty. Destroyers were stationed 75 miles from
the fleet and close enough to each other to allow fighter directors to
"hand off" control of fighters to neighboring destroyers as needed.
However, the destoyers were not close enough for mutual support against
either air or surface attack, and, as casualties mounted, picket
destroyers began to be paired and to be supported by landing craft armed with
antiaircraft weapons. Eventually each picket group was assigned a
section of 12 fighters for local
combat air patrol. Even this could not always prevent casualties, and
consideration was given to converting submarines to radar pickets that
could submerge after reporting incoming strikes. A better idea was Cadillac, a sophisticated (for its
day) airborne early warning radar, which was not deployed in time to
see combat operations, but was part of the plan for an invasion of Kyushu.
By the time the Pacific War was underway, most U.S. Navy officers had concluded from British experience in the Mediterranean that "... as carriers of torpedoes, destroyers now were secondary to submarines and torpedo planes" (Friedman 2004). As a result, dual-purpose gun armament was given higher priority than torpedo armament on the Allen M. Sumners and subsequent classes. By the time units of these classes were deployed, the Japanese Navy had been so whittled down that aircraft and submarines were indeed the major threat; but, in the meanwhile, there had been numerous torpedo actions in the Solomons and elsewhere. This played a role in the decision to continue arming destroyers with torpedoes in the postwar era.
The rule of thumb at the start of the Pacific War
was that destroyers should have a top speed about 70 percent greater
than the battle line. By the time the war ended, the fast battleships
and carriers making up
the core of the fleet were capable of better than 30 knots, and
destroyers were barely keeping a 5-knot speed advantage. Cruising range
was also a serious concern. One solution was nuclear propulsion, but it
was the helicopter that would restore tactical mobility to the screen
of surface groups.
References
Morison
(1953)
Wildenberg (1996)
Worth (2001)
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia © 2007, 2009-2010 by Kent G. Budge. Index
