US Navy Destroyers

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mescal
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US Navy Destroyers

#1

Post by mescal » 03 Jan 2010, 19:31

Hello,

As I did with the Japanese or British destroyers, I've now completed a study of the availability of the US Navy destroyers used in ww2.

I included in the scope the old Clemson and Wickes which had often been converted to other roles, and went up to all Allen M. Sumner class, and the part of the Gearing which commissionned before the end of the war.
This give me a total of more than 530 ships.

You'll find the same charts as I did earlier for other navies below with the state and (approximate) location of all ships for every month of the war, and I'll after that post some aggregate stats.

The color code is as follows :
* Light Green : European Theater of Operation (includes South atlantic & Mediterranean)
* Green : Pacific
* Light Blue : Non-DD role (generally APD, DM, DMS ...). There are two shades : the lightest denotes ETO, the other PTO
* Blue : Training, shakedown (more or less partial availability)
* Grey : building
* Brown : withdrawn or requalified as AG (auxiliary miscellaneous)
* Purple : unavailable
* Red : Sunk
* Orange : combat damage
* Yellow : non-combat damage

Regarding the location definition :
A : Atlantic, from Murmansk to South Atlantic; includes caribean sea & Gulf of Mexico
M : Mediterranean - the Torch ships of Nov 42 are labelled M, even though most of them did not technically enter the Med.
NP : North Pacific - includes the Kuriles Area
CP : Central Pac : from Hawaii to the Gilbert and the Palau
SP : South Pac : From the Fidji & Australia to the Solomon, New Guinea and up to Morotai
EP : East Pac : along the coast of America (North & South)
PI : Philippines (includes the forays in South China Sea in 45)
EI : East Indies
JW : Japanese waters : from Formosa to Hokkaido through the Bonins
CH : China coast
IO : Indian Ocean

Note that it is sometime difficult to find a location for a given month, especially with the fast-moving carrier task forces. For example, TF 38 raided Formosa in mid october 44, but I decided to list all ships in this force under the label 'PI', since the true purpose of those raids was the protection of the Leyte landings - and because of the battle of Leyte Gulf fought later in the month.

Anyway, the usual disclaimer apply : it has been done to the best of my knowledge under some atomicity constraints (the month as time-unit), and has no pretention of being a definitive work on this topic.

The main sources used have been DANFS (or wikipedia, which generally has the same info copy/pasted), destroyerhistory.org as well as dozen of OOB and hundreds of pages of different books I'm unable to list here.

BTW, while doing the information gathering, I found that the DANFS are overall pretty bad. Often the TROMs are short, there are many factual imprecisions (not to say blatant mistakes), and the general tone is too often far removed from neutral history.

Little game : list all ships present at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th, read their DANFS history, count the number of aircraft they shot down according to DANFS (remove all "claims" and "asist", just keep the 'kills'). How many aircraft do we get ?
(Hint : that's more than the total number of lost japanese planes)
:-)


And now, on to the charts
us_dd_11.jpg
us_dd_11.jpg (161.82 KiB) Viewed 1915 times
us_dd_12.jpg
us_dd_12.jpg (130.26 KiB) Viewed 1915 times
Olivier

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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#2

Post by mescal » 03 Jan 2010, 19:32

On to the second part ...
us_dd_21.jpg
us_dd_21.jpg (152.78 KiB) Viewed 1913 times
us_dd_22.jpg
us_dd_22.jpg (108.44 KiB) Viewed 1913 times
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#3

Post by mescal » 03 Jan 2010, 19:33

Third part.

This is the last part dealing with the ww1-era destroyers
us_dd_31.jpg
us_dd_31.jpg (180.35 KiB) Viewed 1913 times
us_dd_32.jpg
us_dd_32.jpg (151.1 KiB) Viewed 1913 times
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#4

Post by mescal » 03 Jan 2010, 19:36

Part 4 :

The Farragut, Porter, Mahan and Girdley classes....
us_dd_41.jpg
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us_dd_42.jpg
us_dd_42.jpg (123.03 KiB) Viewed 1913 times
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#5

Post by mescal » 03 Jan 2010, 19:38

Fifth Part :

The Bagley, Somers, Benham and Sims classes.
As well as the beginning of the Bensons
us_dd_51.jpg
us_dd_51.jpg (153.52 KiB) Viewed 1913 times
us_dd_52.jpg
us_dd_52.jpg (120.96 KiB) Viewed 1913 times
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#6

Post by LWD » 04 Jan 2010, 15:56

Wow .... I don't even want to think about how much time that took you.

Thanks.

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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#7

Post by JamesL » 04 Jan 2010, 18:49

Incredible! My hat if off to you.

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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#8

Post by mescal » 04 Jan 2010, 21:21

Thank you for the kind words

(and Lee, it's good you do not want to know, I wouldn't be able to give you even an approximate answer :D )

And to the next part :
This is the end of the Benson class and the beginning of the Gleaves :
us_dd_61.jpg
us_dd_61.jpg (130.12 KiB) Viewed 1874 times
us_dd_62.jpg
us_dd_62.jpg (127.52 KiB) Viewed 1874 times
Last edited by mescal on 04 Jan 2010, 21:28, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#9

Post by mescal » 04 Jan 2010, 21:22

Some more ...

Gleaves class (continued)
us_dd_71.jpg
us_dd_71.jpg (132.42 KiB) Viewed 1874 times
us_dd_72.jpg
us_dd_72.jpg (115.77 KiB) Viewed 1874 times

And that's all for today, my next charts picture are apparently too big and i'll have to resize them.

But don't go : there are still ~15 Gleaves, 175 Fletchers, 60 Allen M. Sumner and a handful of Gearing waiting
:D :D
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#10

Post by mescal » 05 Jan 2010, 22:07

And here come the end of the Gleaves class and the beginning of the Fletchers
us_dd_81.jpg
us_dd_81.jpg (127.42 KiB) Viewed 1851 times
us_dd_82.jpg
us_dd_82.jpg (125.38 KiB) Viewed 1851 times
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#11

Post by mescal » 05 Jan 2010, 22:08

Fletcher class, part II
us_dd_91.jpg
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us_dd_92.jpg
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#12

Post by mescal » 05 Jan 2010, 22:11

Fletcher class, part 3

(note that DD 548 and 549 were cancelled, so it's normal that the previous chart ends at 547 and this one restarts at 550)
US_DD_101.jpg
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US_DD_102.jpg
US_DD_102.jpg (132.04 KiB) Viewed 1851 times
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#13

Post by mescal » 05 Jan 2010, 22:13

Fletcher class, part 4
US_DD_111.jpg
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US_DD_112.jpg
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#14

Post by mescal » 05 Jan 2010, 22:15

And the last of the Fletchers and beginning of the Allen M. Sumner class
US_DD_121.jpg
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US_DD_122.jpg
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#15

Post by mescal » 06 Jan 2010, 22:30

This is the second part of the Allen Sumner class :
US_DD_130.jpg
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