US Navy Destroyers

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mescal
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#16

Post by mescal » 06 Jan 2010, 22:32

And here comes the last part.

The last Sumners and the Gearings which were commissioned before the end of the war
US_DD_140.jpg
US_DD_140.jpg (81.61 KiB) Viewed 602 times

That's it for the charts, but I will soon post more aggregate views, describing the number of ships per area and per month to give a more synthetic view of the deployment of the US destroyers during the war.
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#17

Post by mescal » 10 Jan 2010, 15:42

Hello,

You'll find in the tables below some synthetic info on the localisation, availability ... of USN destroyers during the war.

It is, simply put, a summation by column of the values in the charts above, with a split between the "old" and "modern" ships - the "old" being tha Clemson & Wickes classes, and the modern all ships from USS Farragut (DD 348) onwards.

A few points to note :
* the number of ship under construction fall sharply at the end of the war - but that comes from the fact that I excluded the ships commissioned after August 1945 from my sample
* the number of "withdrawn" ship is higher than it should : many old ships were reclassified as "Miscellaneous Auxiliary" in 1945 (hull number AG-XXX). I interpreted this as "withdrawn".
* The "training" category covers both the ships under initial shakedown/training and the ones officially assigned to training duty.
US_DD_stats_11.jpg
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US_DD_stats_12.jpg
US_DD_stats_12.jpg (119.77 KiB) Viewed 594 times
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Re: US Navy Destroyers - More stats

#18

Post by mescal » 10 Jan 2010, 15:50

And here is a table made of the sum of the two previous tables :
US_DD_stats_31.jpg
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US_DD_stats_32.jpg
US_DD_stats_32.jpg (90.18 KiB) Viewed 592 times
The total values of 15346 month.DD (12478 of them as active and available) for the US Navy are quite similar to the ones of the Royal Navy (14536 and 11457 respectively) - they had fewer ships, but were at war during 72 months instead of 45.


And now, a chart showing the evolution of the most significant numbers in the tables above :
US_DD_chart_1.jpg
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#19

Post by maxs75 » 14 Jan 2010, 13:13

Very interesting tables! I've never seen statistics like that before!
It is interesting to see that USN had 52 modern destroyers in south Pacific in nov. 1942, and 53 in july 1943 and 55 in nov. 1943. There was only a modest improvement in old DDs number. Of course in nov the central Pacific campaign was started, so modern DD in CP was 55 by then. Before seeing that, I considered that USN greatly increased DD number in south Pac during 1943, but it is not the case. Most new built units went to 5th fleet.

Thanks for sharing!

Max

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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#20

Post by mescal » 15 Jan 2010, 13:47

Hello Max,

I have not yet really begun to work on the interpretation of the data I posted above.

Nonetheless, regarding the number of DDs in the South Pac, and the relatively small increase in number, I can make a few comments :
* Germany First : until the summer, many ships were retained for ASW in the Atlantic/Caribean
* Mediterranean : it's not until the surrender of Italy that many Benson & Gleaves-class ships could be released from the Med.
* The useless campaign in the Aleutian tied 20 to 30 modern destroyers in the summer of 1943
* Qualitative progress : the lost ships were pre-war 1,500 to 1,800 tons ships, but the new arrivals were the newest Fletchers (2,200 tons, better equipment)
* the fight in the Solomons was typically attritionnal, and not only the US number of ships did not diminish even though many ships were lost or damaged (for example, 13 US DDs were removed - sunk or damaged - from the South Pac in November 42), it also slightly increased - quite different from the picture for the IJN.

cf the chart below :
DD_southPac_42-43.jpg
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#21

Post by maxs75 » 15 Jan 2010, 23:21

Thank you for your reply. I completely agree with your comments.
Probably had USN losses been higher than they did, even a greater number of DDs could have been replaced on a one to one basis. Anyway, from a "USN south Pacific command" point of view, the 1943 offensive was started with the same number of DDs in the theatre as in 1942.

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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#22

Post by mescal » 27 Jan 2010, 15:19

Hello,

I'm still investigating the data presented above.
And since short charts are sometime better than long discourses, you'll find below some more graphic representations of those numbers
(I'm still willing to discuss more completely with anyone interested, but ... I do not really know where to begin, so don't hesitate to shoot if you have comments or questions).

The first chart describes the evolution, month by month,of the number of ships available by theater (PTO = Pacific, ETO = Med + Atlantic). It is computed on only the available ships, so any ship under repair enters as a -1 value and reappears as +1- that is, it does not represent an aggregate 'commissionings-vs-sinkings' view. Sunk ships appear as a -1 the month after they had been sunk, and newly commissioned ships appear as +T the month after their shakedown.
All the ships decommissioned late in the war appear as a -1 the month they are decommissioned (which explains most of the negative value for ETO in May/June 45).
DD_evol_theater.jpg
DD_evol_theater.jpg (98.64 KiB) Viewed 539 times
Here are the figures by year and by theater :
ETO : 1942= 0; 1943= +17; 1944= -42; 1945= -61
PTO : 1942= +5; 1943= +75; 1944= +79; 1945= +10


The second chart represents the 'commissioned vs sunk' balance sheet by month :
US_DD_comm-vs-sunk.jpg
US_DD_comm-vs-sunk.jpg (121.86 KiB) Viewed 539 times
It's well known that the US Navy was able to make good her losses, but I feel such charts help to show how easy it was. In 1943, the USN commissioned an average of eleven destroyers per month (and more than 6/month in 42 and 44).
It also shows that the destroyer building slowed down relatively early - from the beginning of 1944, less ships were commissioned.


And finally, in the third chart, you'll find the evolution of the number of ships unavailable. I splitted the unavailability by 'cause' (yes, cause is a too deterministic word, here, but I can't find better) - routine, accidental damage and combat damage.
That is, when unavailability followed combat damage, I made the inference that all months unavailable were due to enemy action. Same for the accidental damage.
But when a ship put in yard after combat damage, she was repaired but also often received upgrades which would have have taken place anyway - and the 'repair' time is artificially lengthened. But I've not been able to find any consistent rule to compute this artificial increase.

So keep in mind that the 'unavailable after combat/accident' in the chart below is above its actual value.

U is 'regular' unavailability, UD represent unav. due to combat and UA to accidents.
US_DD_unav_detail.jpg
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Re: US Navy Destroyers

#23

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 04 Dec 2011, 00:13

Nice ! Color coding charts for USN destroyers...

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