Dealey-class destroyer escort
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The ''Dealey''-class destroyer escorts were the first post- World War II escort ships built for the United States Navy. Slightly faster and larger than the
escort destroyer An escort destroyer with United States Navy hull classification symbol DDE was a destroyer (DD) modified for and assigned to a fleet escort role after World War II. These destroyers retained their original hull numbers. Later, in March 1950, th ...
s they succeeded, the ''Dealey'' class were fitted with twin-mounted guns,
anti-submarine An anti-submarine weapon (ASW) is any one of a number of devices that are intended to act against a submarine and its crew, to destroy (sink) the vessel or reduce its capability as a weapon of war. In its simplest sense, an anti-submarine weapo ...
(ASW) rockets, a
depth charge A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon. It is intended to destroy a submarine by being dropped into the water nearby and detonating, subjecting the target to a powerful and destructive Shock factor, hydraulic shock. Most depth ...
rack and six depth charge launchers. There were later modernizations that removed the ASW rockets and the depth charges in favor of nuclear-capable anti-submarine rocket launchers and torpedo mounts which fired lighter homing torpedoes. A large SQS 23 sonar was refitted in a bow sonar dome and most of the class were also fitted with a hangar and landing pad for DASH drone helicopters to deliver MK 44 and Mk 46 torpedoes. The drone helicopters proved very unreliable and their failure contributed to the relatively short life of the class. They were decommissioned in 1972 and 1973 in favor of the . and were sold at surplus to other countries in 1972, with the remainder of the class being sold for scrap.


Development and design

In the late 1940s, the US Navy developed a requirement for a replacement for the in the coastal convoy escort and patrol roles. The existing submarine chasers were considered too small to carry the required anti-submarine weapons and sensors, and too slow to catch modern submarines, with a ship the size of existing destroyer escorts required. The ships would need to be cheap and quick to build, as large numbers would be required in the event of a war. By 1950, the requirement had changed to an "Ocean Escort" with a speed of at least at full load and an endurance of at . An ahead-throwing anti-submarine weapon, at first planned to be the Mark 17, a large, trainable Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot mortar, would be fitted. The final design, SCB 72, or the ''Dealey'' or DE-1006 class, was
long overall __NOTOC__ Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, and ...
and at the waterline, with a
beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...
of and a draft of .
Displacement Displacement may refer to: Physical sciences Mathematics and Physics *Displacement (geometry), is the difference between the final and initial position of a point trajectory (for instance, the center of mass of a moving object). The actual path ...
was light and full load. 2
Foster-Wheeler Foster Wheeler AG (formerly Foster Wheeler Inc.) was a Swiss global engineering conglomerate with its principal executive offices in Reading, UK and its registered office in Baar, Canton of Zug, Switzerland. Foster Wheeler was added to the NASDA ...
boilers fed steam to a geared steam turbine, which drove a single propeller shaft. The machinery was rated at which gave a design speed of . A single-shaft machinery layout was chosen to ease mass production, avoiding potential bottlenecks in gear-cutting which had delayed production of wartime destroyer escorts. As built, the ships had a gun armament of two twin 3-inch (76 mm)/50 calibre guns, mounted fore and aft. These were open, manually trained dual-purpose mounts which could be used against both surface and anti-aircraft targets. The Mark 17 Hedgehog was cancelled before the ships were built, so in its place two British
Squid True squid are molluscs with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight arms, and two tentacles in the superorder Decapodiformes, though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also called squid despite not strictly fitting t ...
anti-submarine mortars were fitted ahead of the ship's bridge in ''Dealey'', with a
RUR-4 Weapon Alpha The RUR-4 "Weapon Alpha" (originally ''Weapon Able'') was an American naval ahead-throwing anti-submarine warfare (ASW) rocket launcher. It was designed between 1946 and 1949, and was installed on warships from 1951 to 1969. Unlike depth charges ...
anti-submarine rocket launcher fitted in the remaining ships of the class. Launchers for anti-submarine torpedoes were fitted, and
depth charge A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon. It is intended to destroy a submarine by being dropped into the water nearby and detonating, subjecting the target to a powerful and destructive Shock factor, hydraulic shock. Most depth ...
throwers were fitted on the ships'
fantail Fantails are small insectivorous songbirds of the genus ''Rhipidura'' in the family Rhipiduridae, native to Australasia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Most of the species are about long, specialist aerial feeders, and named as "f ...
. Sensors included the SPS-6 air-search radar and the SQS-4 low-frequency sonar. The prototype ship, ''Dealey'', was built under the Fiscal year (FY) 1952 shipbuilding program, with two ordered in both the FY 1953 and 1954 programs and eight in the 1955 program. Production was stopped at 13 because the ''Dealey'' class was considered too expensive at $12 million for mass production. This resulted in the smaller,
diesel Diesel may refer to: * Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression * Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines * Diesel locomotive, a railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engin ...
-powered being built. The ''Dealey'' design formed the basis for the Norwegian and Portuguese s.


Modifications

All of the class except ''Dealey'', ''Cromwell'' and ''Courtney'' were upgraded in the 1960s by adding facilities for the
DASH The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
drone helicopter, with a hangar and helicopter deck replacing the aft 3-inch gun mount and the longer-ranged SQS-23 sonar replaced the SQS-4. The three unmodified ships were fitted with a Variable Depth Sonar (VDS). All ships had their Squid or Weapon Alpha launchers removed late in their US Navy career, while
Mark 32 torpedo tubes Mark 32 Surface Vessel Torpedo Tubes (Mk 32 SVTT) is a torpedo launching system designed for the United States Navy. History The Mark 32 has been the standard anti-submarine torpedo launching system aboard United States Navy surface vessels s ...
for Mark 44 or Mark 46 anti-submarine torpedoes were fitted.


Ships


Notes


Citations


References

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External links


''Dealey''-class ocean escorts
a
Destroyer History Foundation
{{Dealey class destroyer escort Cold War frigates and destroyer escorts of the United States