Tucker-class destroyer

The ''Tucker'' class of destroyers was a ship class of six ships designed by and built for the United States Navy shortly before the United States entered World War I. The ''Tucker'' class was the fourth of five classes of destroyers that were known as the "thousand tonners", because they were the first U.S. destroyers over displacement.

The design of what became the ''Tucker'' class was the result of compromises between the General Board of the United States Navy and the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair. The General Board, tasked with creating an integrated battle fleet, wanted a larger ship that could serve in a scouting role and proposed a ship larger than the unique British destroyer of 1907, and more than twice the displacement of any previous U.S. destroyer. Input from Construction and Repair resulted in a design that was an incremental development of the , which itself was similar to the first of the thousand tonners, the (which displaced about a third more than the preceding ).

The ships were built by four private American shipyards—Bath Iron Works, Fore River Shipbuilding Company, New York Shipbuilding Corporation, and William Cramp & Sons—and were laid down between February and November 1914; launched between April and July 1915; and commissioned into the U.S. Navy between July 1915 and May 1916. The ships had a median displacement of , were just over in length, and had a beam of about . Most of the ships had two direct-drive steam turbines and a single geared cruising turbine; was equipped with two geared steam turbines only and, as the first U.S. destroyer so equipped, greatly influenced later U.S. Navy destroyer designs. All of the ships were designed for a maximum speed of and a range of at more economical speeds. As built, they were armed with four guns and had four twin 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes with a load of eight torpedoes, but all were later equipped with depth charges.

All six ships operated in the Atlantic or Caribbean until the U.S. entrance into World War I in April 1917, when all six were sent overseas to Queenstown, Ireland, for convoy escort duties. Several of the ships rescued passengers and crew from ships sunk by U-boats, and several had encounters with U-boats themselves; was torpedoed and sunk by in December 1917. All five surviving members of the class had returned to the United States by early 1919 and been decommissioned by June 1922. Between 1924 and 1926, four of the five (all but ''Wadsworth'') were commissioned into the United States Coast Guard to help enforce Prohibition as a part of the "Rum Patrol". They were returned to U.S. Navy custody between 1934 and 1936, and had all been sold for scrapping by 1936.

Background

In September 1912, the General Board of the United States Navy asked the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R) to develop plans for the next class of destroyers. The General Board asked for a design with four guns, six twin torpedo tubes, and twenty floating mines, that could travel at up to with steaming radius of .Friedman, pp. 29, 31. C&R came back with a design for a long, displacement, triple-screw "super-destroyer" requiring to make the design speed of .Friedman, p. 31. The C&R design was similar to, but larger than the unique British destroyer of 1907, and more than twice the displacement of the largest U.S. destroyers.Gardiner, p. 122.The s then under construction had a displacement of .

The General Board, whose main concern was the integrated operation of the United States battle fleet,Friedman, p. 28. pushed for the design to provide more scouting capabilities for fleet operations.Friedman, p. 29. But the high cost of the design—$1,900,000 for hull and machinery vs. $790,000 for the ships—and the lack of operating experience with the —the first of the "thousand tonners" (destroyers exceeding displacement) which were just beginning to be launched—caused C&R to resist the much larger design. The Chief Constructor of the Navy, the head of C&R, pointed out that the British had not repeated the ''Swift'' design in the five years since her introduction, and noted that "a destroyer that gets too large loses many of the desirable features of the type".

In November 1912, the General Board offered several alternatives to reduce the size of the destroyer, and was convinced by C&R that the most practical solution was a design that shared much with the ''O'Brien'' class: matching that class' main battery and torpedo load but with a design speed of and the desired steaming radius. The General Board also specified that the ships be equipped with "two aeroplane guns, if they can be developed and installed", have provisions for laying thirty-six mines, and a strengthened bow for ramming. The C&R design for the ''Tucker'' class, DD-57 through DD-62,Although the United States Navy's hull classification system in which destroyers were assigned the hull code of ''DD'' was not adopted until July 1920, most sources retroactively apply the numbering system. So, for example, the lead ship of the class is referred to in sources as rather than as ''Tucker'' (Destroyer No. 57), even though the latter name is the one she was known by throughout most of her U.S. Navy career. Similarly, because was sunk in 1917, she was never known by ''DD-61'' while afloat, but is referred to by that hull code in sources. was approved by the Secretary of the Navy in December 1912, and authorized by Congress in 1913.

Design

As built, the ''Tucker''-class ships were in length (overall), were between and abeam, and had a median draft of . The hull shape featured the distinctive high forecastle typical of U.S. destroyer classes since the 1908–09 , the first destroyers designed to be truly ocean-going vessels.Gardiner, p. 121. The ships displaced between with a median of .

The ships were equipped with two propeller shafts and two Curtis steam turbines fed by four Yarrow boilers, providing a minimum of to achieve the design speed of .Gardiner, p. 123. For all of the ships except , the pair of main turbines was supplemented with a cruising turbine geared to one of the shafts. ''Wadsworth'' had no cruising turbines, but instead had her twin turbines geared directly to the propeller shafts—the first American destroyer so outfitted. She served as a testbed, and had a considerable effect on U.S. destroyer design after her trials in July 1915.

The main battery of the ''Tucker'' class consisted of four /50 Mark 9 guns,The ''50'' denotes the length of the gun barrels; in this case, the gun is 50 calibers, meaning that the gun is 50 times as long as it is in diameter, in this case. The Mark number is the version of the gun; in this case, the ninth U.S. Navy design of the 4-inch/50 gun. with each gun weighing in excess of . The guns fired armor-piercing projectiles at . At an elevation of 20°, the guns had a range of .

The ''Tucker'' class was also equipped with four twin torpedo tubes, for a total load of eight Mark 8 torpedoes. Although the General Board had called for two anti-aircraft guns for the ''Tucker'' class, they were not originally outfitted with the weapons; the was the first American destroyer class so armed. Likewise, there is no record of any of the ''Tucker'' ships being outfitted with mine-laying apparatus. During World War I, most American destroyers were used in anti-submarine warfare roles, and were equipped with depth charges and delivery systems, such as Y-guns and depth charge racks.Gardiner, p. 121. ''Tucker''-class ships were equipped with depth charges during the war, but no specific mentions of the types of depth charges used or delivery system are recorded in available sources.

Comparisons with other "thousand tonners"

The "thousand tonners" were the 26 United States Navy destroyers of five classes—''Cassin'', , ''O'Brien'', ''Tucker'', and ''Sampson''—so named because they were the first U.S. Navy destroyers to have displacements greater than 1,000 long tons.Gardiner, pp. 122–23.The is considered a part of the by ''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921'' (p. 122), but is classed separately by the United States Navy. See, for example, The ''Cassin'' class, the first of the thousand tonners, displaced about a third more than the preceding . The introduction of the thousand tonners led to the ''Paulding''s and other older, smaller displacement destroyers of previous classes to be dismissively called "flivvers", a nickname also commonly applied to the Ford Model T.Cashman, p. 278.According to Cashman (p. 278), a flivver—a portmanteau

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