Town-class destroyers - Guide 400

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A Dinosaur Necromancer… These bits of gold are Why i love Drach so much😂

One Man's Rusty Boat, is Another Mans Rusty Convoy Escort

Trade offer: You get 50 old destroyers, I get few Islands and land

“Dinosaur necromancer” well….that’s one way of putting it 🤣

RCN destroyers are traditionally named after rivers. To acknowledge their American heritage, the RCN gave them names of rivers that either both countries share, or of rivers in both countries that shared the same name: HMCS Annapolis, Columbia, Niagara, St. Clair, St. Croix, St. Francis

Apparently, Winston Churchill (then British Prime Minister) described them as "Cheap and nasty" The American ambassador stood nearby, so Churchill hastily added: "Cheap for us, nasty for the Nazis"

One of the best ways to reuse old ships ever

"And additionally, various elements of their design, ones that optimized them for high-speed battle line and fast attack rolls...." I heard "fast attack rolls" and envisioned them doing Dark Souls style rolls for I-frames against incoming fire.

Last time I was this early, there were no treaty restrictions yet!

A number of them had half the boiler plant removed and their fuel bunkerage increased to give much longer range and endurance at the expense of top speed, similar to what was done with some of the old RN V and W classes.

The Four Pipers had probably one of the most intrusive service lives of a y warship class during the war. From Murmansk to the Java Sea, Pearl Harbor to St Nazire.

Was it really stingy? Consider the following quote: The United States Navy, with characteristic generosity, handed them over well stored, to the pleasure of the British crews: Every square inch of storage space was crammed with a variety of provisions which were now only a memory in England. Accommodations and fittings were also of a nature unknown... There were bunks in the mess decks instead of hammocks; there were typewriters, radios, coffee-making machines. Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars, 1916–1945 by John Terraine I think he's quoting in part: The Far Distant Ships : An Official Account of Canadian Naval Operations in the Second World War by Joseph Schull.

USS Ward (DD139), credited with firing the first shot in anger by the USN inWW2 (if you don't count what went on in China) was a Wickes class "thousand tonnner" on patrol outside Pearl Harbor in December '41.

A good war movie about these old American destroyers and their British crews is the 1952 film "The Gift Horse". Extremely well told story.

Weren't initially at least the town names selected for the ships towns that existed in both the UK and the USA?

The four stackers were a mixed blessing for all that used them. However a warship that floated and moved under its own power and could carry defensive weapons was of value to all concerned in the early years. Their overall survival rate also points out they weren't as much junk as people on both sides of the Atlantic tended to think of them.

No views 59 seconds ago One view now. Always supporting Drach. And the Town Class is interesting.

For all the unloving critique the flushdeckers received, people have lost sight of something important. Flushdeckers were there and (more or less) available when other more capable designs were not. They did a lot of ungrateful work. Hats off to their crews for their bravery.

My father served on one of these in the Pacific. The USS Tracy (DM-19) laid mines, cleared mines and ran drums of avgas to Guadalcanal. Not glamorous stuff but useful, nonetheless.