Talk:Weapon-class destroyer

Inconsistency on number of ships in (and composition of) the Class

I've noticed the following inconsistency in the article: in the detailed table 20 ships are listed, of them 7 were completed and 13 were scrapped or cancelled. However, the statistics in the "Class Overview" infobox don't match those numbers, even indicating that 1 has been preserved (info not shown in the detailed table).
Can anybody please clarify this? Many thanks! DPdH 05:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

'Weapon'-Class Destroyers General Notes

The 'Weapon'-Class ships were laid down after the 'Battle'-Class, not before it (see "Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships, 1922-1946, p. 44), and were designed from the outset as Fleet Anti-Submarine Destroyers; this meant they had to be capable of very high speeds (30+ knots sustained flank speed), but that endurance was not as important.

You should note that draft and displacement are interrelated; the hull form is generally designed for seakeeping and a certain minimum freeboard at an expected deep load displacement (all stores, weapons, and crew aboard). The practical limit to the addition of equipment, sensors, and weapons, to warships is usually topweight; at some point, the ship simply displaces too much water to maintain its stability. In heavy ships the usual remedy was to add "bulges"---the combining of stability/bouyancy bulging with anti-torpedo systems was something of a happy marriage of necessity.

The statement about the torpedo tubes---there were two sets of quintuple 21" tubes---is very close to the line between "considered opinion" and "some opinion". In the narrow sense of late WWII A/S work, it is a reasonable position to take, though a bit of clarification as to why one might view TT as "retrograde" would be helpful, as would a presentation of the contrary position (remember that the 'Weapon'-Class ships were intended to be Fleet A/S vessels, not purely A/S vessels, and that torpedoes were then the best method of sending an enemy ship to the bottom). Also, post-War, torpedoes quickly became the most potent A/S weapon available to surface ships and aircraft (both fixed- and rotary-wing). The introduction of homing and wire-guiding technology by the Germans in the last three years of the war led to major improvements in the quality and kill probabilities of torpedoes.

The Mk.VI DCT was not a "remote control"; a more accurate term would be "fire control system", which is the more common USN terminology, or the ship's own service terminology of the time, 'DCT'. Admittedly, Royal Navy nomenclature can be difficult to wade through. A discussion of it here is probably not useful, but I would be happy to provide a very high-level brief if it would be helpful.

These ships were not really evolutions or refinements of the various destroyer classes built in Great Britain during the war, under the aegis of the War Emergency Programme---which was a controlling policy, not a Classification of warships. Rather, they were a variation on the approach taken by the 'Battle'-Class destroyers, with a focus on A/S warfare in Fleet operations, rather than high endurance Fleet operations as was the case for the 'Battle'-Class. The destroyers built under the War Emergency Program were very closely related, being essentially incremental improvements of their immediate predecessors---the Hull forms, machinery, weapons, fuel, and sensor, fit all being improved or modified as each succeeding class was ordered, from the 'J'-Class through to the 'Cr'-Class. By the time the 'Ch'-, 'Co'-, and 'Cr'-Class ships were being launched, Royal Navy destroyers had 'Tribal' type bows for better seakeeping, transom sterns for better speed and manoeuverability---as well as better D/C handling---and much more powerful main battery rifles fitted with integrated DCT. But they were evolutionary, in that their commonality is clearly seen as they progressed from the pre-War 'J'-Class to the late-War 'Cr'-Class. The 'Battle'- and 'Weapon'-Classes were the first attempts at new designs, within the context of time and place. Caryn96 (talk) 06:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)