Gearing Class Destroyer - Yang Class

Yang Class

After the Gearing-class ships were retired from USN service, many were sold abroad, including over a dozen to the Republic of China Navy (ROCN) in Taiwan. These ships, along with Fletcher-class and Allen M. Sumner-class destroyers also acquired then, were upgraded under the Wu Chin (Chinese: 武進) I, II, and III programs and known throughout the ROCN as the Yang-class (Chinese: 陽字號) destroyers as they were assigned names that all end with the word "Yang". The last batch of 7 WC-III program vessels, all of them Gearing class, were retired in early 2000s.

Under the most advanced Wu Chin III upgrade program, all World War Two vintage weapons were removed and replaced with 4 × Hsiung Feng II SSM, 10 × SM-1 (box launchers), 1 × 8-cell ASROC, 1 × 76 mm gun, 2 × 40 mm/70 AA, 1 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS and 2 × triple 12.75" torpedo tubes. The DASH ASW drones were not acquired, but hangar facilities aboard those ships that had them were later used to accommodate ASW version of Hughes MD500 helicopters.

After the Yang-class destroyers were decommissioned, the SM-1 launch boxes were moved to Chi Yang-class frigates to improve their anti-air capability.