List Of Destroyer Classes Of The United States Navy
The first automotive torpedo was developed in 1866, and the torpedo boat was developed soon after. In 1898, while the Spanish–American War was being fought in the Caribbean and the Pacific, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt wrote that torpedo boats were the only threat to the American navy, and pushed for the acquisition of torpedo boat destroyers. On 4 May 1898, the US Congress authorized the first sixteen torpedo boat destroyers and twelve seagoing torpedo boats for the United States Navy.
In World War I, the U.S. Navy began mass-producing destroyers, laying 273 keels of the Clemson and Wickes class destroyers. The peace time years between 1919—1941, resulted in many of these flush deck destroyers being laid up. Additionally, treaties regulated destroyer construction. During World War II, the United States began building destroyers with five-gun main batteries, but without stability problems.
The first major warship produced by the U.S. Navy after World War II (and in the Cold War) were "frigates"—the ships were actually designated destroyer leaders but later reclassified as guided missile destroyers. Other classes were produced, including the last all-gun destroyers. A special class was produced for the Shah of Iran, but due to the Iranian Revolution these ships could not be delivered and were added to the U.S. Navy.
The Arleigh Burke class, introduced in 1991, has been the U.S. Navy's only destroyer class in commission since 2005; construction is expected to continue through at least 2012. A future class, Zumwalt, is also planned. The Zumwalt class is expected to number three ships.
Read more about List Of Destroyer Classes Of The United States Navy: Pre–World War I, World War I, Between The World Wars, World War II, Cold War and Beyond
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, destroyer, classes, united, states and/or navy:
“Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The supreme, the merciless, the destroyer of opposition, the exalted King, the shepherd, the protector of the quarters of the world, the King the word of whose mouth destroys mountains and seas, who by his lordly attack has forced mighty and merciless Kings from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same to acknowledge one supremacy.”
—Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–59 B.C.)
“Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“I asked myself, “Is it going to prevent me from getting out of here? Is there a risk of death attached to it? Is it permanently disabling? Is it permanently disfiguring? Lastly, is it excruciating?” If it doesn’t fit one of those five categories, then it isn’t important.”
—Rhonda Cornum, United States Army Major. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, “Perspectives” page (July 13, 1992)
“The Navy is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)