Historical Perspective

"Ready Now, Sir!"

Nimitz the Destroyerman: Muddied But Unbowed

By DAVID F. WINKLER

Dr. David F. Winkler is a historian with the Naval Historical Foundation.

With the 100th anniversary of U.S. Navy destroyers approaching, a good naval trivia question might be to "Name the first U.S. Navy destroyer." The logical response would be Bainbridge (DD 1) commissioned on 24 November 1902. However, that answer would not be correct--the correct response would be Decatur (DD 5), commissioned on 5 May 1902. Indeed, Perry (DD 11), Truxtun (DD 14), Whipple (DD 15), Dale (DD 4), and Chauncey (DD 3) all were commissioned prior to the lead ship of the class. Another trivia question might be "Why destroyers?"

In the late 19th century, some navies acquired fast boats capable of launching torpedoes as a coastal-defense counter to armored battle fleets. The Germans and French, for example, set about building large numbers of craft that were both fast and agile enough to deter the powerful Royal Navy. In the 1890s, the U.S. Navy, with its focus on defense, acquired similar boats for coastal defense. Alfred Thayer Mahan envisioned the torpedo boats as augmenting the battle fleet, forging ahead to launch spreads of torpedoes at an enemy battle line. When the Chilean revolution started, the world's naval powers took note when the torpedo gunboats Almirante Condell and Almirante Lynch torpedoed and sank the ironclad Blanco Encalada. Validating the torpedo boat as a deadly weapon system, the Chilean action also reminded naval commanders that methods to counter the formidable craft were needed.

In 1892, to counter the threat posed by French and German torpedo boats, the British Admiralty ordered "Torpedo Boat Catchers," ships capable of high-seas operations. Before long, however, the term "Torpedo Boat Destroyer" was penciled in on official correspondence and the term stuck. By the turn of the century, British shipyards had produced over 100 of the new class of ships for the Royal Navy plus some for export to other countries, such as Spain.

When war with Spain was pending in March 1898, a report from the Naval War Board, headed by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, commented that the Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers stationed in the Canary Islands offered "... the only real menace to us." The report concluded with the following, among other recommendations: "We especially need torpedo boat destroyers"--and recommended the immediate procurement of same. On 29 April, Spanish Adm. Pascual Cervera began his trek across the Atlantic to Puerto Rico with four cruisers and three torpedo boat destroyers.

Under the circumstances, it was hardly a coincidence that Congress authorized construction of the U.S. Navy's first 16 ships of this new class on 4 May 1898. After defeating Cervera at the Battle of Santiago on 3 July 1898, the U.S. Navy moved ahead with construction of the torpedo boat destroyers.

The new vessels, which had an average displacement of 420 tons, were armed with light guns and torpedoes. Their principal advantage was their ability to achieve speeds of up to 30 knots. After they joined the fleet, the Navy organized a number of them into flotillas.

Eventually some were deployed overseas. In one notable incident in the Far East, a very junior ensign, Chester W. Nimitz, ran the Decatur into a mud bank in the waters just south of Manila on 7 July 1908. Pulled off the mud, the Decatur survived unscathed--as did Nimitz.

With the advent of World War I, the Navy's biggest threat came not from the torpedo boats but from a newly emerging class of warships--the submarines. Newer classes of destroyers with greater displacement and more lethal armament soon joined the fleet to counter the U-boat menace. Shortly after America's entry into the war, a squadron of these modern warships arrived in Queenstown, Ireland, under the command of Cdr. Joseph K. Taussig. Asked by Vice Adm. Sir Lewis Bayly when his destroyers would be ready for patrol duties, Taussig responded: "We are ready now, sir! ... That is, as soon as we finish re- fueling."

Most of the original destroyers escorted convoys and performed other duties in the Mediterranean. Those that survived the war were decommissioned--but not until starting a new naval tradition that is today represented by the Spruance and Arleigh Burke classes and in the coming decades will be followed by the DD 21 Zumwalt class of land-attack destroyers for the 21st century.

Sources included Norman Friedman's U.S. Destroyers (Naval Institute Press, 1982) and David Lyon's The First Destroyers (Naval Institute Press, 1996).