William G. Schofield

Not much detail about ships or classes. History is very general. Anecdotes are few, unremarkable, and general. Some nifty photos. Essentially stops with the mid-1940s Gearing class.

More interesting as a late '50s/early '60s starry-eyed view of the Navy than as a history of early destroyers. One chap. is a rhetorical paean to destroyers as a defense against the Red Menace.

Written while target="_top">U.S.S. Bainbridge, DLGN-25 — the U.S.N.'s first and only nuclear-powered destroyer — was being fitted out, and so seems intended as a retrospective of conventionally powered tin cans at the beginning of their expected replacement by nukes: the book begins and ends with U.S.S. Bainbridge. (As it happens, DD-1, the U.S.N.'s first destroyer, was also called U.S.S. Bainbridge, making for a nice bit of historical and literary symmetry). That may explain why the conventional Forrest Sherman and Farragut classes – less than a decade old at the time of publication – get such short shrift: the former has a single mention at the end of the book and no photos; the latter is completely ignored.… (más)