Given that Allied WWII destroyers generally had a top speed somewhere in the mid-30 knots, what speed would they be doing when just cruising from point A to point B or on patrol etc and not restricted by, say, slower ships in a convoy?
I’m assuming it would be the optimum where the best speed and fuel economy was achieved.
Anyone know?
From what I have been told top speed is about 34 knots and cruise is about 15. Sea current has a lot to do with top speed, like a head wind or tail wind for an aircraft.
Edited to add: Check out nav sorce they will have the speeds for each type. http://www.navsource.org/archives/05idx.htm
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in war time its all ahead full. get to the destination ASAP. IN Vietnam we had these old WW2 destroyers. but with the North having no navy they cruised at a much slower speed.
Wouldn’t fuel conservation and refuelling opportunites determine the speed on routine duties, even in wartime?
A destroyer at full speed in the mid-30 kts would use perhaps five times the amount of fuel it would use at about half that speed.
consider we have underway replenishment. for all needs. so you can stay out there indefinitely. I think at the start of WW2 the US was the only Navy that had at sea replenishment and maintained it the entire war. their called auxiliary’s. I served on one.
Thanks.
Maybe not your area, and not what I was originally trying to find out, but what about non-fuel supplies?
It’s a fair exercise to transfer food etc across a few lines between ships steaming beside each other in calm waters, and probably a lot harder than just hooking up fuel lines.
During Vietnam, how long would a US destroyer be provisioned for with food after leaving port?
we had an entire service fleet. these ships carried ammo, food (called reefers) and oilers. underway replenishment was by the time Vietnam came along was down to a science. the hook up was the same procedure for all these ships/needs. no matter what you transferred. food/ammo was on pallets. oilers required hoses. is that what you mean???
after leaving port. hard to say in terms of days. depended on the area they worked in and how many gunfire support missions. DD’s could go days without resupply. aircraft carrier needs were often. with 2 air attack missions a day they ran low on ammo in a hurry. as well as all other needs. we had to supply them all. also aux ships had to resupply each other as well. but the 1 ship that required the most service of all was the USS New Jersey. one of the Iowa class. keeping her resupplied was a daily chore. an officer told me it cost 1 million bucks a day to keep her afloat and operating. but she was designed for a wartime economy. we carried her 16" shells which were about the size of a volkswagen.
here’s an oiler resupplying a ship. note the ‘pig’ is almost connected
this is my ship resupplying the USS Newport News
8" shells on a pallet
underway replenishment story: [link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment)
Yes. I was thinking of WWII fuelling.
after leaving port. hard to say in terms of days. depended on the area they worked in and how many gunfire support missions. DD’s could go days without resupply. aircraft carrier needs were often. with 2 air attack missions a day they ran low on ammo in a hurry. as well as all other needs. we had to supply them all. also aux ships had to resupply each other as well. but the 1 ship that required the most service of all was the USS New Jersey. one of the Iowa class. keeping her resupplied was a daily chore. an officer told me it cost 1 million bucks a day to keep her afloat and operating. but she was designed for a wartime economy. we carried her 16" shells which were about the size of a volkswagen.
Your post raises a point which is largely ignored in popular war histories which focus on the spectacular battle aspects but which goes to the heart of WWII and any other large scale war, which is logistics.
For example, nobody would deny the huge, courageous, and costly effort of the Marines and troops on Guadalcanal, or of the air and naval support there, but none of it would have been possible without the vast supply lines going back to somewhere in California or Idaho or countless other places and all the people who brought those supplies to the battle front, on sea, land and in the air.
There might be no glamour in trudging across the ocean on a slow moving oiler or other supply ship but, without their steady progress, there would have been none of the many wins in the Pacific war won by the destroyers and other warships and troop carriers fuelled and supplied by the oilers and supply ships.
I hope they’re not fused!
Otherwise it’d be a bit embarrassing when they bang against the other hull. 
(Yes, I know they’re not fused, and I hope the XO etc on the receiving ship were as confident. ;))
yeah the fuses were sent over on seperate loads. on bombs we also sent the fins over on seperate loads. bombs were transferred up forward. fuses and fins back aft. when they went over to the carriers and we watched the ordinance men over there bring it all together. they added fuses and fins, then up the elevators, rolled over to aircraft, attached to the wing mounts then away they went on missions. the Navy later on stopped this with ships like mine alongside. to much danger of blowing up. we also transferred while aircraft were landing. which was kind of scary. they stopped this to. accidents did happen
the Forrestal blows up
and in WW2 these supply ships were heavily protected with escorts. we didn’t need em in Nam. the North had no Naval threat.
Guadalcanal was almost another bataan or corregidor disaster. we were on the brink of losing it. we wen’t down there with a bare minimum of everything against a much more powerful Japanese force. FDR was saving ships and supplies to fight the germans. when admiral Halsey took command of Guadalcanal he laid this on the line to FDR and joints chiefs of staff. either send us what we need or the American people would witness more films of American troops going into captivity. the necessary supplies and equiptment were rushed to Guadalcanal to end it.
On USN DDs in WWII about 15 knots would usually be set as “standard speed”–This doesn’t mean the ship was always travelling at that rate. Even when escorting a slower convoy–say one moving at only 10 knots–the “standard speed” might be set at 15 knots. The chief determinant was always fuel economy, I believe, and various speeds–some lower and certainly many higher–were manifestly uneconomical.
Thanks all.
Looks like top speed really chewed up the fuel and drastically reduced range, so I expect it was reserved for important situations or missions.
Here’s the figures for HMS Relentless, which are in similar proportions to a few others I’ve found through Google.
Speed designed 36¾ knots; full speed at deep draught 31½ knots
Endurance at 15 knots 5,800 miles; at full speed 1350 miles
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/43/a6977343.shtml
As Hawaii is about 2,400 miles from California, a destroyer with similar fuel consumption would at full speed get a bit over half way between the two before it needed refuelling, where it could do the round trip at half speed with plenty of fuel left over.
Given the importance of oil in WWII, I expect fuel conservation was an important consideration in running a ship.
In War time, getting the troops to the battle and the marines on land is more important then thinking of fuel conservation and pollution like your thread comments on. There was no Green Peace to bother Admiral Halsey with his objectives. If we thought about how many gallons per mile we could save by going slower, then the war would never end because people who care about conserving the environment would dictate foreign policy. In war it’s full steam ahead at any costs.
Uh huh. What happens if you don’t have sufficient auxiliary ships, or if the weather is too bad to refuel from them, or you suffer battle damage and can’t access some of your fuel while away from an auxiliary (Bismarck was lost for this very reason), or your auxiliary is sunk/damaged, or you damage your steam plant by pushing it too hard for too long, or the pounding your hull takes from going so fast causes excessive crew fatigue leading to poor performance, or another ship gets sunk by a U-boat you missed due to poor sonar performance from flow noise, or… <faints from lack of breath>.
In some situations in wartime it will be valid to go at full speed. In others it will not, and some of these relate to fuel consumption. Just because underway replenishment ships exist does not mean you will have access to them when you would like to. Furthermore, in cases like that of the UK in 1941 or Germany in 1944/45 fuel is in very short supply and if you use it for one purpose (save a bit of time moving a ship between ports) it is not available for another, probably more vital purpose.
that’s right. those ships were designed for speed. and in WW2 speed was always the nr 1 consideration. besides fuel was cheap then. in Nam we had a very large nr of WW2 DD’s that served. but the North did have a very small nr of patrol craft that came out and shot at slower less armed ships. like mine !!! 1 night i was in radar and they were watching the USS Arlington. she was a converted flat top used for communications. sunddenly we saw smaller blips move in on her at high speed. she was under attack. but then here came the DD’s onto the radar and they started to take off. but the DD’s actually over took them and they dissapeared from radar. the next morning i went on deck and there were 2 DD’s escorts with us. boy did we feel better.
– my ship did come under attack by smaller boats we saw on radar. there were no shots fired. but they didn’t answer up to the the IFF and we went to battle stations. they tured out to be PT boats using us for a practice run. I think maybe someone got their ass chewed for this.
–my wife and I went on a trip years ago to Charleston. we visited the Patriots Point display. they have the USS Laffey (DD-724) there. also the USS Yorktown. the Laffy was the first DD I ever went aboard. DD’s are a lot smaller than they look. here the website:
http://www.patriotspoint.org/
Patriots Point would become one of the largest museums of its kind in the world with the addition of other ships such as the destroyer USS Laffey, known as The Ship That Would Not Die. The Treasury class Coast Guard cutter Ingham would join the Patriots Point battle group along with the Balao class submarine Clamagore.
the big attraction is the USS Yorktown. the Laffy suffered serious damage from suicide attacks north of Okinawa.
–jez. i kinda babbled away here.
You’re a troll.
You’re not worth responding to with reasoned comment.
no system is perfect is it??? expect the unexpected.
Quite. The point I was trying to make is that it is not always appropriate to travel at full speed, and that there are other factors involved apart from getting from A to B in the minimum time. Something a certain recently banned member on here seems to find it difficult to understand.