Farragut-class destroyer (1958)
The Farragut-class destroyer was a group of 10 guided-missile destroyers built for the United States Navy during the 1950s. They were the second destroyer class to be named for Admiral David Farragut. The class is sometimes referred to as the Coontz class, since Coontz was first to be designed and built as a guided-missile ship, whereas the previous three ships were designed as all-gun units and converted later. The class was originally envisioned as a Destroyer Leader class, but was reclassified as Guided-Missile Destroyers following the 1975 ship reclassification.
Design and description
The Farragut class was the first class of missile-armed carrier escorts to be built from the ground up as such for the USN. The ships had an overall length of, a beam of and a deep draft of. They displaced at full load. Their crew consisted of 23 officers and 337 enlisted men.The ships were equipped with two geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by 4 water-tube boilers. The turbines were intended to produce to reach the designed speed of. The Farragut class had a range of at a speed of.
The Farragut-class ships were armed with a 5"/54 caliber Mark 42 gun forward. They were fitted with an eight-round ASROC launcher between the 5-inch gun and the bridge. The Farragut was the only ship of her class that had an ASROC magazine mounted behind the launcher. The class was already top-heavy and the addition of the magazine reportedly made it worse, so the decision was made not to equip the other nine ships with magazines. Close-range anti-submarine defense was provided by two triple Mk 32 torpedo tubes. The primary armament of the Farraguts was the Terrier anti-aircraft missile designed to defend the carrier battle group. They were fired via the dual-arm Mark 10 launcher and the ships stowed a total of 40 missiles for the launcher.