The twin 5"/38cal dual purpose gun system populated the US Navy for over 60 years. The Iowa class still mounted some of the twin turrets when they were decommissioned in the 1990's. The US Navy had literally hundreds of the Four Piper classes of destroyer. They all needed flotilla and squadron leaders as the ships themselves were not big enough to house a Captain 'D' or Commodore 'D' and their staffs. The Omaha class Scout cruisers provided some of this badly needed leaders, but a dedicated Destroyer Leader was required. Thus the Porter Class. These ships could not have been built prior to 1930as they would have abrogated the Washington Treaties limit on destroyer construction. In real life the Porter class was 381x36 feet and built on 1850 tons (Wiki). Any ship with a more than 10-to-1 length to breadth ratio is going to have stability problems. The Porter was no exception. My 'magic wand' Porter will have none of those problems and be a ship worth its weight in gold. Originally to have been a class of eight, this number grew to 16 then finally a total of 32 were ordered and completed. They were then replaced in the building schedules by the Gearing class.
Above, the first two sets of eight ships were completed with the early mk.33 Gun Controllers. The later two sets of eight were completed with the new, upgraded, mk.37 gun directors. The earlier ships were supposed to be retrofitted with the mk.37 but the war intervened and a lot of the early destroyers fought the war with mk.33's with various radar control systems being fitted to increase their accuracy.
The changes from the USS Somers class onwards, were made after the 'after action reports' from the ships commanders of the earlier ships were received at BuShips. The extra weight of the second Mk.33 aft and the superstructure it was mounted on was deemed excess to requirements. These were removed (along with the quad 28mm) and replaced with one of the new quad 40mm mountings and predictor. The quad 28mm beside the funnel were removed and replaced with twin 40mm. The one report that was made and taken to heart was the after report from the 'Battle of Honda Point', where eight US destroyers ran aground. Seven were four pipers and the eighth being the Argent, the destroyer leader of DesRon 11. The report from the Captain of the Argent was quite scathing of the officers and men appointed to his brand new ship. It was stated that as the destroyer leader of the group the Argent needed to have experienced officers in the senior positions, one of these should have been an experienced Navigator. It was the rookie Navigators errors that led to the series of groundings that sank seven ships and the death of 23 crewmen.
The layout of the destroyer commands normally went, one Scout/Flotilla Cruiser, two Destroyer leaders, twenty-four four pipers or sixteen modern 5" destroyers. These made powerful groups that could be used to escort any size of fleet or convoy. This gave a senior Captain/Commodore in overall command, then two Captains in command of each flotilla, then commanders, and Lieutenant-Commanders in command of the individual destroyers. This gave a command of about 3,000+ officers and men. A lot of responsibility.
