The US Navy had the Akron as its offensive minelayer for ten years, and learnt a lot about what a more modern ship should be like. The new ships would have to be fast, at least 40 knots. The US Navy had advanced knowledge of the British Abdiel class and the French Bertin class. Both were very fast.
The Jaguar class, as shown above, carried its complement of mines in the open. While this was not a problem when on mining missions, it was unable to carry out the resupply or commando missions that the Meteor or Abdiel classes could do with their enclosed mine deck. The secondary duty for these ships was as flotilla leaders to the big destroyer classes - Gleaves and Gearing types.
I will carry this forward a bit because I like the ship.
This Jaguar class had four ships built, arriving in the fleet in 1940-41. Despite two ships being early losses, no more were built as replacements. Four pipers were used as small minelayers instead. They were expendable and fast enough to do the job. Later in the war, other classes had members converted to carry mines. As minelayers, the Jaguar class were well armed enough, but as flotilla leaders they could have had one or two twin 5"/38cal turrets more. The design was actually used as the basis for the Atlanta class AA cruisers which were far better, and with the torpedoes removed could also be fitted for carrying mines, just not as many in one go. A better solution.
The next try is to give the same design an enclosed mine deck. This would add a few hundred tons to the ships, but make them more versatile overall.
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Those changes seem to work OK. The hull now looks like a heavy cruiser hull. It has the effect of making the superstructure look much smaller. The mine deck would run from the stern to the fore funnel. There would be indents into the hull for the engine rooms, aft funnel exhausts and 5" shell handling rooms. The overall mine capacity would increase and the versatility of the ships would also increase. There would still be two early losses but four new ships would be built to replace them. The surviving ships would go right through to Vietnam where mining the entrances to the North Vietnamese harbours would be a priority. This worked right up until the North Vietnamese got enough Radar installations along the shore to cover the harbour areas. At that stage the mine decks were converted for troop carrying to and from the United States. Once all of the US troops were out of Vietnam, the last four ships (Lion to Puma) were sent to the Reserve Fleet where they were mothballed. 1980 they were deleted from the Navy list and sold. Radar had made them obsolete.
