Aluminum Destroyers

A rumpled man with cantilever mustach was giving the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ships plenty to brood about. Greying William Starling Burgess, designer of America’s Cup defenders (Enterprise, Rainbow and Ranger), whipper-upper of the automobile-engined Sea Otter (TIME, Sept. 29), had turned up with another ship innovation.

This time it was a new kind of destroyer, faster by 25% than any of the 41-knot, steel-hulled speedsters the Navy is getting, and nimble-footed as a seagoing cat. “Skipper” Burgess had patented the design in 1937, had tested it, as well as he could without a full-scale model, from hell to breakfast. What worried Navymen was the material that Burgess had to use to get his speed-and-footing effect: aluminum. The Navy could not have had a seemingly good design thrown at it at a worse time, when aluminum supply (and magnesium, needed for alloy) is as strictured as the flow from a 1919 garden hose.

Nonetheless the Navy had ordered one Burgess boat from Bath (Me.) Iron Works and was busy wangling the 300 tons of aluminum needed for the job.

In outward appearance Burgess’ destroyer is a close-coupled version of the current models. It will steam at a top of 52 knots (60 m.p.h.). Displacing around 1,000 tons (steel destroyers: 1,500 to 2,000), it will be about 275 feet long, have almost as much gun and torpedo power as its standard sisters. It will have more anti-aircraft fire power, carry more depth charges for potting its natural enemy, the submarine. But it will be an experimental ship until tests at sea (and enough aluminum at home) convince the Navy that Designer Burgess has another winner.