A destroyer is a class of surface warship specially designed to fight submarines, torpedo boats, and aircraft, to conduct reconnaissance, to escort aircraft carriers, battleships and cruisers, and to carry out torpedo attacks on large ships. The development of the destroyer was the direct consequence of the invention of the self-propelled torpedo in the second half of the 19th century. The first destroyer, 'el destructor', was invented by Spanish naval officer Fernando Villaamil Fernández-Cueto in 1885 to cope with a new threat in the sea waters against large war vessels: the torpedo boat that launched the new self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes.
The first destroyers had displacements of 1,000 and 1,500 tons and maximum speeds of 35–36 knots (64–66 km/hr). They were armed with 8–12 torpedo launchers and three or four artillery guns with calibers ranging from 100 mm to 120 mm. During the war, the role of this warship was expanded, and they were fitted with additional artillery guns and with mechanisms for releasing antisubmarine depth charges. The destroyer was first used in combat during the Russo-Japanese War on February 8, 1904, during the naval battle of Port Arthur.
In World War II, destroyers were used to protect transport convoys and tactical units of large naval vessels from attack by German or Japanese submarines and light surface ships. Although they were armed with depth charges and torpedoes, the most important part of a destroyer's anti-submarine warfare was the sonar, which is a position-finding device to detect the presence of an enemy submarine by transmitting acoustic waves and picking up the reflected sounds from enemy submarine hull. At the beginning, destroyers were light warships with little endurance for unattended ocean operations. This is the reason they had to operate together in packs, supplied by the tender, or depot ship.
Today, they are used to search and destroy submarines and to lay minefields. After the war, with the development of missiles and atomic weapons, the destroyer class of vessels evolved into separate classes of medium-tonnage, narrow-purpose warships with anti-aircraft and antisubmarine capabilities. Vessels of the US Navy’s Arleigh-Burke class are representative of the modern destroyer. Such vessels have a displacement of 5,800 tons and travel at speeds of up to 35 knots. They are equipped with one 127-mm gun, two triple torpedo launchers, and one 8-tube rocket launcher.
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| Above, the first modern US Navy destroyer; the USS Wickes DD-75, which was commissioned in 1918. |
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| Above, four US Navy Allen M. Sumner destroyers moored alongside their tender. Commissioned in 1943, they were the first American destroyers fitted with a modern effective sonar. |