Dealey-class destroyer escort

The Dealey-class destroyer escorts were the first post-World War II escort ships built for the United States Navy.

Slightly faster and larger than the escort destroyers they succeeded, the Dealey class were fitted with twin-mounted 3 in guns, anti-submarine (ASW) rockets, a depth charge rack and six depth charge launchers. There were later modernizations that removed the ASW rockets and the depth charges in favor of nuclear-capable anti-submarine rocket launchers and torpedo mounts which fired lighter homing torpedoes. A large SQS 23 sonar was refitted in a bow sonar dome and most of the class were also fitted with a hangar and landing pad for DASH drone helicopters to deliver MK 44 and Mk 46 torpedoes. The drone helicopters proved very unreliable and their failure contributed to the relatively short life of the class.

They were decommissioned in 1972 and 1973 in favor of the Knox-class frigate. USS Dealey (DE-1006) and USS Hartley (DE-1029) were sold at surplus to other countries in 1972, with the remainder of the class being sold for scrap.

Development and design
In the late 1940s, the US Navy developed a requirement for a replacement for the PC-461-class submarine chaser in the coastal convoy escort and patrol roles. The existing submarine chasers were considered too small to carry the required anti-submarine weapons and sensors, and too slow to catch modern submarines, with a ship the size of existing destroyer escorts required. The ships would need to be cheap and quick to build, as large numbers would be required in the event of a war. By 1950, the requirement had changed to an "Ocean Escort" with a speed of at least 25 kn at full load and an endurance of 6000 nmi at 12 kn. An ahead-throwing anti-submarine weapon, at first planned to be the Mark 17, a large, trainable Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot mortar, would be fitted.

The final design, SCB 72, or the Dealey or DE-1006 class, was 315 ft long overall and 308 ft at the waterline, with a beam of 36 ft and a draft of 11 ft. Displacement was 1314 LT light and 1877 LT full load. 2 Foster-Wheeler boilers fed steam to a geared steam turbine, which drove a single propeller shaft. The machinery was rated at 20000 shp which gave a design speed of 27 kn. A single-shaft machinery layout was chosen to ease mass production, avoiding potential bottlenecks in gear-cutting which had delayed production of wartime destroyer escorts.

As built, the ships had a gun armament of two twin 3-inch (76 mm)/50 calibre guns, mounted fore and aft. These were open, manually trained dual-purpose mounts which could be used against both surface and anti-aircraft targets. The Mark 17 Hedgehog was cancelled before the ships were built, so in its place two British Squid anti-submarine mortars were fitted ahead of the ship's bridge in Dealey, with a RUR-4 Weapon Alpha anti-submarine rocket launcher fitted in the remaining ships of the class. Launchers for anti-submarine torpedoes were fitted, and depth charge throwers were fitted on the ships' fantail. Sensors included the SPS-6 air-search radar and the SQS-4 low-frequency sonar.

The prototype ship, Dealey, was built under the Fiscal year (FY) 1952 shipbuilding program, with two ordered in both the FY 1953 and 1954 programs and eight in the 1955 program. Production was stopped at 13 because the Dealey class was considered too expensive at $12 million for mass production. This resulted in the smaller, diesel-powered Claud Jones-class destroyer escort being built. The Dealey design formed the basis for the Norwegian Oslo-class frigate and Portuguese Admiral Pereira da Silva-class frigates.

Modifications
All of the class except Dealey, Cromwell and Courtney were upgraded in the 1960s by adding facilities for the DASH drone helicopter, with a hangar and helicopter deck replacing the aft 3-inch gun mount and the longer-ranged SQS-23 sonar replaced the SQS-4. The three unmodified ships were fitted with a Variable Depth Sonar (VDS). All ships had their Squid or Weapon Alpha launchers removed late in their US Navy career, while Mark 32 torpedo tubes for Mark 44 or Mark 46 anti-submarine torpedoes were fitted.