S&P - Wickes Class

[Alexb83]

Nice work from DM on the article with the extra ships; great to see some variety in there, especially for different periods.

But I noticed in the Wickes entry, she has the agile trait, perhaps I'm mixing Wickes up with the other destroyers that became the Commonwealth town class, but didn't these ships notoriously suffer from huge turning circles and handling issues because they didn't have contra-rotating screws?

 

[Ben2]

To be fair I thought the huge turning circles were because of the narrow V shaped hull having difficulty turning at speed, which the clemson class solved by just having very big rudders.

 

[DM]

I based my assessment in part on the "very similar" comment regarding the designs of the two classes in Whitley's book on WW2 destroyers (he's pretty good on most things, and its a good book if you want to try and keep track of armament variations). Digging a bit deeper I found comments on the manoeuvrability characteristics extending to all the 4 stackers from RN experience (I suspect a possible element of "not invented here") so decided to play it safe and base the core stats on the "very similar" later class.