Beginning in World War I, the U.S. Navy operated floatplanes from battleships and cruisers—and from a few destroyers and a submarine. Destroyers originally were developed in the late 1800s as torpedo boat destroyers, but by the World War II era, they had evolved into multirole ships. Among those roles was screening and scouting for the battle fleet; for the latter task, aircraft could provide valuable assistance.
The USS Noa (DD-343), completed in 1919, was one of several hundred flush-deck, four-stack destroyers built by the U.S. Navy during and just after World War I. They were the backbone of the U.S. destroyer force during the 1920s and 1930s, and many were in action in World War II. The Noa was decommissioned in 1934 and placed in reserve in Philadelphia.
Recommissioned in 1940, the destroyer was provided space for a floatplane forward of the after deckhouse, replacing the after banks of 21-inch torpedo tubes. A boom for lifting the aircraft was stepped in place of the mainmast. Thus reconfigured, she steamed for the Delaware Capes in May 1940 and conducted tests with an XSOC-1 Seagull seaplane piloted by Lieutenant G. L. Heap.1
The plane was hoisted onto the water for takeoff and then recovered while the ship was under way. Heap also made an emergency flight on 15 May to transfer a sick sailor to the Naval Hospital at Philadelphia. The Noa spent much of the next two years on experimental assignments and on U.S. Naval Academy midshipman training operations out of Annapolis, Maryland.
The Noa demonstrations convinced Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison that scout planes operating from destroyer-type ships had value. At one point, a proposed class of large, destroyer “flotilla leaders” was envisioned as carrying scout planes. When that program was dropped, however, Secretary Edison on 27 May 1940 directed that six new destroyers of the soon-to-be-constructed Fletcher (DD-445) class be fitted with aircraft catapults and handling equipment.
These ships were the:
Hutchins (DD-476)
Pringle (DD-477)
Stanly (DD-478)
Stevens (DD-479)
Halford (DD-480)
Leutze (DD-481)
In their aircraft-carrying configuration the ships would have only four 5-inch/38-caliber dual-purpose guns, a greatly reduced antiaircraft battery, and only five 21-inch torpedo tubes. The ships also were to be fitted with tankage for 2,000 gallons of gasoline and 150 gallons of lubricating oil.
Only three ships were completed with aviation facilities, and they conducted trials with the OS2U Kingfisher floatplane. That aircraft was widely flown in the fleet.2 Because of mechanical deficiencies in the aircraft hoisting gear, the program was canceled early in 1943. The concept thus failed to mature as a combat technique, with the three ships fitted to carry a floatplane being upgraded to the standard Fletcher configuration of five 5-inch/38-caliber dual-purpose guns, several 40-mm and 20-mm antiaircraft guns, and ten 21-inch torpedo tubes.
There were no additional efforts—either during World War II or after—to provide destroyers with fixed-wing aircraft, although in the 1970s Grumman Aircraft Corporation and some other aviation agencies proposed vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft that could operate from destroyer-type ships. Of course, from the late 1950s, more than 100 war-built destroyers were converted under the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) program to carry the unmanned Drone Antisubmarine Helicopter (DASH). Subsequently, destroyer-type ships, including the large frigate (DL) series and smaller escort (DE/FF) series, were constructed with helicopter facilities.