File:New Union DE Danny Porter Class.jpg

Summary
This is the new DE design I've come up with to address the sudden obsolescence of the sail & auxiliary steam DDs & DEs due to the appearance of Kurokawa's air power. Those vessels maybe better used defending Madagascar from the Grik or be transferrred to the eastern front as the new DEs become available. It's named for Chief Danny Porter who died in Storm Surge, page 418, saving the crew of the S-19 after it had been rammed by Kurokawa's escaping ships. It's smaller than the Walker and uses less time & resources to build. They use only one turbine & two boilers per ship reducing the crew requirements and tonnage, but retaining a good turn of speed. The three 4" dual purpose guns are sighted so they provide the same broadside capabilities as the Walkers. I gave the 4" battery tubs & shields as a sort of "Poor man's" turret. This gives the gunners fairly good protection without the complexity of a full turret. As an added bonus, it helps when operating the weapon in a moderate to heavy sea state, breaking the wave surge & keeping them from being washed overboard. The AAA suite is beefed up with three twin 25mm mounts instead of the Walker's two. I was able to fit all this by eliminating the P1B Nancy scout, which took up a huge amount of limited deck space. These ships will mostly be in company with larger ships which have the scout planes & carriers in convoys providing air cover. They are designed to be mostly anti air & ASW ships, although they do have enough fire power to engage a DD & the single quad torpedo tube makes them a threat to larger vessels if they attack in numbers. The new DDs & light cruiser will absorb all of Amagi's remaining 25mm & use up most of the remaining .50 BMG available, so these ships may have to replace them temporarily with .30 BMGs until the new production .50 cals & 25mm arrive. They would replace the .50 cal mounts one-for-one & two for each of the 25mm mounts, with their original four .30 cals this gives the new DEs a total of 22 .30 BMGs for AAA work.