Benham

History

USS Benham (DD-397) was the lead ship of her class of destroyers and the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for Andrew Ellicot Kennedy Benham. It missed the attack on Pearl Harbor, being an escort for the USS Enterprise on its way to Midway at the time. It also served off Hawaii during the Doolittle raid, rescued survivors from several ships, and operated during the Battle of Midway and the landings on Guadalcanal, among other missions. It was torpedoed and rendered unusable, for which she was sunk at the end of 1942.

Design

The Benham-class of destroyers was the last class of destroyers in the United States Navy that was equipped with 16 torpedo tubes. They were improved in several ways over the preceding classes, but also somewhat heavier passing the 1,500 ton mark by more than 10% when carrying their standard load.

Compared to the earlier Bagley-class they had one less boiler, which resulted in a noticably smaller funnel. Otherwise their propulsion was not all too different, the three aforementioned boilers would generate steam for two sets of turbines, which would give the ship a designed horsepower of 50,000 for a speed of 38.5kn. The cruising range was 6,500 nautical miles at a speed of 12 knots.

The main armament consisted of four 127mm/38 dual purpose guns mounted in four single mounts. A new feature of the 16-torpedo destroyers was that the guns were no longer in pedestal mounts, but instead utilized base-ring mounts, which included an ammunition hoist for a faster and more convenient ammunition supply to the main armament. This kind of mount would become the standard of all the subsequent destroyers fielded by the USN during WW2.

Most prominent on the Benham-class were the four quad torpedo launchers. It was intended that these would permit the ship to fire a full 16 torpedo barrage against a target using gyros to steer the torpedoes into the desired direction. No reloads were fitted on these ships for the torpedo launchers. A downside of this armament was that the ships were overloaded and dangerously topheavy. As such, it was decided during World War Two to remove at least one pair of torpedo launchers.

The auxilliary armament initially consisted of four .50 cal machine guns. This was deemed inefficient and over the course of World War Two measures were taken to strengthen AA defenses. Depending on how many torpedo launchers were removed, up to two or four twin mounts of the 40mm Bofors were mounted as well as a handful of 20mm Oerlikons, with the .50 cal machine guns being removed due to their limited effectiveness. The initial ASW-equipment consisted of a sonar and ten depth charges in two racks. Latter was supplemented by four depth charge throwers and an increase in the total depth charge count to 46 in 1941-1942.

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  USS Benham (DD-397) at anchor sometime after commissioning.

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  Benham's launch on April 16, 1938.

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  A close-up view of Benham`s No.2 gun mount.

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  Benham with 720 survivors from USS Yorktown to USS Portland June 4, 1942. The stricken Yorktown lies abandoned in the background.

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  Benham conducts underway fuel replenishment alongside USS Enterprise in December 1941.