National Affairs: Double-Barreled Killer

To the blare of hooting whistles, the world’s largest destroyer leader slid down the ways at Camden, N.J. last week, and rode out into the Delaware. The new giant is the 5,500-ton U.S.S. Norfolk. Only slightly smaller than the Navy’s Juneau class antiaircraft cruisers,* the Norfolk is 54O-ft. long, will carry a main battery of dual-purpose guns (probably five-inch), and a hull crammed with the latest antisub detectors.

When the Norfolk is commissioned next August, she will be manned by 500 men and 40 officers, will slice through the water at a 30-knot clip. Her job, when she joins the fleet: to lead the Navy’s hunter-killer antisubmarine teams. Sub warfare is getting so complicated that the Navy needs a double-barreled killer, a vessel big enough to act as a command ship for the air-sea teams, and tough enough to help them at the final kill.

*And originally laid down as a light cruiser herself (therefore christened with the name of a city, like all U.S. cruisers), the Norfolk is almost as big as the British Dido class (5,770 tons) cruisers, far outclasses the next largest destroyer; the U.S. 3,675-ton Mitscher scheduled for launching in about a month.