Across roughly the same period, the US Navy began nineteen pre-dreadnoughts in the Kearsarge, Illinois, Maine, Virginia, and Connecticut classes while building thirteen Bainbridge destroyers. Three improved Truxtuns raised the destroyer total to sixteen. Congress found it easier to fund status-bearing capital ships than their escorts. The comparison concerns force balance rather than battleship quality. A battle line with fewer destroyers than battleships had little screening depth before an enemy even appeared.
Notable Point · 9:23-12:35
Nineteen battleships outpace sixteen early destroyers
Congress funded nineteen contemporary pre-dreadnoughts while the Bainbridge and Truxtun orders produced only sixteen destroyers to support them.