The E- and F-class programme produced two leaders and sixteen destroyers. Eleven of the eighteen ships were lost, mostly by the end of 1942, and five of the eight E-class destroyers were among them. Those losses place an apparently routine pre-war programme in its wartime context. The ships also used Admiralty three-drum boilers. Four 4.7-inch guns and two quadruple torpedo mountings had already become the Royal Navy's standard destroyer fit. The combination proved useful in the Second World War, although the main-gun mountings needed greater elevation as air attack became more important. Displacement had reached 1,427 tons standard and nearly 2,000 tons at full load. The nominally small destroyer was already growing.
Notable Point · 5:58-9:40
E and F classes: a standard destroyer fit
The E- and F-class programme shows how the Royal Navy settled on a repeatable destroyer armament, while wartime losses reveal how hard that role would be.