Five Smiths cannot screen a battle division

A four-battleship division could absorb nearly the entire Smith class and still have only a thin screen. Destroyers had to keep torpedo boats and enemy destroyers away, with some ability to help against cruisers. Five hulls could cover only five places and would draw a larger enemy flotilla toward them. Other powers were ordering destroyers by the dozen or in formations of around twenty. American wartime construction eventually produced many good ships, but those later numbers could not provide prewar deterrence.