Why did the United States build several destroyer classes before the Fletcher class, and was congressional funding the reason?
Short answerThe navy was iterating and testing designs, with new class names distinguishing successive changes even when ships remained similar.
NotesThe sequence is explained as an iterative design process in which the navy tested what it wanted and then built another class. Different class names made changes easier to distinguish, even when the ships remained similar. The proposed congressional-funding explanation is rejected in favor of that design-development explanation.