Dalrymple-Hamilton belonged to the destroyer officers who dominated senior naval leadership around the Second World War. The first destroyers of his career displaced only a few hundred tons and carried crews near seventy. By the time he left service, a Daring-class destroyer was roughly five times larger and carried about three hundred people. That expansion changed the distance between captain and crew without removing the need for initiative, aggression, morale, and mutual trust. The destroyermen's continuing leadership problem was preserving a small ship's command culture inside a much larger and more complex vessel.
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Destroyer growth and a command-culture legacy
Destroyers grew fivefold during Dalrymple-Hamilton's career, testing whether the initiative and close command culture of tiny prewar ships could survive at larger scale.