The wartime programme left the US Navy with 267 new destroyers in the early 1920s, most from the Wickes and Clemson classes. They were useful Atlantic wartime designs, but cramped hulls and little reserve displacement made later equipment additions difficult. Conversions into escorts, minelayers, minesweepers, and other roles could extend their usefulness without making them modern fleet destroyers. The 1940 exchange of fifty destroyers for bases shows how far their value as frontline fleet units had fallen. The Washington Naval Treaty imposed no cumulative limit on ships below 10,000 tons. A cumulative limit arrived only with the First London Naval Treaty in 1930, after the construction pause was well established. The pause was therefore a political and financial choice rather than an immediate treaty requirement. A small recurring order would have kept design teams and yards practising while testing new machinery and layouts. Instead, paper strength concealed a growing gap between the force available and the force needed for a future Pacific war.
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How the World War I destroyer surplus hid an aging force
A huge wartime stock of Wickes- and Clemson-class destroyers gave Congress a reason to stop buying replacements, while design practice, shipyard capacity, and the ships themselves steadily aged.