Overview and historical setting
The Wickes class was the first mass-produced U.S. flush-deck destroyer design of the World War I era.
Wickes class belongs to the history of destroyers and torpedo combatants. The class was developed for United States Navy during the First World War and the interwar period, and contemporary descriptions identify it as destroyer. This setting matters because the design should be read against the missions, technology, and fleet organization available to that navy at the time.
Development and program
The design emphasized high speed and rapid wartime production and preceded the fuel-capacity improvements of the Clemson class.
For Wickes class, the documented program can be summarized as 111 planned, 111 ordered, 111 completed, and 0 cancelled. Those figures separate the intended program from the ships that actually reached completion, a distinction that is especially important when requirements changed during a long construction cycle.
The recorded lineage links Wickes class to no explicitly identified predecessor. Lineage is treated as evidence of design relationship, not proof that equipment, protection, or operating doctrine remained unchanged from one class to the next.
Design and operational role
The technical character of Wickes class is described through flush deck, steam-turbine propulsion, and world war i. These characteristics are most useful when connected to the missions assigned to the class, including fleet screening and torpedo attack; they explain what the navy expected the ships to do rather than serving as an isolated list of specifications.
Wickes class should not be treated as one permanently fixed configuration. Individual members could differ during construction and later change through refits, revised weapons, new sensors, altered boats or aircraft, and changes in crew or command facilities. The class page establishes the shared baseline, while dated ship evidence is needed for any claim about a particular hull.
Ships of the class
The documented roster for Wickes class contains 17 ships, although completeness is not confirmed. The named members are USS Colhoun, USS Gregory, USS Little, USS McKean, USS Stringham, USS Talbot, USS Waters, USS Dent, USS Schley, USS Kilty, and 7 others.
The roster gives Wickes class a measurable production history rather than treating the class as an abstract design. Comparing the member pages can reveal construction differences, refits, transfers, renamings, losses, and preservation outcomes that a class-wide summary cannot assign safely to every ship.
Across the member records, the currently documented outcomes are 17 not confirmed. This summary reflects the available ship records and should be revised when stronger evidence changes an individual vessel’s status.
Service history
Seventeen Wickes-class hulls documented were later completed as high-speed transports.
Service within Wickes class was not necessarily uniform. Ships built to the same design could enter different theaters, receive different modernizations, or leave service under different conditions. For that reason, an operation documented for one member is not presented as a class-wide experience unless the supporting source makes that connection.
Historical significance and evidence
Wickes class is historically useful because it connects a specific naval requirement, a documented construction program, and the careers of its member ships within destroyers and torpedo combatants.
The significance of Wickes class is best evaluated by comparing its intended roles, the design features selected to meet them, the number of ships actually completed, and the different outcomes recorded across the class. That approach turns the program and roster into evidence about naval priorities rather than treating the class only as a set of measurements.
The evidence used for Wickes class includes Naval History and Heritage Command, Ingraham I (Destroyer No. 111), HyperWar / Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1940-1945, US Navy High-Speed Transports, 1940-1945, and NavSource Naval History, High-speed Transport (APD) / Amphibious Transport, Small (LPR) Photo Index. These sources support the chronology and identification presented here; where they do not establish a ship-specific event or configuration, the profile says so rather than borrowing details from another vessel.
Ships in this class
Showing 53 recorded class members.
- HMCS Annapolis
- HMCS Columbia
- HMCS Niagara
- HMCS St. Clair
- HMS Bath
- HMS Brighton
- HMS Caldwell
- HMS Campbeltown
- HMS Castleton
- HMS Charlestown
- HMS Chelsea
- HMS Georgetown
- HMS Hamilton
- HMS Lancaster
- HMS Leamington
- HMS Lincoln
- HMS Mansfield
- HMS Montgomery
- HMS Newark
- HMS Newmarket
- HMS Newport
- HMS Richmond
- HMS Roxborough
- HMS Salisbury
- HMS St. Albans
- HMS St. Marys
- HMS Wells
- USS Boggs
- USS Colhoun
- USS Crosby
- USS Dent
- USS Dickerson
- USS Dorsey
- USS Elliot
- USS Gregory
- USS Hamilton
- USS Herbert
- USS Hogan
- USS Howard
- USS Kilty
- USS Lamberton
- USS Little
- USS McKean
- USS Palmer
- USS Rathburne
- USS Roper
- USS Schley
- USS Stansbury
- USS Stringham
- USS Talbot
- USS Tattnall
- USS Ward
- USS Waters
Sources and further reading
- Ingraham I (Destroyer No. 111) ↗Naval History and Heritage Command · accessed 2026-09-19
- US Navy High-Speed Transports, 1940-1945 ↗HyperWar / Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1940-1945 · accessed 2026-09-19
- High-speed Transport (APD) / Amphibious Transport, Small (LPR) Photo Index ↗NavSource Naval History · accessed 2026-09-19