Dealey-class destroyer escort

The Dealey-class destroyer escorts were the first escort ships built for the United States Navy after the Second World War. Slightly faster and larger than the escort destroyers they followed, they carried twin 3-inch guns, antisubmarine rockets, a depth charge rack and six depth charge launchers. Later modernizations replaced the rockets and depth charges with an ASROC launcher and torpedo mounts, a large SQS-23 sonar was fitted in a bow dome, and most of the class gained a hangar and pad for DASH drone helicopters, whose unreliability contributed to the short life of the class. The ships were commissioned from 1954 to 1958 and decommissioned in 1972 and 1973 in favor of the larger Knox-class frigates; Dealey and Hartley were sold to other countries and the rest were scrapped. Bath Iron Works in Maine built three of the 13 ships.