laststandonzombieisland

Something once incredibly common, a staple then on its last legs.

75 years ago this week, the Gearing-class destroyers USS Epperson (DDE-719), center and USS Sarsfield (DD-837), at right, dropping depth charges during anti-submarine warfare exercises, 15 June 1950. Sarsfield has also fired her Mark 6 K-Gun depth charge projectors, making vertical smoke trails (aft of the ship) and impact splashes to port and starboard.

First fielded by the U.S. Navy in 1916, when it ordered 10,000 100-pound Mark 1 depth charges, the fleet would place orders for 43,466 “ash cans” during the Great War in seven varieties, with the largest being the mammoth 745-pound Mark IV.

This figure was swamped in WWII with orders for 622,128 depth charges of all types placed by the Navy Department between December 1941 and September 1945, with the 420-pound Mark VI being the most numerous (218,922 built). The last new conventional American DC was the Mark 16, a 435-pounder developed in 1946 that used an advanced acoustic fuse.

Post-WWII, rocket-propelled Hedgehog, Mousetrap, Squid, and Alfa/Alpha devices supplemented and then replaced the more traditional depth charge. Then came dedicated ASW homing torpedoes with the Mk 32 in 1950, followed by the Mk 43 and Mk 46, which helped bring the Rocket Assisted Torpedo (later ASROC) on-line in 1958.

While the 29-pound counter-frogman Mark 10 depth charge remained in limited service, and assorted tactical nuclear depth charges were kept as special weapons, the Navy was eager to remove its huge stocks of WWII-era charges from inventory by the late 1950s due to their high maintenance requirements and outright danger– just recall the final moments of the USS Reuben James.

When the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) program for updating the Navy’s WWII-era destroyers for the Cold War kicked off in 1958, depth charge racks and projectors were “unceremoniously removed.”

As recalled by Captain Eli Vinock, U. S. Navy (Retired), in the meeting about the program with CNO Adm. Arleigh A. Burke, probably the most renowned destroyerman to ever hold a rank in the fleet:

Depth charges were unceremoniously removed as a weapon system for destroyers that presentation. As the list of weapon systems (new and old) that would be ‘incorporated in destroyers was being presented. Admiral Burke interrupted at the mention of depth charges and said, “Who included those things?” There was an embarrassing pause. Without comment, I drew a line through “depth charges,” turned toward the admiral, and said, “Sir. depth charges have been removed.” Good,” he said, and that was that.