Talk:Fubuki-class destroyer

"World's first modern destroyer"

This is a contentious claim to make in what is, at this time, a very brief introductory paragraph.

The claim that "they have been called the world's first modern destroyer" is based on a single sentence on page 336 of Parshall & Tully's 'Shattered Sword'. Fine historians, researchers and authors as they are, this is a highly disputable claim for them to have made. It is not made clear by the authors upon what basis exactly the claim is made; technical or performance criteria, or whatever.

What is quite certain, is that the Fubuki class represented the starting point of a new destroyer paradigm for the Japanese; what is not, however, is that Japan was the first nation to enter the interwar 'super destroyer' race:

France commenced construction of the six Chacal-class contre-torpilleurs in 1923, with the lead of class commissioning exactly one week before Fubuki was laid down (12th June 1926 vs 19th June 1926 respectively). The first ten of Japan's new 'Special Type' destroyers were then closely followed by France's six Guepard-class contre-torpilleurs, while Italy followed suit very shortly after with their twelve Navigatori-class 'scouts' and the USA initiated the Porter-class 'leader' programme in the early 1930s. Only the UK was slow to follow this pattern of large destroyers, with the Tribal class following a full decade after the Fubukis.

Parshall & Tully don't talk about the Fubuki in any technical detail, and are not, in actuality, seriously appraising the design's features or merits at all. Rather, they are poetically describing the appearance of a ship on the horizon. To quote:

"Finally, a destroyer hove into view. Naganuma recognised it for a tokugata ('special type') - the Japanese name given to the world's first modern destroyer, the Fubuki, and her numerous descendants). The ship was closing to within a few hundred metres in the rapidly gathering darkness, and Naganuma realised that it was now or never. His ambivalence to the prospect of death suddenly vanished - he waved his arms and shouted himself hoarse.

• Bold highlights the sentence referred to by the article.

This is not a serious appraisal of the class' position in the history of global TBD / fleet destroyer / guided missile destroyer development; it is a passing lay term used in the background of a description of one man's survival, and it is not even the true focus of that paragraph.

Far more authoritative histories of the TBD and later destroyers, up to the end of the 'gun & torpedo' period particularly, might take the starting point of the "modern" destroyer to be the River class, with their raised forecastle and true sea-going capability compared with the first series of TBDs built in the 1890s, or perhaps look to the pre-WW1 Tribal class' use of geared steam turbine engines, or maybe to the step-up in armaments represented by the V & W class... o really any of a half-a-dozen others for various reasons.

My concern is that inclusion of this reference in such a brief opening paragraph - one which contextualizes the class' significance in very little other manner - brings undue attention to the lay reader of an idea which is patently dubious but which suggests itself as authoritative, if not actual fact. Enough readers are liable to take this as fact as to render this line misleading.

Now, it is, of course, technically accurate to write that the ships "have been described as" 'the world's first modern destroyers', because that's what Parshall & Tully wrote in one paragraph (deep in the middle of a chapter about burning & sinking aircraft carriers and desperate survival of shipwrecked sailors), so I wouldn't wish to be deletionist about it. But is there a way that we can clarify or better contextualise both this one throwaway poetic description and the class' significance in general? (Without starting an edit war?) 2A00:23C7:3100:B501:7017:4A01:7B06:B1A3 (talk) 00:59, 17 September 2025 (UTC)