and 1933, respectively. All six ships had been sold for scrapping by June 1936. Background For the 1913 fiscal year, the General Board of the United States Navy determined that six destroyers would be authorized. The design for Destroyers No. 51 through No. 56—what became the O'Brien class, was to closely follow the design of the and es from fiscal year 1912. The chief of the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) suggested that the new destroyers be equipped with ten torpedo tubes and urged that the new torpedo be adopted. The General Board agreed in principle, adopting the 21-inch torpedo tubes, but eliminated BuOrd's proposed centerline torpedo tubes and keeping the number of tubes at eight, the same as the Cassin and Aylwin classes. The additional weight of the larger torpedoes, of top weight, was offset by reducing the planned two aft-facing guns to a single one. This gave the class four guns, which, again, matched the battery of the Cassin and Aylwin classes. The design for the O'Brien class was approved on 20 August 1912, and authorized by Congress on 4 March 1913. Design As built, the O'Brien-class ships were in length (overall), were abeam, and had a standard draft of . The hull shape featured the distinctive high forecastle typical of U.S. destroyer classes since the 1908–09 , the first destroyers designed to be truly ocean-going vessels. The ships displaced between with a median of . The ships were equipped with two propeller shafts and two direct-drive, Zoelly steam turbines fed by four White-Forster boilers. The power plant of the ships generated which drive the ships to the design speed of . Because of inherent inefficiency of turbines at low speeds, all of the ships were equipped with supplemental cruising engines for travel at speeds under . All except were equipped with supplemental triple-expansion reciprocating engines: , , and each had a pair of reciprocating engines for cruising; and were outfitted with only one. Instead of reciprocating engines, Cushing was equipped with a pair of geared steam turbines for cruising. The main battery of the O'Brien class consisted of four /50 Mark 9 guns, with each gun weighing in excess of . The guns fired armor-piercing projectiles at . At an elevation of 20°, the guns had a range of . The O'Brien ships were also equipped with four twin torpedo tubes, for a total load of