Cool. I served aboard USS Deyo DD989 in the middle 80’s.
When I was there I don’t know if they had even started on DD989.
I worked on the east side of the river were completion was done. The hulls and superstructures were mainly laid out and built on the west bank and then towed over to the east bank for completion..
A friend of mine was a welder on the west bank, so he may have worked on it.
It didn’t sink did it?
Just kidding, but he was much better with a cutting torch than welding.
IIRC, somewhere around the DD970’s they had already started upgrading and changing the plans so on our side of the river we would get a ship and then they would have to take a cutting torch to it and change some things.
They figured it was cheaper to just keep building all of them the same then take a torch to it and change it, than it was to redo the plans.
One idiot working on DD963 lost all 4 fingers on his right hand working on one of the auto loaders.
The welder he was working with hid one somewhere hoping one day a sailor would find it.
Who knows, it might still be there.
After the guy got his fingers cut off they put me down there working with the welder.
He told me if I got a finger cut off he would hide it too.