The USS Timmerman (DD-828), originally ordered as a standard Gearing (DD-710)-class destroyer from Federal Ship Building & Dry Dock at Newark, New Jersey, was reassigned to Bath Iron Works and laid down on 15 April 1945 specifically to become trials ship for the experimental high-pressure/high-temperature steam propulsion plant that was to have been installed in the canceled Fletcher (DD-445)-class destroyer Percival (DD-452). With the end of World War II, the incomplete hull was left on the ways until the project was revived in the early 1950s. Launched on 19 May 1951 and commissioned on 26 September 1952, the Timmerman was given a heavy destroyer gun armament (she was the last Navy destroyer to be completed with 20-mm antiaircraft guns) but no torpedo tubes or antisubmarine ordnance— although a sonar was fitted. Redesignated EDD-828 (for “Experimental”) in 1953 and AG-152 on 11 January 1954, she spent her brief active career operating from Boston. She was laid up in reserve at Philadelphia in September 1956, stricken on 4 April 1958, and sold for scrap a year later—having spent more time on the ways than in commissioned service.
The lightweight propulsion plant was intended to generate 100,000 shaft horsepower (shp) in the same volume occupied by a 60,000 shp Gearing plant. Two of the boilers operated at 875 pounds/square inch (psi) and the other two at 2,000 psi; all four produced 1,050° Fahrenheit superheated steam. Because of electrical plant failures and problems with the lightweight feed pumps, the Timmerman never operated at more than half power and thus never achieved her theoretical maximum speed of slightly more than 40 knots. Ironically, a far more successful, later-design high-pressure/high-temperature plant operating at 1,200 psi and 950° had entered service in the Mitscher (DL-1) class, which was completed just prior to the Timmerman, and served as the model for later U.S. Navy steam plants.
The Timmerman (seen in these photos as EDD-828 in April 1953) had a higher bow freeboard than a standard Gearing-class destroyer, to cope with the expected higher speeds, and topweight was reduced wherever possible. A stabilized Mk 67 prototype gun fire control system replaced the standard Mk 37 to control the three twin 5-inch/38-caliber Mk 38 gunmounts. Two quadruple and two twin 40-mm antiaircraft gunmounts were controlled by four Mk 51 directors; the planned radars to upgrade the fire control systems to Mk 63 were never installed. Five twin 20-mm gunmounts also were fitted, and the ship carried two 26-foot motor whaleboats rather than the normal destroyer allowance of one.
The Timmerman also pioneered the use of gas turbines in a U.S. Navy destroyer, albeit only as an emergency generator set in a compartment to starboard, forward of the normal engineering spaces.
A standard, early 1950s destroyer radar suite was fitted to the Timmerman: an AN/SPS-6 air-search set and an SG-6 surface-search set with the characteristic “clamshell” adjunct antenna for its zenith-search feature. The stabilized main battery gun director had the Mk 25 radar’s antenna atop it.