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Final Review: U.S. Tier X Premium Destroyer Forrest Sherman

10 min read

Ladies and Gentlemen, today, we are going to talk about a new sailing A-10 Warthog. One of these ships firing so fast in sequential/ripple fire that the server cannot keep up with it. I give you the Forrest Sherman, the first post-war destroyer of the U.S. Navy.

This ship will first become available with Update 0.11.1 as part of the possible drops on the new Firepower containers.

After 2 weeks, she will also be available in the Armor for 232 000 Coal or 34 950 doubloons. On top of that, she will also be on sale in the Premium Shop with the most basic bundle costing around 116€. Yeah… that is a whole lot of money for a single ship but considering that Wargaming are proposing it for sale, it means that it worked well for Napoli and the ARP Yamato.

Is she worth it? Is that stupidly high rate of fire worth the coal? Here is my opinion on the matter.

Historical background

U.S.S. Forrest Sherman was the lead ship of the eponymous class of U.S. destroyers, counting a total of 18 units. These ships were the first U.S. destroyers built after the war.

Forrest Sherman herself was laid down in October 1953, launched in February 1955 and commissioned in November 1955. In her initial configuration, the ship was armed with three fast-firing 127 mm/55 guns, two twin 76.2 mm AA guns and four fixed single torpedo launchers located behind the front superstructure.

In terms of service, the ship didn’t see any real action. She took part in multiple exercises, patrols and ceremonies but that was pretty much it. The only real “Hot situation” she got into was during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. She supported the islands of Quemoy and Matsu that were getting shelled by forces of the People’s Republic of China in an attempt to ” liberate” Taiwan.

Forrest Sherman was decommissioned in November 1982. She was initially supposed to be scrapped in 1992 but the company in charge of it went bankrupt. The ship was later recovered by the Navy and an attempt was made to restore her as a museum in 2006. These plans failed and she was ultimately sold for scrap in December 2014.

In World of Warships, we are getting the ship as she was when launched. Unlike the rest of the U.S. destroyers, she is equipped with SAP shells instead of AP.

The Good and the Bad

The Good

  • The highest rate of fire in the game
  • SAP shells with 36 mm penetration
  • Good ballistics for a U.S. destroyer
  • Great firing angles, especially at the front
  • Turrets able to turn at 360°
  • Really fast turret traverse
  • 16.5 km torpedoes
  • Large HP pool
  • Hydroacoustic Search consumable
  • U.S. Smoke Generator
  • Special U.S. destroyer Defensive AA Fire

The Bad

  • You might turn deaf from the constant firing of the guns
  • Only three guns
  • Fixed torpedo launchers with very narrow firing angles
  • Only two torpedoes per side
  • Large ship compared to other destroyers
  • The slowest tier X destroyer
  • Above-average turning radius
  • Poor spotting range by sea
  • Only two charges of Smoke Generator

The camouflages

The permanent camouflage of the Forrest Sherman provides the classic bonuses for tier X ships:

  • -3% to surface detectability range
  • +4% to maximum dispersion of shells fired by the enemy at your ship
  • -50% to the cost of ship’s post-battle service
  • +20% credits earned in the battle.
  • +100% to experience earned in the battle

Modules

Hull
Engine
Gun Fire Control System
Main battery
Torpedoes

icon_module_Hull_installed

Forest Sherman

icon_module_Engine_installed

Propulsion: 71 500 HP

icon_module_Suo_installed

‎‎Mk10 mod. 1

icon_module_Artillery_installed

127 mm/54 Mk.42 in a turret

icon_module_Torpedoes_installed

‎Mk25 mod. 1

General Characteristics and Playstyle

TierX
Health24 900 HP
Torpedo Damage Reduction0 %
Displacement4 916 tons
Dimensions
Overall length127.56 m
Beam13.7 m
Overall height (keel to the highest point on the ship)18.0 m
Freeboard3.0 m
Main Armament
Maximum Firing Range12.600 km
127 mm/54 Mk.42 in a turret3 x 1 127 mm
Torpedo Armament
Maximum Firing Range16.500 km
533 mm Single4 x 1 533 mm
Maximum speed33.9 knots
Turning Circle Radius680 m
Rudder Shift Time5.3 s
Surface Detectability8.28 km
Air Detectability3.84 km
Detectability After Firing Main Guns in Smoke3.13 km
Consumables
Slot 1
Slot 2
Slot 3
Slot 4
Damage Control Party
Work time: 5 s
Cooldown: 40 s
Smoke Generator

Number of charges: 2
Work time: 30 s
Cooldown: 160 s
Smoke radius: 450 m
Smoke duration: 130 s
Hydroacoustic Search
consumable_PCY016_SonarSearchPremiumNumber of charges: 3
Work time: 100 s
Cooldown: 120 s
Torpedo spotting range: 3.5 km
Ship spotting range: 5.0 km
Defensive AA Fire
Number of charges: 4
Work time: 40 s
Cooldown: 80 s
Continuous Damage: +100%
Damage from shell explosions: +300%

Forrest Sherman presents a similar archetype to the Friesland/Groningen. It’s a gunboat destroyer relying quite a lot on her Smoke Generator to farm damage. She also gets a hydroacoustic Search to secure capture points although, compared to Friesland, the ship needs to be played far more cautiously. Due to her poor concealment, large size and very low speed, the ship will have a hard time getting away from bad situations so think twice before going in.

While Jinan is more of a big destroyer with a citadel, Sherman is basically a small light cruiser without a citadel and must be played just as carefully if you don’t want to get your free one-way trip to the port. Avoid solo warrior actions around capture points, especially in the early game when you aren’t sure of what you have in front of you, may it be in terms of ships with Surveillance Radar or destroyers.

Except that, as said above, Sherman is heavily focused on farming damage by raining HE and SAP from behind an island or while smoked up. Be careful with the second situation because with all the gun-blazing you are doing, it tends to get enemy ships angry. They might just drop everything they are doing to blind fire in your smoke instead of shooting the spotted flat broadside cruiser right next to you (true story).

Another thing to keep in mind before smoking up is making sure that you won’t find yourself in the embarrassing situation of witnessing all enemies run away to Narnia the moment you start opening up. With how slow the ship is, you need to make sure that your positioning is on point if you want to use your Smoke Generator effectively as otherwise, you will spend a large part of the game running after your targets.

If you want to see the ship in action, here is a replay from one of my games:

Main Armament

3 x 1 127 mm/54 Mk.42 in a turret
All turrets can turn at 360°
 Maximum Firing Range12.600 km
 Reloading Time1.5 s
180 Degree Turn Time4.5 s
Optimal firing angles at the front25°
Optimal firing angles at the rear30°
Sigma2.00 sigma
Maximum Dispersion110 m
Shells
Type of Projectile HE – 127 mm HE Mk.41
Alpha Damage1 800
Penetration capacity21 mm
Explosion size0.44
Fire chance9 %
Projectile Speed808 m/s
Air Drag0.21
Projectile Mass31.75 kg
Type of ProjectileSAP – 127 mm CS Mk.42
Alpha Damage2 700
Penetration capacity36 mm
Projectile Speed808 m/s
Air Drag0.21
Projectile Mass31.75 kg
Ricochet Angles65° – 75°

So…. to nobody’s surprise, the main attraction on the Forrest Sherman is her guns. Yes, these sweet guns that might just give you hearing damage from their constant firing. I swear, I had to turn down the gunfire volume when playing Sherman because of that endless stream of shells that she unleashes.

In fact, her guns fire so fast in sequential/ripple fire (holding the left click button) that the tick rate at which the server checks on the status of her guns is too low and because of that, her actual DPM is lower than it should be. For those who might not have heard of this problem, here is the situation. World of Warships has a tick rate of 0.142857… s (1/7s). At each tick, your client will communicate with the server and update it on the situation with your ship. Its speed, its bearing, yadda yadda. The thing is that for guns in sequential/ripple fire, the tick rate is only 0.285714… (2/7s). On each tick, the server will check the status of your guns. If they are loaded, if they are firing, etc. The problem is that because of this, there will be times when, despite your guns being loaded, they will have to wait for the server to update to actually be able to fire.
Forrest Sherman isn’t the only ship suffering from the issue. Any ship with a high rate of fire has that problem like Druid, Smaland or Daring to only name these. Technically, the tick rate limitation on sequential fire also affects even battleships but in their case, I salute the guy who can notice it.

Don’t worry though, Wargaming already have a fix that they are working on and it should arrive in one of the nearest updates. In the meantime, if you want to avoid that issue, you will have to mash your left click like madmen to not lose the DPM.

Now that this is out of the way, how are these guns actually performing? Well basically, they are nuts. This ship is like a pocket Austin that would be on a constant Main Battery Reload Booster. Obviously, you don’t get anywhere near the insane DPM that Austin can achieve but you still deal a truly frightening amount of damage on any target you can come across. You will more or less be able to happily engage most destroyers you will come across, especially with the early minutes of the engagement where you can deal large chunks of damage with SAP if the enemy destroyer doesn’t directly angle hard against you.

When it comes to ammo selection, most of the time, you will be firing SAP shells unless we are talking about targets that you cannot penetrate or that are too angled. In that case, you just bring out the good ol’ HE shells to set the enemy ships on fire on top of getting penetration damage on thin armor platings.

Torpedo Armament

4 x 1 533 mm Single
Mk17
Reloading Time73 s
Maximum Distance16.500 km
Firing angles42° – 45° (starboard)
43° – 46° (port)
Damage17 900
Flooding Chance301%
Speed66 knots
Surface Detectability1.4 km

The torpedoes of Forrest Sherman are nothing short of a mystery of science for me. These torpedoes are literally bending the fabric of reality to give you the most random hits you can think of.

More seriously, their usage is quite limited, to say the least. You only have two torpedoes per side and since the tubes are fixed, the firing angles are incredibly narrow. This means that it’s really hard to use them in any sort of close-quarter action as turning just a bit too much will put you off target. They will mostly be dropped from a good distance where you can freely maneuver and aim them properly. Alternatively, you just do the good old “drop and forget” and a minute or so later, you somehow get hits, sometimes from the target you least expected.

Anti-air Armament

3 x 1 127 mm/54 Mk.42 in a turret
Sector range0.1 km – 6.0 km
Hit chance100 %
Sector’s damage28
Sector’s damage frequency0.29 s
Sector’s damage per second98
Flak clouds number4
Flak cloud damage1 750
2 x 2 76.2 mm/50 Mk.22 on a Mk.33 mount
Sector range0.1 km – 4.0 km
Hit chance100 %
Sector’s damage23
Sector’s damage frequency0.29 s
Sector’s damage per second81

Even though Forrest Sherman was partially designed as an anti-air escort, her anti-air armament is…. nothing crazy. The DPS on the long-range and mid-range AA is quite low and there are only four flak explosions per salvo. Also, the DPS on the mid-range is only ensured by two AA mounts so you can imagine how easy it is to end up with no AA mount at all.

Now considering that she has special U.S. destroyers Defensive AA Fire, it somewhat mitigates the issue as the DPS is increased by 100% instead of 50%. This gives her a beefy long-range DPS of around 200.

The Armor

There isn’t much to talk about here. Forrest Sherman is simply protected by 19 mm of armor and her turrets are covered with only 6 mm of armor.

Final Opinion

Forrest Sherman, while not offering the most exciting type of gameplay is definitely a very strong gunboat destroyer. Thanks to her ludicrous rate of fire that allows her to turn most targets into swiss cheese, she will be able to stand out in the tier X destroyer meta, even with things like Smaland, Ragnar or Marceau roaming around to only name these.
For the Friesland enjoyers, you will almost feel right at home if you can get past the fact that you are playing the American version of the ship that has a premium account at every fast food you can think of and handles like a school bus.

The ship is definitely worth 232 000 Coal, however, there is no way in Hell that I would burn 116 bucks for it. I’m genuinely curious to know what people are ready to put such investment on a single ship.

Recommended Build

For the Forrest Sherman, I recommend the following commander build and upgrades:

I also recommend using the commander Alexander Ovechkin for the improved Survivability Expert.

This concludes my review of the Forrest Sherman. Thank you for reading this article!

Don’t hesitate to subscribe to our notifications to make sure that you don’t miss any future articles.

Also if you are new to the game or want to get back to it, feel free to use my Recruiting Station code for free goodies such as Premium ships, premium time and more: https://warships.net/yuzorah

Have a good one and see you soon!

About Author

2 thoughts on “Final Review: U.S. Tier X Premium Destroyer Forrest Sherman

  1. Have you left anything out , this is good for tactical enemies to attack the ship with

  2. I actually served aboard DD945, USS Hull, 1965-1966 in Vietnam and the 5/54 guns were fast, accurate and damn awesome!

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