High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Mahan-class destroyers originally included 16 ships: the US Navy commissioned 15 of them in 1936 and one in 1937. The construction resources came from the 1934 Fiscal Year program and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933. The following Fiscal Year included the resources for two more destroyers that were built from the Mahan-derived plan, yet they are often referred to as the Dunlap class. The Dunlaps were so similar to the Mahans that some publications do not single them out as a separate class. The Dunlap model substituted the base-ring mounted 5-inch guns forward with fully protected enclosed gun-houses and rigged with a single pole mast. Both Dunlaps were commissioned in 1937. The Mahan class emerged as an improved version of the Farragut-class destroyer, with a design that set a new standard for the construction of destroyers. The lead ship, USS Mahan (DD-364), was named for Alfred T. Mahan, a US Naval officer and influential historian and theorist on sea power.