They were part of a series of USN destroyers limited to 1,500 tons standard displacement by the London Naval Treaty and built in the 1930s.

Two of the class were lost during World War II, three were scrapped in 1947, while the remaining five ships were scuttled after being contaminated from the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

The Bagleys were a Navy design that duplicated the machinery of the preceding long-range Mahan class; this led to their prominent boiler uptakes around the single stack that were their main recognition feature.

[2][7][8] Features that improved fuel economy included boiler economizers, double reduction gearing, and cruising turbines.

[11] As with most other US destroyers of this period, the 5-inch guns featured all-angle power loading and were director controlled, making them as effective as the technology allowed against aircraft.

[5][13] In common with all US surface combatants in the 1930s, the as-built light AA armament was weak; only four .50 caliber machine guns (12.7 mm) were equipped.

It was apparently felt that the heavy AA armament would shoot down most incoming aircraft in all situations, but the attack on Pearl Harbor showed that this was not true.

[14] While on Neutrality Patrol, some of the class landed their after torpedo tube mounts and .50-caliber machine guns so that their Depth charge and light AA batteries could be increased; photographs show six Oerlikon 20 mm cannon were added along with four K-gun depth charge throwers and, reportedly, a Y-gun on some ships.

Lang, Sterett, and Stack formed division "A-2" at the Battle of Vella Gulf in 1943 and, thereafter, all five remaining ships accompanied the advance through the Marshalls and Marianas.

The others, contaminated as targets in the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests, were decommissioned and scuttled in deep water off Kwajalein in 1948.