Why convoy helicopters belong on dedicated platforms

Should individual merchant ships replace their after gun with a helicopter pad?

No; concentrating aircraft on dedicated ships gives deeper maintenance teams and shared stores while leaving merchant guns available for local defense.

Putting one helicopter on every merchantman duplicates pilots, maintainers, spares, fuel, and accommodation across the convoy. A converted merchant platform instead supports several aircraft with a deeper engineering team and one shared store of parts. Helicopter sloops add distributed decks and redundancy without forcing each cargo ship to become a miniature aviation unit. Individual merchant ships can retain their four-inch guns for local defense against aircraft or a surfaced submarine. Concentrating expertise therefore produces greater readiness and logistical depth than distributing single unsupported aircraft.