The turbine bottleneck affected more than the total number of ships completed. The United States adopted diesel machinery in some destroyer escorts because turbines were unavailable for every hull. Britain similarly moved from turbine-powered prewar sloop designs toward triple-expansion engines during wartime. Machinery choice was therefore an industrial allocation decision: high-performance turbines went where speed mattered most, while slower escorts used technologies that could be produced in greater numbers.
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How turbine shortages changed escort machinery
Machinery scarcity pushed American destroyer escorts toward diesels and British wartime escorts back toward triple-expansion engines.