Patreon 63: Escort carriers, the idea, designs, development and notable operations

Treaty tonnage, Treasury limits, and competing rearmament demands explain why prewar escort-carrier plans did not become ships.

An open breach would free every other navy to exceed its limits, and Britain still wanted the treaty's spending restraint.

Yes. She probably would have joined HMS Furious in a carrier strike against a German naval base.

No. The treaty counted total carrier tonnage, so changing the ships' subclass labels would not remove them from the national allowance.

A separate national tonnage allowance for carriers under 10,000 tons could have protected fleet-carrier tonnage and encouraged small-carrier construction.

Each navy had already developed a distinct doctrine suited to its own strategy and equipment, and those doctrines continued evolving during the war.

Converting merchant hulls forced officials to trade visible cargo capacity and revenue against protection from larger future shipping losses.

No; their larger air groups and ability to perform both strike and escort tasks make light carrier the better description.

American methods could adapt to the Atlantic, British methods would fight the Pacific differently, and Japanese doctrine would likely burn through pilots quickly in the Mediterranean.

About eighteen for a standing patrol, but most escort carriers carried six to eight and launched them when radar detected a threat.

Aircraft could neutralize surface-running submarines by forcing them underwater, slowing them for sonar-equipped escorts.

A Hermes just under 10,000 tons might have encouraged a British small-carrier program and a treaty category to match.

No; the long hull could support a workable carrier, but the conversion would be costly and competed with advocates of the original large-cruiser design.

A Hermes air group weighted toward Swordfish could have supplied Force H with a dedicated anti-submarine screen.

The decisive convoy metric was delivering merchant ships, even if no attacking submarine was destroyed.

Not entirely. The guns could have been built, while converting the hulls into light carriers offered a useful alternative capability.

Gun layouts reflected expected attack geometry, and disrupting an attack could matter more than shooting the aircraft down.

Not effectively; they lacked the endurance, sensors, reliability, and search coverage that made the Swordfish useful.

Radar, depth charges, and rockets let the Swordfish find surfaced submarines and damage their ability to dive.

ASV Mark II operated around 176 MHz with a broad beam and roughly one-to-forty-mile range, though the precise installation weight and wavelength are treated cautiously.

When extra funding appeared, the Royal Navy preferred Unicorn's aviation-support and carrier-development value to a narrower escort carrier.

Recurring Empire-wide sloop construction could have preserved escort-building capacity before the wartime emergency.

Probably not; Hedgehog work began earlier, and Squid rather than Hedgehog was the projected depth-charge system.

Yes, the deck and the Swordfish's low takeoff speed should make a launch possible.

The Swordfish Mark III's large centimetric radar installation displaced its torpedo, an acceptable trade once anti-submarine patrol had become the aircraft's main job.

Britain's planned southern convoy route depended on French and British land-based air cover that vanished after 1940.

A Condor could keep reporting a convoy's position and guide U-boats even without attacking the merchant ships itself.

Merchant aircraft carriers kept their commercial function while adding a flight deck and a tiny air group for convoy protection.

A captured German merchant ship became the first operational British escort carrier after a rapid conversion at Blyth.

Audacity's Martlets destroyed Condors and helped force U-131's loss before U-751 sank the exposed carrier.

British refits traded American provisions for long Pacific deployments for equipment suited to shorter Atlantic convoy cycles.

Archer combined a fifteen-aircraft group with a lift, catapult, arrestor wires, and barriers, but her low speed constrained flying operations.

They occupied a small side structure beside the flight deck, while additional control facilities were built into the hull.

They shared the broad C3 merchant-ship family, but different C3 variants produced materially different carrier conversions.

PQ 18 gave Avenger an operating box, protected re-entry positions, and destroyers dedicated to following the carrier out of formation.

Submarines waited within PQ 18's formation so they could sortie against a German surface force approaching the convoy.

A flight deck was badly damaged, but the full peeling-back story is probably an exaggeration.

Generally no. They were used to support seaplanes and flying boats as mobile aviation bases.

They are best treated as light fleet or fleet carriers; their size and forty-aircraft capacity do not meet the modern supercarrier standard.

Taiyo shows that Japan operated escort carriers, but not in the numbers needed for a prolonged maritime war.

No. Its roughly twenty-two-aircraft hangar group, or about thirty with deck parking, places it around escort-carrier capability.

Approximate air-group bands separate escort, light, fleet, and supercarriers by distinct levels of aviation capability.

Three related American conversions supported Arctic and North African operations but exposed severe merchant-hull survivability risks.

Not automatically. Capable drones still take substantial space, require control capacity, and need material support.

Yes, but the redesign would be expensive and slow enough that a purpose-built hull might make more sense.

Convoys could combine reusable carrier aircraft with emergency catapult fighters so one aviation system backed up another.

Of 155 American carriers built during the war, 122 were escort carriers available for transport, support, and amphibious missions.

Land-based Spitfires had only twenty minutes over Salerno, so Force V brought five carriers to sustain fighter cover over the beaches.

An oil-starved Beaufighter forced down en route to Malta produced Cunningham's quip that two lucky men should not travel together.

Force V sustained beach patrols beyond the planned withdrawal, but calm air and short decks destroyed far more Seafires in landings than enemy action did.

Escort carriers stayed near amphibious forces to support troops ashore while fleet carriers remained available against enemy fleets.

Halsey's move north exposed Taffy 3 to the Japanese Center Force, while aircraft from all three Taffy groups joined the defense.

Aircraft trained for land support attacked with whatever weapons they had and kept making dry runs after their ammunition was gone.

Forty-five Bogue-class and fifty Casablanca-class ships let American CVE production cover Allied demand while British yards concentrated on light fleet carriers and other work.

Mostly wartime-service crews maintained flight operations and shipboard resistance during a surface action their escort carriers were never intended to fight.

Japanese ships had trained crews, directors, rangefinders, and radar even though their equipment and industrial base had important weaknesses.

Probably; radar warning and a handful of fighters could disrupt the Japanese strikes long enough for ship defenses and land-based fighters to matter.

With warning and coordination from all three Taffy groups, a prepared alpha strike could have inflicted much larger Japanese losses.

It lacked reach and stopping power, and replacing it with a 40 mm system required industrial conversion Japan did not complete in time.

They could protect the carriers and buy launch time, but would probably absorb concentrated gunfire and torpedoes at severe human cost.

The industrial conversion was substantial, and by the time the need was obvious Japan no longer had enough time or spare capacity.

Probably after a limited AA upgrade, pairing her with Renown and carriers in a fast Eastern Fleet group.

No. The ship-breaking story is dismissed as one of the tales that circulates about HMS Victory.