Escort aircraft carrier
A escort aircraft carrier (called escort carrier for short ) is a type of smaller auxiliary aircraft carrier that was primarily in use during the Second World War . The United States and Great Britain built by far the largest number of escort carriers , followed by Japan . In the US Navy , they were initially assigned the classification AVG or ACV (“auxiliary carrier with heavier-than-air craft”) , later with CVE (“carrier with heavier-than-air craft escort”) . In marine jargon they were also called "baby flat-tops".
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Development of escort carriers
In particular due to the critical situation during the early phase of the Atlantic Battle , the Royal Navy was looking for ways to improve its own reconnaissance and anti -submarine defense within the framework of convoy security and to be able to effectively combat enemy aerial reconnaissance. Since large fleet aircraft carriers were too valuable for convoy service, the concept of converting merchant ships to more cost-effective auxiliary aircraft carriers was used .
Distinguishing features to other types of carriers
Escort vehicles were always based on a commercial or passenger ship design; either by converting existing merchant ships or by using or varying an already existing freighter or tanker design (especially in the USA). The technical specifications of the escort carriers were essentially based on the requirements that the convoid service brought with it. The speed had to be sufficient to be able to operate in a convoy as well as in an anti-submarine group. It was not high enough for fleet operations - fleet carriers reached speeds of more than 30 knots. No armor was used. Even after the renovation, the number of bulkheads and watertight compartments corresponded to the normal standards of merchant shipping. The fact that ships fully loaded with flammable aviation fuel and ammunition lacked practically any protection led sailors to jokingly reinterpret the CVE classification as Combustible, Vulnerable, Expendable (combustible, vulnerable, expendable). The type of aircraft carried was also based on the deployment scheme: escort carriers in convoid service mostly carried fighter aircraft for air cover and aircraft for submarine hunt, while fleet carriers had numerous bombers to combat surface and land targets.
Technical problems with conversions
The escort carriers converted from merchant ships usually had little space for aircraft. The hangar was placed on the upper deck like a deckhouse after the superstructures had been removed, and in turn supported the flight deck. This changed the center of gravity in the shape of the ship, which had to be compensated for with further modifications to the hull. The lower decks were “built in” in this regard, hollowing out the hull for more efficient use of space would have impaired the stability of the ship and would also have been too cumbersome and expensive. The British Audacity did not even have a hangar. Their planes were constantly on the flight deck . It was a little easier with tankers: fewer superstructures had to be removed and the lower decks offered more space for flight operations equipment. The Japanese Navy in particular concentrated on the conversion of passenger ships - here the removal of the superstructures was more complex, but these ships were equipped with powerful propulsion systems from the outset and mostly faster than the classes developed from freighters.
Escort carrier in World War II
First modifications
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The first escort carrier in the world was the Audacity , which arose from the captured German freighter Hanover and was completed in June 1941. The ship received a slight Fla -Bewaffnung and six Martlet -Jagdflugzeuge.
At about the same time, two merchant ships were converted into escort carriers in the USA. The first entered service with the US Navy as the USS Long Island in June 1941. The sister ship was left to Great Britain under the Lend Lease Act , where it did service as HMS Archer from November 1941 . These ships were significantly more powerful than the Audacity : at a higher speed of 17.5 knots , they had more powerful anti-aircraft armament and could carry 16 aircraft.
Immediately thereafter, four more units followed, which were redesigned from merchant ships under construction. These four escort carriers were also delivered to the Royal Navy as Avenger class, but one was returned to the USA and used there as a training ship (USS Charger) . These ships were very similar to the Long Island in that they were based on the same merchant hull (Type C-3) .
At the beginning of the war in the Pacific, the US Navy initiated the conversion of four Sangamon- class fleet tankers into escort carriers in order to be able to alleviate the temporary shortage of large carriers . Because of their size, these ships were able to accommodate more aircraft (the figures for this range up to 36 machines).
The Japanese Navy began converting three passenger steamers into escort carriers in 1941. This Taiyo class was larger and, at 21 knots, faster than its Anglo-Saxon counterparts and could accommodate 27 aircraft. Other individual projects of a similar size followed, including the conversion of the German passenger liner Scharnhorst to the Shin'yō carrier . The Japanese army dealt in the late war years with the conversion of transport ships into the simplest escort carriers. These should be able to carry and take off a limited number of aircraft, but there would have been no possibility of landing due to the very short flight deck. None of these ships went into active service - they were only used for transporting aircraft, material transport and for pilot training.
In 1942 and 1943, the German Navy also considered converting passenger ships into escort or auxiliary aircraft carriers, including the Gneisenau passenger ship , the sister ship of the Scharnhorst , which was converted by the Japanese . However, these projects got stuck in the beginning and were no longer seriously pursued due to the course of the war. In 1944 there were still plans to complete freighters from the Hansa construction program as escort aircraft carriers, but here too the course of the war ended the realization.
Escort carrier in series production
US shipyards took over by far the largest part of the construction program that has now started. At the beginning of 1942 a series of 21 escort carriers was started, also based on merchant ships already under construction. Since these, however, were not so far advanced, a few improvements over were Long - Iceland class are considered. Eleven of these ships went to Great Britain as Attacker- class, the remainder as Bogue- class in the service of the US Navy. The speed and the number of aircraft could be increased again (to 24 and 20 for the British units). These ships were followed by a second series of improved bogue units, which, unlike their predecessors, were designed as escort carriers from the keel-laying on, but were ultimately almost identical. Of the 24 units in this series completed by early 1944, all but one ship went to the Royal Navy, where they served as the Ameer- class.
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In Great Britain, five of its own conversions from civilian ships to aircraft carriers were made up to 1943, the performance of which roughly corresponded to that of the Bogue class. In the USA, on the other hand, a “big hit” was launched: The industrialist and shipyard owner Henry J. Kaiser promised the US government that no fewer than 50 escort carriers would be delivered within one year. The unusually short construction time of the ships - for some units from keel laying to commissioning only a little more than three months - he achieved through the consistent use of mass production methods , similar to the series-produced Liberty freighters . The first ship in this series, the USS Casablanca (CVE-55) , entered service on July 8, 1943; the 50th and final USS Munda (CVE-104) exactly one year later to the day. The Casablanca class was followed by the 23 ships of the Commencement Bay class , which entered service from November 1944. The 19th ship in this class was the USS Tinian (CVE-123) , which was taken over by the Navy in 1946 as the last escort carrier. The construction of the remaining four units was stopped after the Japanese surrender in mid-August 1945 and the hulls demolished. Another series of twelve improved ships were canceled at the same time.
Average technical data
Although there were significant differences between the individual classes, general average values can be given for the vast majority of the carriers, especially those built in series:
- Length: about 150 m
- Width: about 30 m
- Displacement: 10,000 ts to 20,000 ts
- Planes: 15 to 30
- Speed: 18 to 19 kn
- Crew: 700 to 900
Technical data of selected escort carriers
| HMS Audacity (UK) | USS Long Island (USA) | HMS Attacker (UK) | Taiyō (J) | USS Casablanca (USA) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commissioning | 6/1941 | 6/1941 | 9/1942 | 8/1942 | 7/1943 |
| displacement | 11,000 ts | 16,600 ts | 14,600 ts | 20,000 ts | 10,900 ts |
| length | 142.3 m | 141.7 m | 151 m | 183.7 m | 151.7 m |
| width | 17 m | 21.2 m | 34 m | 22.5 m | 32.9 m |
| Draft | 8.4 m | 7.8 m | 7 m | 7.6 m | 6 m |
| speed | 15 kn | 17.5 kn | 18.5 kn | 21 kn | 19 kn |
| Armament (flak) | 1 × 4 ″; 2 x 3 / 50AA; 4 × 50cal MG |
1 × 4 ″; 1 × 6 pounder; 4 × 2 pounders; 4 × 20 mm |
2 × 4 ″, 14 × 20 mm | 6 × 4.7 "; 8 × 25 mm | 1 × 5 ″; 8 × 40 mmAA 12 × 20 mm |
| crew | 210 | 408 | 646 | 747 | 746 |
| Planes | 6, later 8 | 16 | 20th | 27 | 27 |
Use of escort porters
The possible uses of these ships were extremely diverse and depended on the respective navy and the region. The British Navy used its escort carriers mainly in convoy service. There they were supposed to provide air cover with fighter planes and fight enemy reconnaissance planes or bombers , which played an important role in the northern sea convoys for the Soviet Union . They played an important role in the fight against submarines : reconnaissance aircraft of the escort carriers were able to report individual submarines or even entire packs of submarines at an early stage in order to enable the convoy to evade, or to effectively push away or fight the boats. In June 1944 , the USS Guadalcanal took possession of the German submarine U 505 . The increasingly numerous escort porters played a central role in the victory of the Allies in the battle of the Atlantic.
In the Pacific, the few Japanese escort carriers played no operational role; they were used exclusively for pilot training and aircraft transport. The US carriers were, however, used for all sorts of tasks: to air coverage of convoys transporting aircraft to remote bases, submarine defense, air support in landing operations, etc. The first US aircraft during the struggle for the Solomon Islands -Insel Guadalcanal landed at the famous Henderson Field airfield , came from the escort carrier Long Island . The ship type played an almost legendary role in the sea and air battle in the Gulf of Leyte , when 18 "baby flat-tops" were able to repel the attack of the majority of the Japanese battle fleet for over two hours and only lost one ship in the process.
Whereabouts of the escort porters
Losses in war
The first escort carrier, the HMS Audacity , fell victim to a torpedo attack by a German submarine six months after it was put into service. The British Admiralty then issued amended guidelines for the use of the carriers in convoid service. Then the British Navy lost the HMS Avenger , also by submarine attack, during " Operation Torch " in 1942; as well as the HMS Dasher , which was lost in an accident in 1943 (explosion of aircraft fuel) and in 1944 the Nabob , which was so badly damaged by a submarine torpedo hit that it was beached and abandoned. During the war, the USA lost five escort carriers through combat operations: two sank off the Gulf of Leyte , one was sunk by submarine attacks and two more by kamikaze attacks at the beginning of 1945. All Japanese units fell victim to submarine or air raids .
post war period
The ships delivered to Great Britain under the Loan and Lease Act were returned to the United States in 1946, where in most cases they were sold to the private sector and reused as merchant ships. The same thing happened to the British ships, which were used as merchant ships for up to 25 years.
Most of the American escort carriers were partly removed from the list of warships and scrapped immediately after the end of the war, and partly kept in the reserve for a few years before they were also sold for demolition around 1960 (the demolition work was very often done by Japanese companies ). Some units of the Casablanca class and Commencement - Bay class were as transport ships, helicopter carriers continue to be used or after conversion as a communication link ships from the US Navy and were still in these roles in the Korean War used. Individual ships actively experienced the Vietnam War . They were only decommissioned and scrapped in the 1970s. Today there is no escort anymore. The America class (2012) , built since 2012, is seen as a revival of the escort aircraft carrier in view of a planned air group of up to 10 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter bombers.
Literature (selection)
- Rick Cline: Escort Carriers WW II. War in the Pacific on the Aircraft Carrier USS Petrof Bay . RA Cline Pub., Placentia CA 1998, ISBN 0-9663235-0-5 , (report from an American).
- David Jordan: aircraft carrier. From the beginning until today . Tosa, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85492-640-5 .
- Kenneth Poolman: Escort carrier 1941-1945. An account of British Escort Carriers in Trade Protection . Ian Allan Pub., London 1972, ISBN 0-436-37705-5 .
- Stefan Terzibaschitsch : US Navy aircraft carrier . Volume 2: Escort aircraft carrier . Bernard et al. Graefe, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-7637-6200-0 .
- Peter Ward: Pacific Voyage. A Year on the Escort Carrier HMS "Arbiter" During World War II . Brewin Books, Studley 2005, ISBN 1-85858-276-8 , (British crew member's experience report ).
- David Wragg: The Escort Carrier of the Second World War. Combustible, vulnerable, expendable! Pen & Sword, Barnsely 2005, ISBN 1-84415-220-0 .
