Escort carriers were developed by the British as a response to the deadly U-boat threat in the Atlantic. Their direct ancestor was the MAC, a merchant ship equipped with a catapult with which to launch a Hurricane fighter if the convoy containing the MAC was attacked from the air. The concept was a desperate one: The fighter had no way to land once its mission was complete, so the pilot either had to be close to a land base, or he had to ditch in the water near his ship and hope for the best.
The next logical development was a converted carrier with a flight deck to allow aircraft to land. The original threat against which the MAC was designed was long-range German bombers and reconnaissance aircraft, but as it became clear that air cover was an effective force multiplier against submarines, the idea of a small, cheap carrier that could provide such air cover became increasingly attractive. The British build several experimental escort carriers that demonstrated the soundness of the concept.
Roosevelt followed the British experiments with great interest and asked the U.S. Navy to experiment with the concept. The result was the Long Island, which found itself assigned to the Pacific in an aircraft-ferrying role. This proved sufficiently valuable that the Navy began constructing entire classes of escort carriers.
Because the Japanese failed to effectively deploy their submarines against Allied shipping lanes, the escort carriers assigned to the Pacific were able to branch out from the antisubmarine role. They provided replacement aircraft to the fleet carriers, allowing the latter to remain on station longer. They accompanied amphibious invasion forces, flying ground support missions while also providing combat air and antisubmarine patrols.
Sometimes called “jeep carriers” because they were small, mass-produced, and versatile, the escort carrier crewmen also grimly joked that the class designation (CVE) stood for “Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable.” They were cramped and uncomfortable, and flight operations were always hairy. Nevertheless, the ships were a success, and surprisingly few were lost during the war.
The Japanese badly needed escort carriers of their own, given the threat posed by American submarines to Japanese shipping. They had a number of small carriers that would have been ideal for this role, and built more during the war, but it was not until much too late in the war that these carriers actually were employed in this fashion.
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia (c) 2007-2008 by Kent G. Budge. Index
