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destroyer escort (dict)

Destroyer Escort

A Destroyer Escort (DE) is classification for a small, comparatively slower warship designed to be used to escort convoys of merchant marine ships, primarily of the United States Navy, Royal Navy and the Free French Navy in WWII. It is usually employed primarily for anti-submarine warfare, but also some protection against aircraft and smaller attack vessels in this application. Full size destroyers must be able to keep up with and exceed the speed of fast capital ships, typically needing better than 25-35 knot speeds(dependent upon the era and navy) and carrying torpedoes and a relatively smaller caliber of cannon to use against enemy ships, as well as anti-submarine detection equipment and weapons. A destroyer escort need only be able to maneuver relative to a slow convoy, which in World War II would travel at 10 to 12 knots, and defend itself against aircraft, and to detect, chase down and attack a submerged (3 to 6 knot speed) or surfaced (22 knot speed) submarine. These lower requirements greatly reduce the size, cost and crew required for the destroyer escort. Destroyer escorts are also useful for coastal anti-submarine and radar picket ship duty. After World War II, United States Navy destroyer escorts evolved into ocean escorts, but retained the hull classification symbol DE. The 1975 ship reclassification changed ocean escorts to frigates (FF) to bring the USN's nomenclature to be more similar to those in other NATO countries, and more importantly, similair to the USSR. One main issue's being the Soviets had a number of ships called cruisers, but were comprable to US frigates, which resulted in confusion. As result a overhaul of the system was done which fixed this, and a number of other issues with naming including the aformentioned change from ships of the DE class to being frigates.

Origins

The Lend-lease Act was passed into law in the USA in March 1941 enabling the United Kingdom to procure merchant ships, warships and munitions etc, in order to help with the war effort. This enabled the UK to commision the USA to design, build and supply an escort vessel that was suitable for anti submarine warfare in deep open ocean situations, which they did in June 1941. Captain E.L. Cochrane of the Bureau of Shipping came up with a design which was known as the British Destroyer Escort (BDE) but this was soon reduced to Destroyer Escort (DE). When the United States entered the war, and found they also required an Anti-Submarine warfare ship and that the Destroyer Escort fitted their needs perfectly, a system of rationing was put in place whereby out of every five Destroyer Escortss completed four would be allocated to the U.S.Navy and one to the British Royal Navy. The Royal Navy recieved only Evarts & Buckley class Destroyer Escorts and named the class "Captain Class Frigates". The Royal Navy used the names of captains of the period covered by the Napoleonic wars for the individual ship names of Captain Class Frigates. The main design differance between Royal Navy Captain Class Frigate & US Navy Destroyer Escort was that the British ships had the forward torpedo tubes removed along with the ice cream makers.

Destroyer Escort Class Overview

Lead Ship           Commissioned   !! Ships Built
Evarts class USS Evarts (DE-5) April 15, 1943 align=center|   72
Buckley class USS Buckley (DE-51) April 30, 1943 align=center| 102
Cannon class USS Cannon (DE-99) September 26, 1943 align=center|   72
Edsall class USS Edsall (DE-129) April 10, 1943 align=center|   85
Rudderow class USS Rudderow (DE-224) May 15, 1944 align=center|   22
John C. Butler class   USS John C. Butler (DE-339)   March 31, 1944 align=center|   87
Dealey class USS Dealey (DE-1006) June 3, 1954 align=center|   13
Claud Jones class USS Claud Jones (DE-1033) February 10, 1959 align=center|     4

See also

External links

References

  • For an excellent book on the subject of a particular example of this type of ship (USS Abercrombie (DE-343)) in World War II see Little Ship, Big War: The Saga of DE-343 by Edward Peary Stafford. Naval Institute Press, 2000 ISBN 1557508909

 

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