Escort Carriers and Close Air Support

http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/escort-carriers-and-close-air-support/#comment-211524

• Written by: Dwight Jon Zimmerman on June 26, 2013
• Categories: Aviation, Naval
• Tags: Aircraft Carriers, Attack Aircraft, Fighter Aircraft, I... +
• Comments: One Comment

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Escort carrier USS Bogue (CVE 9) shown in June 1944. Bogue's aircraft and her escorts became premier U-boat killers in the Atlantic. U.S. Navy photo

Escort carriers, nicknamed “baby flattops” and “jeep carriers,” were slow, thin-skinned, small, and cramped. Their crews, in a sarcastic reference to the classification “CVE,” called them “Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable.” On top of that, at first, the U.S. Navy high command didn’t want them. In 1940 Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Harold Stark believed advances in aircraft technology made escort carriers impractical, so development was stopped. President Franklin Roosevelt overruled them and demanded a crash program converting merchantmen into carriers for use in anti-submarine warfare.

The Avenger class escort carrier HMS Biter seen from one of her Fairey Swordfish aircraft just after taking off. Ready on the deck are two Wildcat fighters, and in the distance ships of the convoy. The U.S. supplied the Royal Navy with more than 40 escort carriers during World War II. Imperial War Museum photo

Of the 151 aircraft carriers built by American shipyards during the war, 122 were escort carriers. Designed more to be easily mass produced rather than as the most efficient warships, they were based on existing hulls originally planned for C-3 merchant ships, tankers, oilers, and fast transports. Many were supplied under Lend-Lease to theRoyal Navy. Because they were both slow and roughly half the size of fleet carriers, they didn’t usually have enough wind over their short decks for combat-loaded aircraft to safely reach flying speed, so CVEs had catapults installed to assist in launching aircraft.

continued at http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/escort-carriers-and-close-air-support/#comment-211524

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The Battle Off Samar is often portrayed as mainly a surface action of Destroyers against the mighty  Yamato, the largest batteship in the world, and as a shining moment for the Destroyer Escort Samuel B Roberts, "the DE which fought like a battleship" which was designed to serve in slow convoys like the CVE, but CVE's remain little-known.

Unlike the Samuel B Roberts which has missile frigates names for the ship and crew, no CVE's were saved, all we have are models, and no ships were named for the ships or crew. CVE based Avengers were first to spot the Yamato and deliver the first blow, a depth charge which bounced off  the deck, setting the aggressive tone of the rest of the battle. The Japanese had Halsey completely figured out and their decoy carrier task force successfully got Halsey to take every fast ship away from Leyte, leaving only the Taffy CVEs and screening ships which carried minimal torpedoes and bombs because they were tasked with ground support. But inadvertantly, the Americans had their own ruse because the Japanese had not calculated how out-gunned desperate American sailors would act, and confused the outlines of their tiny ship for Halsey's full-sized carriers and cruisers. So the Yamato, designed for a showdown against America's biggest guns instead in its only gunfight was foiled by America's cheapest and most common ships, backed up by 3 Taffy groups that between them had as many aircraft as a few fast carriers. No ship had any gun larger than 5". The CVE's had only one tail stinger but one blew up a cruiser with a lucky hit on one of its torpedoes.

The new assault / JSF carriers should be named for at least the Gambier Bay and St Lo were were lost to gunfire and the first kamikaze attacks