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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 in WWII. It is usually employed primarily for anti-submarine warfare, but also some protection against aircraft and smaller attack vessels in this application. The US built roughly 457 Destroyer escorts spread out over 8 classes. The Royal Navy's equivalent warship was known as the Frigate, although somewhat confusingly they referred to the Hunt class and similar ships as "escort destroyers".

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 from the USA, in order to help with the war effort. This enabled the UK to commission 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 American 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 Escorts´s completed four would be allocated to the U.S.Navy and one to the British Royal Navy.

General Description

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. While fleet destroyers were still more effective for anti-submarine warfare, the destroyer escort outweighed this by being able to be built considerably faster. Destroyer escorts were also considerably more seaworthy than Corvettes.

Destroyer escorts are also useful for coastal anti-submarine and radar picket ship duty.

Some 95 Destroyer escorts were converted to APD's (High Speed Transports). This involved adding an extra deck which allowed space for about 10 officers and 150 men. Two large davits were also installed, one on either side of the ship from which landing craft (LCVP) could be launched.

After World War II United States Navy destroyer escorts were referred to as ocean escorts, but retained the hull classification symbol DE. However other navies, most notably those of NATO countries and the USSR, followed different naming conventions for this type of ship which resulted in some confusion. In order to remedy this problem the 1975 ship reclassification reclassified ocean escorts (and by extension, destroyer escorts) as Frigates (FF). This brought the USN's nomenclature more in line with NATO, and made it easier to compare ship types with the Soviet Union (see Cruiser gap). As of 2006 there are no plans for future frigates for the US Navy. The DDG Zumwalt and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) are the main ship types planned in this area. One major problem with ship classification is whether to base it on a ship's role (such as escort or air defense), or on its size (such as the amount of tons). One example of this ambiguity are the Ticonderoga-class air defense ships, which are classified as cruiser even though they use the same hull of the Spruance class destroyer.

US Navy Destroyer escort class overview

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

Captain-class frigates of the Royal Navy

Under the Lend-Lease agreement, the Royal Navy received 32 destroyer escorts of the Evarts class and 46 of the Buckley class. The Royal Navy used the names of captains of the Napoleonic Wars for the ships; hence these ships are known as the Captain-class frigates.

The main design difference between the Royal Navy and US Navy ships that the former had the forward torpedo tubes removed along with the ice-cream makers, the iced-water fountains, the dishwashers and the laundries (some ships). More depth charges were fitted on the upper deck each side of the ship (allowing for about 200 in total) and the steel work around the binnacle had to be replaced by non-ferrous materials. Additionally the American gyrocompasses were replaced with the Admiralty pattern ones and the MK IV elevating column Oerlikon mountings were replaced with the simpler MK V1A mountings.

Free French

Six Cannon class Destroyer Escorts were built for the Free French Navy. Although initially transferred under the Lend-lease Act these ships were permanently transferred under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program.

List of Free French Destroyer escorts

Mutual Defense Assistance Program - Post WWII

Under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP) the Destroyer Escorts leased to the Free French were permanently transferred to the French Navy. In addition the following navies also acquired Destroyer Escorts:

French Navy

DE-1007, DE-1008, DE-1009, DE-1010, DE-1011, DE-1012, DE-1013, DE-1016, DE-1017, DE-1018, DE1019

Italian Navy

DE-1020, DE-1031

Portuguese Navy

DE-1032, DE-1039, DE-1042, DE-1046

Netherlands Navy

DE 195 Burrows, DE 196 Rinehart, DE 182 Gustafson, DE 188 O'Neill, DE 192 Eisner, DE 187 Stern

See also

External links

References

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

Free French Forces | Italian Navy | Naval ships of France | Royal Navy frigates | Ship types

Van Amstel-klasse | Niszczyciel eskortowy

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Destroyer escort".

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