HMS Arbiter (D31)

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Career

Laid down:	26 April 1943
Launched:	9 September 1943
Commissioned (RN):	31 December 1943
Decommissioned:	12 April 1946
Fate:	merchant ship
General Characteristics
Displacement:	9,800 tons
Length:	492' (150 m)
Beam:	69' 6" (21.2 m)
Draft:	26' 8" (8.1 m)
Speed:	17 knots
Complement:	890 officers and men
Armament:	2 × 5 inch guns, 16 × twin 40 mm Bofors, 15 × single 20 mm Oerlikon
Aircraft:	18

The USS St. Simon (CVE-51) (originally AVG-51 then later ACV-51), an escort aircraft carrier originally classified as an auxiliary aircraft carrier, was laid down on 26 April 1943 at Tacoma, Washington, by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Co., under a Maritime Commission contract (MC hull 262); reclassified as an escort aircraft carrier, CVE-51, on 15 July 1943; launched on 9 September 1943; sponsored by Mrs. R. H. Lewis, the wife of Major General R. H. Lewis, Commanding General, Northwestern Sector, Fort Lewis, Washington; assigned to the Commercial Iron Works, Portland, Oregon, for the completion of construction; and delivered to the Royal Navy, under lend-lease, on 31 December 1943.

Renamed HMS Arbiter (D31) (while being carried on the United States' Naval Vessel Register with the classification BCVE-51), the escort carrier served in the Royal Navy for the duration of World War II. She earned "battle honors" in the Atlantic during 1944, serving on the western approaches to the British Isles, and in 1945 served as one of seven similar ships engaged in operating as an aircraft ferry supporting the British Pacific Fleet's train, bringing up replacement aircraft or providing combat air patrol for replenishment ships.

Returned to Norfolk, Virginia, on 23 February 1946, she was accepted by the United States Navy on 3 March 1946. Struck from the Navy list on 12 April 1946, the ship was sold to the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Virginia, on 30 January 1947. Converted to the cargo ship Coracero, the former escort carrier served under two more names, President Macapagal from 1965 to 1972 and Lucky Two in 1972 before she was scrapped in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1972.