Casablanca class escort carrier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Casablanca |
| Preceded by: | Bogue class |
| Succeeded by: | Commencement Bay class |
| Completed: | 50 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Escort aircraft carrier |
| Displacement: | 7,800 tons 10,902 tons full load |
| Length: | 512.3 ft (156.1 m) overall |
| Beam: | 65.2 ft (19.9 m) Extreme width: 108.1 ft (32.9 m) |
| Draft: | 22.5 ft (6.9 m) |
| Propulsion: | Two (2) five-cylinder reciprocating Skinner Unaflow engines Four (4) × 285 psi boilers, 2 shafts, 9000 shp |
| Speed: | 20 knots (37 km/h) |
| Range: | 10,240nm at 15 knots |
| Complement: | Ship's Company: 860 officers and men Embarked Squadron: 50 to 56 officers and men Total Complement: 910 to 916 officers and men. |
| Armament: | One 5"/38cal. Dual-Purpose Gun Sixteen 40 mm AA Cannon in eight twin mounts Twenty 20 mm AA Machine Guns in single mounts. |
| Aircraft carried: | 28 |
The Casablanca class Escort aircraft carriers were the greatest number of not only escort carriers, but also any size aircraft carrier ever built to a like-design by any nation at any time. Fifty of these were laid down, launched and commissioned within the space of less than two years - November 3, 1942 through July 8, 1944. These were nearly one third of the 151 carriers built in the United States during the war. No example remains of the class; five were lost to enemy action during WWII and the remainder were scrapped.
The first class designed from keel up an escort carrier, the Casablanca class had a larger and more useful hangar deck than previous conversions. It also had a larger flight deck than the Bogue class. Unlike larger carriers which had extensive armour, protection was limited to splinter plating.
Casablanca class carriers were built by Kaiser Company, Inc.'s Shipbuilding Division, Vancouver Yard on the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington. The Vancouver yard was expressly built in 1942 to construct Liberty Ships, but exigencies of war soon saw the yard building LST landing craft and then Escort Aircraft Carriers all before the end of the yard's first year in operation. The yard had twelve building ways and an enormous 3,000 foot outfitting dock along with a unique additional building slip originally intended to add prefabricated superstructures to Liberty ships. Their small size made them useful for transporting assembled aircraft of various sizes, but combat fighters were usually smaller and lighter models such as the Avenger and Wildcat.
The hull numbers are consecutive, from CVE-55 (Casablanca) to CVE-104 (Munda). Although designated as escort carriers, the Casablanca class was far more frequently used in fleet operations, where their light wings of fighters and bombers could combine to provide the effectiveness of a much larger ship. The shining moment of the class came in the Battle off Samar, when Taffy 3, a task unit composed of six of these ships and their screen of destroyers and destroyer escorts gave battle against the Japanese main force and succeeded in turning them back. One of their number, St. Lo (ex-Midway), is the only aircraft carrier to ever record a hit on an enemy warship by its own guns, when she hit a Japanese destroyer with a single round from her aft-mounted 5"/38cal heavy anti-aircraft gun.
Of the eleven U.S. aircraft carriers of all types lost during World War Two, six, or 55% were Escort Carriers. Of those six Escort Carriers lost, five, or 83% were of the Kaiser built Casablanca class. The five Casablanca class carriers lost during World War Two were:
- CVE-56 Liscome Bay
Sunk 24 November 1943. Submarine torpedo launched from IJN I-175 SW of Butaritari (Makin).
- CVE-73 Gambier Bay
Sunk 25 October 1944. Concentrated surface gunfire from IJN Center Force during Battle off Samar.
- CVE-63 St. Lo (ex-Midway)
Sunk 25 October 1944. Kamikaze aerial attack during Battle of Leyte Gulf.
- CVE-79 Ommaney Bay
Sunk 4 January 1945. Kamikaze aerial attack in the Sulu Sea en route to Lingayen Gulf.
- CVE-95 Bismarck Sea
Sunk 21 February 1945. Kamikaze aerial attack off Iwo Jima.
Unlike virtually every other warship since HMS Dreadnought, the Casablanca class ships were equipped with uniflow reciprocating engines instead of turbine engines. This was done in view of bottlenecks in the gear-cutting industry, but greatly limited their usefulness after the war. Some ships were retained postwar as aircraft transports, where their lack of speed was not a major drawback. Some units were reactivated as helicopter escort carriers (CVHE and T-CVHE) or utility carriers (CVU and T-CVU) after the war, but most were deactivated and placed in reserve once the war ended, stricken in 1958-9 and scrapped in 1959-61. One ship, USS Thetis Bay, was heavily modified into an amphibious assault ship (LPH-6), but was scrapped in 1964.
Originally, half of their number were to be transferred to the Royal Navy under Lend-Lease, but instead they were retained in the US Navy and the Batch II Bogue class escort carriers were transferred instead as the Ameer class (the RN's Batch I Bogues were the Attacker class).
[edit] Ships in class
[edit] References
pps. 1 & 2 - "Kaiser Company, Inc. - Vancouver", BuShips QQ files, NARA, College Park, MD.
- "The Ships We Build", Kaiser Company, Inc., n.d., circa immediate post-war, 1945.
[edit] See also
|
||||||||
