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
World War II. 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 also used destroyer escorts but classified them as
frigates (
Captain class) and somewhat confusingly 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). The BDE designation was retained by the first six Destroyer Escorts transferred to the United Kingdom ( BDE 1, 2, 3, 4, 12 and 46); of the initial order of 50 these were the only ones the
Royal Navy received, the rest being reclassified as Destroyer Escort (DE) on January 25, 1943 and taken over by the
United States Navy[1].
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 completed four would be allocated to the U.S. Navy and one to the 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, defend itself against aircraft, and 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.
Combat
Destroyer escorts were also useful for coastal anti-submarine and radar picket ship duty. They were never meant to fight against cruisers and battleships, but that is what happened in the
Battle off Samar. The destroyer escort ship Samuel B. Roberts of task group
Taffy 3 joined other out-gunned destroyers in directly attacking cruisers and battleships. With no armor, only two 5-inch guns and 3 Mark-15 torpedoes capable of punching a hole in enemy hulls, her crew lacked the weapons and training in tactics to compete with the much larger heavy cruiser Chokai. The Roberts dodged shellfire to fire a salvo of 3 torpedoes which struck the cruiser. The battle continued for an hour, and the Roberts fired over 600 5-inch shells, and hit the upper works with 40 mm Bofors and 20 mm anti-aircraft guns at close range. Chikuma's bridge was set afire and the number 3 gun turret was disabled. Chikuma scored two direct hits on the Roberts, which soon sank with 89 of her crew. After the battle the Roberts became known as "the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship". The Roberts was an instrumental part of a small task force of light ships that forced a much larger armoured battle force to turn away from American landing forces in Leyte Gulf, though at a high cost.
Some 95 Destroyer escorts were converted to
APDs (High Speed Transports). This involved adding an extra deck which allowed space for about 10 officers and 150 men. The modern
Littoral Combat Ship also adds transport and boat launching capabilities to a ship smaller than a destroyer. Two large
davits were also installed, one on either side of the ship from which landing craft (
LCVP) could be launched.
Postwar U.S. Ship Reclassification
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.
★
List of destroyer escorts of the United States Navy
US Navy Destroyer escort class overview
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 initially used the names of captains of the
Napoleonic Wars for the ships; hence the
Admiralty classifying these ships as the
Captain class frigates.
Some of the main design difference between the Royal Navy frigates and the US Navy destroyer escorts was that the British ''Buckley'' class had the forward torpedo tubes removed (the ''Evarts'' class was not designed to carry torpedo tubes
[2]) along with the ice cream makers, the iced water fountains, the dishwashers, and laundries (in some ships) and the replacing of the primitive American two seat "thunder trough" toilets (which did not offer even so much as a simple canvas screen to spare blushes) with an enclosed water closet.
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
★
FFL ''Algérien'' (F-1), ex-''Cronin'' (DE-107)
★
FFL ''Sénégalais'' (F-2), ex-''Corbestier'' (DE-106)
★
FFL ''Somali'' (F-3), ex-''Somali'' (DE-111)
★
FFL ''Hova'' (F-4), ex-''Hova'' (DE-110)
★
FFL ''Marocain'' (F-5), ex-''Marocain'' (DE-109)
★
FFL ''Tunisien'' (F-6), ex-''Crosley'' (DE-108)
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
★
The Enemy Below for a movie filmed on a DE.
★
Modern Naval tactics.
★
Frigate
★
Destroyer
★ Lists
★
★
List of destroyer escorts of the United States Navy
★
★
★
List of frigates of the United States Navy subset of above with hull numbers DE/FF 1037 and higher plus all DEG/FFGs because of the
United States Navy 1975 ship reclassification
★
★
List of frigates
★
★
Captain class frigate
External links
★
http://www.desausa.org/ Destroyer Escort Sailors Association (DESA).
★
http://www.ussslater.org/ USS Slater, the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum.
★
USS Slater Photos on board the Destroyer Escort USS Slater DE-766
★
USS Bangust WWII Photos of life on board the Destroyer Escort USS Bangust DE-739 in WWII
★
Destroyer Escort Bangust DE-739 Home Page
★
http://www.captainclassfrigates.co.uk/ the Captain Class Frigates Association.
★
Escort http://www.uboat.net/
References
★ The most authoritative account of a destroyer escort class and destroyer escorts in general is Bruce H. Franklin's Buckley-Class Destroyer Escorts. Naval Institute Press, 1999 ISBN 1557502803
★ 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 1-55750-890-9
★ For an excellent book on the subject of the Captains class frigate variant of the Destroyer Escort in World War II, see ''The Captain Class Frigates in the Second World War'' by Donald Collingwood. published by Leo Cooper (1998), ISBN 085052 615 9.
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