Casablanca-class escort carrier

The Casablanca class was a class of escort carriers constructed for the United States Navy during World War II. They are the most numerous class of aircraft carriers ever built. Fifty were laid down, launched, and commissioned within less than two years – 3 November 1942 through to 8 July 1944. Despite their numbers, and the preservation of larger carriers as museums, none of these ships survives today. Five were lost to enemy action during World War II and the remainder were scrapped. The Casablanca class was the first designed from keel up as an escort carrier rather than as a merchant hull conversion. Because of this, these ships had a larger hangar deck and a larger flight deck than the Bogue class. Unlike larger carriers, which had extensive armor, protection was limited to splinter plating. Their small size made them useful for transporting assembled aircraft of various sizes, including ferrying many aircraft types that were unable to operate from their decks. Their hull numbers were assigned consecutively, from CVE-55 Casablanca to CVE-104 Munda.

Casablanca-class carriers were built by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company's 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 carriers all before the end of the yard's first year in operation. The yard had 12 building ways and a 3,000-foot (910 m) outfitting dock, along with a unique additional building slip originally intended to add prefabricated superstructures to Liberty ships. Their relatively small size and mass-production origins led their crews to refer to them as "jeep carriers" or "Kaiser Jeeps" with varying degrees of affection.

Design and description

The Casablanca-class escort carrier program originated from the U.S. Navy's unpreparedness to meet the U-boat threat when it entered World War II in December 1941. Over the first six months of the Second Happy Time, German submarines sank over two million tons of shipping off the Eastern Seaboard. The 1942 escort carrier program had already called for the conversion of 24 hulls, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that more were needed to stem the loss of shipping. Against the backdrop of these losses, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, assisted by Roosevelt's advisor Thomas G. Corcoran, gave a presentation to the President for a 20 kn (37 km/h; 23 mph) carrier design by Gibbs & Cox that was to be produced at scale at his shipyards. On 8 June 1942, Roosevelt declared his support for the Kaiser design, and after some discussion, the government announced the program was to be overseen by the Maritime Commission, with the hulls built to standard merchant-marine practice. Although Kaiser wished to build at least 100 ships, the Navy ordered 50. The Casablanca-class carriers came into service in late 1943, when the U-boat threats were already in retreat. Some did see service in the Atlantic, but most were used in the Pacific, ferrying aircraft, providing logistics support, and conducting close air support for the island-hopping campaigns. They were built on the standardized Type S4-S2-BB3 hull, a lengthened variant of the Doyen-class hull, and specifically designed to be mass-produced using welded, prefabricated sections. This allowed them to be produced at unprecedented speeds; the final ship of her class, Munda, was delivered to the Navy just 101 days after the laying of her keel. They were 512 ft 3 in (156.13 m) long overall and 490 ft (150 m) at the waterline. They had a beam of 65 ft 2 in (19.86 m) and a draft of 20 ft 9 in (6.32 m). They displaced 8,188 long tons (8,319 t) standard, which increased to 10,902 long tons (11,077 t) with a full load. To carry out flight operations, the ship had a 257 ft (78 m) hangar deck and a 474 ft (144 m) flight deck. Her compact size necessitated the installation of an aircraft catapult, positioned at her bow, and two aircraft elevators facilitated movement of aircraft between the flight and hangar deck, one each fore and aft. They were powered by four Babcock and Wilcox Express D boilers that raised 285 psi (1,970 kPa) of steam at 577 °F (303 °C). The steam generated by these boilers fed two Skinner Unaflow reciprocating steam engines, delivering 9,000 shp (6,700 kW) to two propeller shafts. This allowed them to reach speeds of 19 kn (35 km/h; 22 mph), with a cruising range of 10,200 nmi (18,900 km; 11,700 mi) at 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph). For armament, one 5 in (127 mm)/38 caliber dual-purpose gun was mounted on the stern. Additional antiaircraft defense was provided by eight Bofors 40 mm (1.57 in) antiaircraft guns in four twin mounts and 12 Oerlikon 20 mm (0.79 in) cannons mounted around the perimeter of the deck. By 1945, the standard armament for the Casablanca-class carriers had grown to 20 Oerlikon cannons and 16 Bofors guns. The sensors onboard consisted of an SG surface-search radar and an SK air-search radar. In action, the Casablanca-class carriers were intended to function with a crew of 860. A typical embarked squadron consisted of 16 Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters and 12 Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, stowed in the hangar deck between the two elevators.

== Naming == The Casablanca class initially continued the US Navy's policy of naming escort carriers after bays and sounds, in this case the numerous inlets of the Alexander Archipelago that form the southeast coastline of Alaska, though several were subsequently renamed to carry on the US Navy's tradition of naming aircraft carriers after battles. Those ships that appear to be named after islands, seas, straits, or cities actually commemorated battles fought at those locations. Several had their original "Bay" names changed to battle names while under construction, and two of them, Midway (CVE-63) and Coral Sea (CVE-57), lost their battle names midcareer to new Midway-class aircraft carriers, becoming USS St. Lo and USS Anzio, respectively. Unlike the larger Essex and Independence-class aircraft carriers, none was named to commemorate historical naval vessels.

Production time and Navy refusal

Although Essex-class aircraft carriers were completed in 20 months or less, 1941 projections on the basis of the 38-month average prewar construction period estimated no new fleet carriers could be expected until 1944. Kaiser had reduced construction time of cargo ships (Liberty ships) from more than a year to less than 90 days, and proposed building a fleet of 50 small carriers in less than two years. The US naval authorities refused to approve construction of the Kaiser-built ships until Kaiser went directly to the President's advisers. The Allies were in desperate need of carriers to replace early war losses. Kaiser produced the small carriers as rapidly as planned, and resistance to their value quickly disappeared as they proved their usefulness defending convoys, providing air support for amphibious operations, and allowing fleet carriers to focus on offensive air-strike missions. Unlike most other large warships since HMS Dreadnought, the Casablanca-class ships were equipped with uniflow reciprocating engines instead of steam turbines. This was done because of bottlenecks in the gear-cutting industry, but greatly limited their usefulness after the war.

Service

Although designated as convoy escort carriers, the Casablanca-class ships were far more frequently used in large fleet amphibious operations, where speed was less important and their small air groups could combine to provide the effectiveness of a much larger ship. Their finest hour came in the Battle off Samar, when Taffy 3, a task unit composed of six of these ships and their screen of three destroyers and four destroyer escorts, gave battle against the Japanese main battle force ("Center Force"). Their desperate defense not only preserved most of their own ships, but also succeeded in turning back the massive force with only their aircraft joined by aircraft from Taffy 1 and 2 consisting of additional Casablanca-class carriers, machine guns, torpedoes, depth charges, high-explosive bombs, and their own 5-inch/38-caliber guns. Tasked with ground support and antisubmarine patrols, they lacked the torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs to tackle a surface fleet alone. Taffy 3 was to be protected by Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet with carriers and battleships, but the Third Fleet had left the scene to pursue a decoy carrier fleet, inadvertently leaving Taffy 3 the only force between the massive Japanese fleet and undefended landing forces at Leyte Gulf. The lightly armed vessels each had only one 5-inch/38 cal gun mounted aft, yet two of their number, St. Lo and Kalinin Bay, became the only US aircraft carriers to ever record a hit on an enemy warship by its own guns. St. Lo hit a Japanese destroyer with a single round and Kalinin Bay damaged a Myōkō-class cruiser with two hits. In addition, the gun crew on USS White Plains may have struck the cruiser Chōkai, with up to six 5-inch shells. One of these rounds may even have caused a large secondary explosion – probably from one of Chōkai's own torpedoes – on the starboard side that proved fatal to the heavy cruiser. White Plains's gun crew claimed to have put all six 5-inch rounds into Chōkai from a range of 11,700 yards (10,700 m), near the maximum effective range for the 5-inch/38 gun. However, Japanese sources attributed the loss of Chōkai to bomb damage from an air attack. Another noteworthy achievement of the Casablanca class was when USS Guadalcanal, under command of Captain Daniel V. Gallery, participated in the first capture-at-sea of a foreign warship by the US Navy since the War of 1812, when a crew of volunteers from USS Pillsbury boarded U-505 after Gallery's Guadalcanal-centered hunter-killer group forced it to the surface with depth charges. Guadalcanal also earned the distinction of being the only aircraft carrier in history to conduct flight operations with a captured enemy vessel in tow.

== Notable incidents == Of the 11 United States aircraft carriers of all types lost during World War II, five were Casablanca-class escort carriers:

CVE-56 Liscome Bay Sunk 24 November 1943. Submarine torpedo launched from IJN I-175 SW off 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 ex-Chapin Bay) 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.

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 1966. 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 Ruler class (the RN's Batch I Bogues were the Attacker class).

== Ships of the class == All ships of the Casablanca class were built in Vancouver, Washington, at the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company's Vancouver Shipyard. Thesee ships of the class were constructed:

== See also == List of ship classes of World War II

== References == pps. 1 & 2 – "Kaiser Company, Inc. – Vancouver", BuShips QQ files, NARA, College Park, MD.- "The Ships We Build", Kaiser Company, Inc., n.d., c. immediate post-war, 1945.

[1] Archived 28 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Listing of ships at Hazegray.org

== Sources == Adcock, Al (1996), Escort Carriers in Action – Warships No. 9, Carrollton, Texas: Squadron/Signal Publications, ISBN 0897473566 Baker, Arthur D. III (April 2007). "'Jeeps for the Fleet'". Naval History. 21 (2). Retrieved 21 May 2026. Foster, Mark S. (2014), Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, ISBN 9780292736450 Friedman, Norman (1980), "United States of America", in Chesneau, Roger; Gardiner, Robert (eds.), Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946, London, England: Conway Maritime Press, ISBN 0870219138 Friedman, Norman (1983), U.S. Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, ISBN 0870217399 Poolman, Kenneth (1989), Escort Carriers of World War Two, London, England: Arms and Armour Press, ISBN 9780853689522 Ross, Al (1993), The Escort Carrier Gambier Bay, Anatomy of the Ship, London, England: Conway Maritime Press, ISBN 9781557502353 Y'Blood, William T. (2012), Hunter-Killer: U.S. Escort Carriers in the Battle of the Atlantic, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, ISBN 9781591149958 Y'Blood, William T. (2012), The Little Giants: U.S. Escort Carriers Against Japan, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, ISBN 9781612512471

External links

The Battle Off Samar – Taffy III at Leyte Gulf website by Robert Jon Cox