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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 were laid down, launched and commissioned within the space of less than two years - 3 November 1942 through 8 July 1944. These were nearly one third of the 151 carriers built in the United States during the war. Despite their numbers, and the preservation of many more famous and larger carriers as museums, none of these modest ships survives today. Five were lost to enemy action during WWII and the remainder were scrapped. The first class to be designed from keel up as 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 Wildcat. The hull numbers were assigned consecutively, from CVE-55 (Casablanca) to CVE-104 (Munda).
[edit] ServiceAlthough 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 4 destroyers and 3 destroyer escorts gave battle against the Japanese main force. Their desperate defense not only preserved most of their own ships, but succeeded in turning back the massive force with only aircraft machine guns, depth charges, high-explosive bombs, and their own 5" guns. Tasked with ground support and antisubmarine patrols, they lacked the torpedoes and armour piercing bombs to tackle a surface fleet alone. They were to be protected by Admiral Halsey's mighty Third Fleet with carriers and battleships. But they 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" / 38 cal gun mounted aft, yet two of their numbers, St. Lo (ex-Midway) 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 Myoko class cruiser with two hits. Another noteworthy achievement of the Casablanca class was when USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60) under command of Captain Daniel V. Gallery, made the first capture-at-sea of a foreign warship by the US Navy since the War of 1812, by capturing U-505. 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:
Sunk 24 November 1943. Submarine torpedo launched from IJN I-175 SW of Butaritari (Makin). 
Sunk 25 October 1944. Concentrated surface gunfire from IJN Center Force during Battle off Samar.
Sunk 25 October 1944. Kamikaze aerial attack during Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Sunk 4 January 1945. Kamikaze aerial attack in the Sulu Sea en route to Lingayen Gulf.
Sunk 21 February 1945. Kamikaze aerial attack off Iwo Jima. Unlike most 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 Ruler class (the RN's Batch I Bogues were the Attacker class). [edit] Ships in class[edit] Referencespps. 1 & 2 - "Kaiser Company, Inc. - Vancouver", BuShips QQ files, NARA, College Park, MD.
[edit] See also
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